By LUIZ MARQUES*
This is the century of the absurd, of necropolitics, of unhappy young people and the (desperate) search for a meaning that capitalism has stolen.
For an ancient Hebrew, the question “Do you believe in God?” was equivalent to the question “Do you have faith in Jehovah?” It did not indicate an intellectual problem, but a relational equation. Pre-modern people did not feel challenged by doubts about the existence of divinity, unlike modern people in a period in which life has never been worth so little. The 20th century, by spewing lava of extermination in torrents and counting millions of unnecessary deaths, was a slaughterhouse on an industrial scale.
In a time of practical devaluation of life in Europe, it is easy to assume that existentialist philosophy reflected the anxieties caused by the Great Depression after the First World War (Martin Heidegger, Being and time, 1927) and at the end of the Second World War (Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1943). The lucubrations about “being-there” come to light when established roles, beliefs and conventions enter into crisis. With new methods, contempt for life resurfaced in the 1980s with the hegemony of neoliberalism. Necropolitics is the continuation of the absurd by other means.
In the words of Terry Eagleton, in The sense of life: “In the climate of pragmatism and street smarts characteristic of the most advanced postmodern capitalism, of skepticism towards grand narratives and comprehensive syntheses, of disenchantment with everything metaphysical, life is yet another of the totalities that have lost credibility.” Read the nation, religion, justice, politics, education. The formation of identity has descended from superlative themes to individual consumption. The social dimensions of public life have been relegated to the private sphere. The categorical imperative has melted away.
Among us, the nation, instead of realizing the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity, has become a trading post for commodities for agribusiness. Religion, which for millennia colonized central power and shaped ideologies, reinvented itself in the obscurantist fundamentalism of dominion theology, with the sword. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. First Testament biblical won.
Justice was instrumentalized by the money of the judiciary, it manipulated public opinion with the lawfare and abjured Themis. Politics was captured by secret amendments to the federal budget. Public schools became privatizable assets (São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Paraná, Rio Grande do Sul), where mediocre rulers are hinting at the liquidation of state assets in the dispute for the prize of sellout number 1 to garner support from the “elites” in the next elections. Infamy blushes stone friars, not cynics. It is not about praising the conditions of the past, but about formulating a critique of the conditions of the present.
The evidence of barbarity
Postmodernity has challenged the values that organically united the parts to the whole. Rationality has been reduced to self-interest and the calculation of personal benefits. Morality has become the object of a private forum, with no public correspondence. The pursuit of pleasure has ended up overcoming the desire for social recognition. The idolatry of merchandise has taken over minds and hearts. However, it has not filled the void that covers the earth, engulfs the skies and undermines consciences.
The original understanding of the term “individual” (indivisible, inseparable from) withered in the process of its independence from institutions. The very notion of meaning was placed under suspicion, for conveying the idea that one thing can represent another. Nowadays, interpretations have been discarded. Allegories have disappeared from the landscape. Individualities suffer from fragmentation.
To illustrate with a scandal, Brazilian coup plotters defend themselves against the accusation of trying to destroy the democratic rule of law by claiming that the draft of a coup is just an innocent piece of writing. It is not articulated with actions, statements and demonstrations. The signifiers are sufficient in themselves. They do not harbor hidden meanings awaiting enlightening decoding. For Terry Eagleton: “A positivist sociology and a behaviorist psychology, allied with a short-sighted political science, have come to consecrate the betrayal of intelligentsia (conservative)”. The more the human sciences adapt to the economy, the more they leave aside the in-depth investigation of fundamental themes for society.
The symbolic has become dissociated from the empirical. Privatization has thrown the senses of reality down the drain. It has naturalized deindustrialization, precarious work, environmental imbalance, racism, sexism, transphobia, aporophobia, and cognitive denialism. Homeless workers have been forced to regress to the stage of urban caves improvised with scrap metal. This is evidence of barbarity.
On the grass of contemporary arenas, savage tribes take the place of social classes alongside the masses to expose the passions of xenophobia (“Open your eyes, Japanese!”) and supremacism (“Olé, Olé, Olé, Vini Chimpanzee!”). Today, football is the opium of the people. Temples are the crack of the outskirts. Zeitgeist recognizes his creation in the warlike stands between joy and self-curse.
Happiness – social practice
Postmodernists do not remember the time when there was truth, or meaning. Their common sense imploded with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1991. The emblematic phrase of the last hundred years was “All power to the Soviets,” which complemented the famous declaration “God is dead.” With the end of the terrible Siberian nightmares, the unipolarity imposed by US imperialism sought to stop the wheel of history. With the ignoble defeat of utopia, the slogan of the think thanks neoliberals “All power to the free market” welcomed deregulation and finance.
Jalismo contained the demagogic promise of prosperity; it was not fulfilled. Democracy was then given the adjective illiberal, characterized by oxymoron. Authoritarianism is the guardian of the system that feeds the accumulation of rentiers, with total indifference. As in the visionary poem by T. S. Eliot: “In a world of speculation / What might have been and what was / Converge to one end, which is the present. // Absurd the dark, devastated time / That before and after its trail spreads”.
Nevertheless, the spirit of progressives breaks the illusions of quietism and interrupts the trajectory of fascism, with the bond that links ethics to politics in the fight against fake news of corporate media. Comradeship confronts hatred by opening the windows of hope. By promoting changes in the world, the BRICS signal the “will to power” of the 21st century. We have survived the cannibalism that reduced us to private contentment. Happiness is a social practice, a way of acting that arouses willingness to share, fight and overcome the obstacles that impede the well-being of the collective. Because the joy of encountering humanity drives away prostration, loneliness and fear.
If pleasure is a fleeting sensation that even fascists can enjoy, happiness is lasting from a perspective based on the conception of man as ““political zoo” (social animal). The challenge is to become good at being human, at the virtuous technique of living. Happiness is not a personal attribute and does not depend on luxurious material goods. Popular psychoanalysis at Casa da Árvore (Rio de Janeiro), Casa dos Cata-Ventos (Porto Alegre) and public squares throughout the country helps marginalized people to recover their subjectivity and go beyond the psychic and systemic chaos. In this “big world”, many paths lead to solidarity because “the teacher is not the one who always teaches, but the one who suddenly learns”.
Research on Generation Z, born between 1995 and 2010, shows high levels of unhappiness: (i) due to excessive use of technology, electronic games, digital networks; (ii) due to the pressure to conform to the beauty and success standards of others. influencers on the internet and; (iii) economic uncertainty and the lack of a professional horizon. The climate catastrophe and social inequalities sharpen isolation in young people. But the flame of their indomitable rebellion remains lit, attentive to events. Heteronomy in defining the course of existence from the outside in sickens souls, it does not silence them. Paraphrasing the Oscar-winning film by director Walter Salles – “youth is still here”.
One day, we will hear about the adventures of capital told like this. Once upon a time in the West.
* Luiz Marques is a professor of political science at UFRGS. He was Rio Grande do Sul's state secretary of culture in the Olívio Dutra government.
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