Nowadays, when people ask me how I am, I answer, jokingly, that I’m doing great, so long as I ignore Donald Trump’s presidency in the US, Brexit, the crisis of the UK’s major political parties and the performance of Manchester United.

But recently, the litany of unfortunate circumstances has gotten so long that the joke is hard to pull off. One now must also list the political crisis in Hong Kong, a burgeoning diplomatic and economic dispute between Japan and South Korea, the Indian government’s revocation of Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomy — and India-Pakistan tensions more generally — and growing turmoil within South Africa’s ruling African National Congress.