We have a cultural and maybe mental problem. We do not know how to deal with what we know and we know that it is true. And this defect has been more exposed than ever before with the covid crisis. Everyone (politicians, environmentalists, scientists, economists, friends, family ...) is determined to predict what will happen next without focusing on what is happening to us now. What to do with what is to come occupies so much space that it seems that we do not know how to relate to what we are experiencing every day. And I dare say that the more involved in managing this crisis, the more diffuse the relationship with the real.
Our society has become so sophisticated in manufacturing the future that we no longer know how to relate to what is really happening. That is why terraplanismo is a trend of our century. Because the truth has become an unmanageable matter and it is more common to resort to delirium than to common sense. Does it make sense to think in 2020 that the earth is flat? The fact is that it is a growing trend since dealing with the real has become ungovernable. Can you imagine managing a global pandemic in a society with objective problems to connect what you know with what you do, to gather knowledge and action?
The government team does imagine it and is revealing the terrible relationship that current leaders have with what happens in real life. They are so busy predicting what will happen in a month, three or a year that they appear strangely paralyzed to proceed sensibly here and now. To act not with the masks and tests that will come or with the metrics that will be debugged or with the reliable data that we will ever have. I mean to do with what there is. And here we fall into the paradox of our time and that is not exclusive to this Government. The clearer the reality is, the easier it would be to make a decision, the more delusional government action becomes. Strategy that is not exclusive to governments and also applies to companies, families and all kinds of institutions.
The children's thing was easy. However, the relationship of our managers with life in the flesh is directly negative. Only from this thesis can I understand the terraplanista management of the children's issue. Such management requires, first of all, denying the evidence. In other words, the Government had to assume that the children do not exist or that they had never seen one. Maybe that's why it was first decided that the children were strange subjects under the age of 12. After that the children would be better strange subjects under the age of 14. And right now they are analyzing in an expert committee what kind of subjects are those who are between 14 and 18, because even without being children they do not reach the age of majority. However, after much work this committee could have concluded that these subjects have been adults since the confinement began and that they could go outside from the beginning. Too bad neither they nor their parents knew it.
Well, once a Martian relationship with reality has been demonstrated, childhood in this case, comes the consequent delirium: proposing that the children go out first to the hot areas of contagion. Namely: supermarkets, shopping malls, pharmacies ... That they later rectified and that is fine. But the alarming thing here is that this treatment with reality is not the characteristic of this Government but of our time.
For example. Imagine that all the governments of the world have enough information to know that we are going through a climate crisis that puts the lives of all human beings at risk in the medium term. Let's imagine that we have all the information, all the metrics, that we know what to do and that citizens are also aware. What will those who govern us propose? Terraplanisimo climate without a doubt: future scenarios, fantasies, dystopias and international forums where to discuss them and see Greta Thunberg cry.
I say more. We ourselves have an increasingly doubtful relationship with our conscience. We can, for example, be really concerned about the mistreatment of animals destined for human consumption, observe how chicken young are separated from the shell with a machine and even cry when watching on YouTube how many crushed chicks die. And then celebrate it with a meatball smoothie. On the subject of affections, the matter worsens if possible. In other words, in intimate life, we are not able to consequently connect what we know with what we decide. That my marriage is going wrong, because I try to fix it with a second son, they understand me. Family terraplanism.
It is urgent to demand that the politicians return to reality and that they are already in place, we return as soon as possible. We will need it immediately and it would be a good habit to survive. Meanwhile, those of us who have children are in luck. We can now go around the block keeping the reasonable social distance. This change and its simple execution has meant hours of work, several press conferences and even a small government crisis. Here we are.
Nuria Labari is a journalist and writer.
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