Writing our history

Some of the tensions in today's democratic societies are not only political, economic and/or social. Sometimes these tensions are due to a set of factors in which the individual reveals his or her essence as the human being that he or she is. Full of interests, contradictions, emotions, passions and being part of a society in which he lives without much conviction.

Developed democratic societies are rather predictable and difficult to steer in a new direction. Their stability lies in the relatively small number of people who change their political preferences, and when they do, it is usually only slowly. A very large part of society remains loyal to its voting criteria, supporting continuist political and economic models that sustain the "status quo", seeking stability and the permanence of the existing order. In other words, they make the existing model last for a long time, with only slight variations. And that is not exciting. Moreover, it is discouraging for those who need to feel that they can change and reorder the world in which they live. A world that, moreover, seems to be ungovernable, global, and far beyond the capacity of most of us who live in it to control and understand individually. A world where what we don't know is far more important than what we do know. Because when we lived in local and then national isolation or looked to the sky for explanations, everything was in its place and to a large extent that world was more comprehensible and even almost predictable. Not now.

Today, uncertainty generates fear of this new way of life and becomes a disturbing anxiety that pushes us, that makes us lose the logic and reason that we have made so much use of and that have brought us to what we are today. So many people move into a state of mind of excitement, of sensitive nerves, of a desire for radical change, and more and more people are eager to return to the familiar. 

We live in free societies, where large social currents are mixed, pushing in different directions, contradictory in many cases, and where maintaining order can only be achieved if we know how to manage freedom, tolerance and agreement. But it is not easy. We need to have a broad outlook, courage, judgement, a vision of the whole and a critical capacity to keep the current model of life active.

And it is there, when these elements are lacking, or when essentialist, demagogic or reductionist tricks are used, or when an undisguised dictator starts a war, that emotions begin to give meaning and encouragement to perished hopes. At that moment, the reasons that support the times in which we live become blurred and our eyes turn to other distant and ancient times, where nostalgia for the past or for what could have been and what we want to believe it was, shine again as desirable objectives. At this point, there are people in society who prefer to improvise, simplify and decide to strain realities in order to achieve these old objectives, to go over the abyss if necessary for some idea or ideal, and protected by an immense sea of confused or manipulated information, they begin to tread hard without thinking about the risks that this path entails. And new feedback groups are created, lacking in memory or willfully forgetful, who walk together to continue an unstoppable regression in search of a better and safer past.

A social excitement of the collective backward march begins to take place; for the pending revolution, neo-fascism, independence, the god that protects us or the elimination of a series of real or imaginary enemies that supposedly threaten their lives.

In my opinion, this 21st century and many of its people, in general with a better quality of life than ever before in the history of humanity, do not know what they are looking for, nor valuing what they have, nor where to go and not even asking themselves if they are here for something or to be able to become something.
It seems that it will have to be a hecatomb or a conflict that makes sense of things. As a friend of mine said to me the other day, quoting I don't remember who, somewhat deterministically, "every generation must have its war", and maybe now it will happen, but in an involutionary way; it is possible that it will happen through a conflict of colossal epic proportions, with the death of certain societies on a global scale and with all the tragedy that may entail. The 20th century has almost forgotten the 20th century; the First World War, the Civil War, the Second World War and the Cold War, and conflicts that are not close to our borders are neglected. There are fewer and fewer people left who lived through those times, others deny important parts of what happened, and many have already found the necessary adversaries, it only remains to choose the moment, the stage and to divide into alliances for the hecatomb to begin.

But one cannot live without hope, and sometimes crises come, like the pandemic that dramatically brings it back to us. Crises where life is put to play with the death of large collectives and then societies move to a more lukewarm position. Where being able to go out again, to see the sun, that our parents do not die, that our children have a future and the desire to stay as we are become simple desirable realities. Then the mood calms down somewhat, despite the agitators. But it doesn't end there, Vladimir Putin invades Ukraine and once again a deep shock shakes the foundations of almost the entire world, we see the death and destruction of other equals who had aspirations to be like us and who to a large extent already were. Watching almost live as a shop of a well-known brand of hamburger blows up, just like the one near your home. Then democracies and their citizens see themselves reflected in a mirror of violence and horror nearby.

And fear takes over everything and everyone, things are seen in black and white, life is simplified and what we have, with all its faults, is once again valued for what it is worth. And without deep reflection we see that what we have achieved in democratic countries makes sense. That having Putin, Lukashenko, Xi Jinping and many others to govern us does not seem a good thing and that ours, although imperfect, allows us to vote, live in freedom, travel without permits, be who we are or who we want to be, protest, speak our minds and many other things that were not valued because they were obvious. All of this is perfectible, undoubtedly, but acceptable.

And with these counterpoints, the desire to return to the past should be softened, because history has decided to come to see us and now we have to write new pages, the ones that are truly ours. And so we can leave behind the nostalgia and the idyllic worlds that never were, where, as in the Middle Ages, it was God's will that presided over man's decisions, or later, where Hitler and Stalin were the ones who pointed out the true paths.

Let us hope that, even if there remain the office warriors, those who, out of impulse or spurious interests, encourage war as another way of doing politics, those who want to achieve changes that favour them, those who try to find their way in a world they do not understand or those whose prejudices do not allow them to see the fragile life that encourages us, we will see, before long, if we have good handwriting, a firm pulse and clear reasons to point to the future and to be able to write our own history. Or if, on the contrary, it will end up being interests, contradictions, emotions and passions that put an end to "History" once and for all.