Here’s to a Most Human Anthropology
New Year’s Day has always felt like anthropology’s most poetic moment.
New Year’s Day has always felt like anthropology’s most poetic moment. Not because of the resolutions or the countdowns, but because it’s a ritual we all share, a collective turning of the page. Around the world, in every culture, we mark time, as if putting up a new calendar could somehow reset everything. It can’t, of course. But we do it anyway, because that’s what humans do: we hope.
Anthropology teaches us that to be human is to adapt, to struggle, to dream. From the very first tools shaped out of stone to the skyscrapers scraping the heavens, we’ve always been creatures of invention and reinvention. Even now, in a world tangled up in inequality, conflict, and crises that feel bigger than we are, we keep trying. That’s not naivety; it’s our most enduring feature.
Take a walk through New York on January 1st, and you’ll see it everywhere. The city is an open-air museum of human resilience and contradiction. In the shadow of luxury high-rises, street vendors set up shop, offering warm pretzels and hot coffee. The subway is a rolling anthropological case study: a teenager with AirPods next to an elder reading a dog-eared book, an opera singer busking a high note between stops. Every face, every story, a reminder that life is messy and unfair—but also beautiful.
And that’s the thing about anthropology: it doesn’t flinch from the hard truths. It shows us the systems that exploit and divide, the hierarchies that persist. But it also shows us the ways we’ve resisted, the communities we’ve built, the love we’ve chosen to give. The New Year is no different. It’s a time to reckon with what hasn’t worked, to grieve what we’ve lost. But it’s also a moment to remember that we’re still here. Still trying.
There’s a kind of anthropology to resolutions, too. They’re deeply human: aspirational, sometimes unattainable, often a little silly. Lose ten pounds. Write a novel. Save more money. Yet beneath the surface, they’re about something universal: the desire to be better, to grow, to connect. Even when we fail (and let’s be honest, many of us will), the act of trying matters. It’s how we stay in the game.
So here’s to a most human anthropology in 2025. Here’s to the teachers and the caregivers, the activists and the artists, the dreamers and the doers. Here’s to the everyday acts of resistance and creation, to the soup kitchens and story circles, the protests and the poetry slams. Here’s to the friends who listen, the strangers who lend a hand, the lovers who hold on.
And here’s to you, reading this, wondering what the new year will bring. It’ll be complicated, as it always is. But maybe, just maybe, it will also surprise you—with laughter you didn’t see coming, with a kindness that catches you off guard, with a moment of grace that makes all the struggle feel worth it. After all, isn’t that what being human is about?
Happy New Year, from one human to another. Let’s see what we can make of it.