We are a puzzled nation
(Article translated from a text originally published in Portuguese, using Google Translator.)
The results of the first round of the presidential elections showed the intensity of the disorientation of our electorate in the face of the consequences of the transition from the analog to the digital age. One segment of the population shows an unacknowledged fear of the uncertainties generated by the technological revolution, while another proposes changes, but fails to offer solutions to at least three major challenges created by digitalization and the internet.
The vote obtained by the supporters of the ultra-conservative current better known as Bolsonarism clings to routines, rules, and values that refer to a known past and, therefore, considered safe. No matter the arguments, facts, and data. What predominates is the atavistic fear of the possibility of losing consolidated goods and values and the compulsive tendency to form social ghettos through information bubbles that feed polarization and radicalization.
The followers of the so-called Lulismo, a broad social arc identified with the idea of a renewal of political practices, institutional rules, and cultural values, show great difficulty in formulating innovative proposals for the three great challenges created by the new communication and information technologies. Despite betting on the future, Lulismo also resorts to the past as a way to materialize its political platform. The slogan “let’s be happy again” seeks to awaken in people’s memory something that has already passed, and that should not be repeated because the world has changed.
Bolsonarism has no future because it lives in the past and refuses to abandon it because it finds patrimonial and cultural security in it. But in a bewildered nation, this segment has the advantage because it offers an illusory solution to a real problem. The flight from doubt and insecurities feeds the electoral flow of a movement whose ideas do not resist the most primary arguments, such as the opposition to vaccines, flat earthing, and civil armamentism. But it is precisely this irrationality that works as a great electoral aggregator for the ultraconservatives.
Three harrowing challenges
Bolsonarism practices electoral populism by granting financial benefits to the poorest population just to win votes, ignoring that this implies future costs, possibly unpayable. The Brazilian and global extreme right sticks its head in the sand like ostriches when threatened. She closes her eyes to the future, which will surely lead her to a dead end, and from there to violence and agency.
The problem with Lulismo is that its adherents know that change is inevitable, they do not fear it, but they have not yet produced concrete solutions to the challenges of inequality in contemporary society, the future of work, and the management of information. These are the three most harrowing challenges generated by the transition to the digital age, in addition to many others that are less urgent and less complex. It is the answer to these three challenges that can give innovative trends a new political/electoral impetus capable of overcoming the fear of the ultraconservatives.
Inequality is one of the main features of contemporary society. There are two types of inequality. The, so to speak, natural ones, such as differences in sex, race, culture, geographic location, and age, to name the most notorious. And there are man-made differences such as economic, social, and political inequalities. The former feeds the diversity of worldviews which, in turn, are at the base of the production of new knowledge and of social, economic, political, and cultural innovation. On the other hand, inequalities created by man destroy the social fabric, shake the economy and provoke lethal conflicts. They are the ones that threaten the communities in which we live.
It will hardly be possible to end all inequality produced by man but to reduce it to tolerable limits and be compatible with the requirements of economic growth, it will be necessary to change a lot in the financial system and in the way in which a country’s wealth is distributed to its inhabitants. . There is no escaping from the implementation of the universal minimum income system, which in turn will lead to a reduction in the income of the richest part of the population. The political and financial mechanisms for how this system will be implemented are still largely unknown, but billionaires will certainly lose some of their fortunes.
The question of minimum income is directly linked to the problem of work in the coming decades. The world population continues to grow, but there are fewer and fewer jobs due to the advance of automation in the production of goods and services. Thus, unemployment tends to continue growing even with the adoption of incentives to hire workers, low or unskilled, who form the overwhelming majority of the unemployed. What to do with this surplus of labor? No politician on the planet has so far been able to provide an answer to this problem. The population is led not to think about what to do because candidates only offer immediate and electoral solutions.
Informational bewilderment
But it is in the handling of information that the most disturbing question of our times resides. The avalanche of information on the internet created conditions for the emergence of the phenomenon of fake news and with it the distrust of what is said or published by people and the media. The viral contamination of uncertainty clashes with the dichotomous culture of right or wrong, good or bad, fair or unfair, and beautiful or ugly.
Our cognitive structure is being gradually shaken and with it our behavioral security. We are losing confidence in what we see, hear, and feel because we no longer know if our five senses are being deceived by false, distorted, or out-of-context narratives or speeches. Informational doubts push us into bubbles and tribes that can lead to sectarianism and xenophobia.
Fighting these trends is a long and complicated process, but one that needs to be started immediately, facing the hostility of the ultraconservatives who, at the moment, still have the political and financial power to hide the harsh reality of this era of uncertainty. The biggest challenge is to combine immediate alternatives, such as winning an election, with the exploration of medium and long-term solutions, which generate controversy, but few votes.
