It is the best of times. It is the worst of times.
Dickens may have written this in 1859, but he might as well be speaking about the world today. We’re living through extraordinary advances in science, medicine, and technology. And yet, human life often feels cheaper than ever.
James Baldwin once said that the world is held together by the love and attention of a very few people. That, without them, despair would be the logical response.
We’ve had (at Linchpin Magazine and elsewhere) endless conversations about the point of it all. About how you keep going when hate, exploitation, and indifference are treated as business as usual.
How do you exist in a world that has embraced self-interest with wilful abandon without coming undone? It’s as if we’ve immunised ourselves against kindness and empathy.
So maybe the only antidote is change.
But as with most things, the word ‘change’ is used too easily. As if change comes from intent alone. Like opinions formed from a distance. Like outrage that grows increasingly strident with each keystroke, but asks little beyond expression.
But here’s the thing: real change rarely announces itself.
It usually begins with someone noticing what others have learned to live with. A broken system. An injustice. A fault line. A crack in the wall that our eyes once registered, then adjusted to skim past.
Baldwin’s words kept flitting about the edges of our consciousness as we brought this edition to life. In seeking Linchpins for this edition, we wanted to look closely at what happens after the question “what can I do?” has been asked for the last time and answered, albeit imperfectly, with action. Not the performative version of action, but the kind that reshapes a life. So we held these words close through every interview, every transcript and draft.
It may seem like our changemaking Linchpins have nothing in common. They work in different places, on different problems, and with different tools. Yet, when each of them reached a point where the world’s disorder could have licensed withdrawal, every single one of them chose forward motion instead.
Like Hannah, who found her protest and then built the infrastructure to help others find theirs,
like Yogesh, who patiently throws every gate in publishing wide open so oppressed and marginalised words never have to be sanitised again,
like Durgesh, who connects people in places the world glazes over,
like Neda, who is giving voice to women expected to be radiant at a moment that is often anything but,
and, like Jonah, who is building a zero-waste community centering farmers in Goa.
This, our first edition of 2026, is dedicated to everyone who has ever felt tiny and helpless in the face of the disarray that constantly threatens to upend the world. The world does not need more certainty. What it needs is more people willing to decide, quietly and repeatedly, not to be the ones who look away.
Change, when it lasts, moves less like fire and more like water. And like water, it will find its way.
– Karina
