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change society

2022-01-21T03:13:43.705Z


We come from a civilization that has been built on the dualism of nature and culture. The first is unchangeable, while the second would be the realm of freedom. These great imaginaries seem to have been inverted


Getting out of the pandemic requires transforming the conditions that gave rise to it and that made its damage so devastating. However, the evidence that it is necessary to change does not always imply the possibility of doing so. The health and climate crises are a good example of this. The pandemic is linked to certain forms of social interaction and the difficulty of dealing with it is largely due to our resistance to changing them, in the same way that the climate crisis is a consequence of production and consumption habits that, in fact, we are not willing to change at all. the extent to which it would be necessary. In the movie

Don't Look Up

the authorities did not do what they had to do to avoid the disaster;

it may be that this narrative is deceptively inviting us to direct our recrimination towards others, instead of asking ourselves what we ourselves have done and should do.

That societies have to change is a frequent exhortation but it does not eliminate the controversy about in what direction and in what way.

Surely we do not lack the correct diagnoses, nor the political will or the interest to solve these problems, but the fact is that we were never in such agreement as when the confinements were decreed to contain the pandemic and the true return to normality has been to recover the disagreement in which we habitually live.

Society today is, at the same time, what must be changed and the place where the greatest resistance to change is generated. We come from a civilization that has been built on the dualism of nature and culture, according to which our natural condition would be unchangeable while culture-society would be the kingdom of freedom. These great imaginaries seem to have been inverted, as Bruno Latour asserts: nature has become an artificial construction while society stagnates beyond the reach of our modification capacities; nature would be malleable and society rigid. The health system has been relatively successful in providing biological immunity to part of the population through vaccines, but now the most difficult part remains: social immunity, that is,that the rest of the systems (educational, political, economic) ensure that such serious crises do not occur or that they find us better prepared and with greater capacity to repair the damage they cause in society. It seems easier to escape from our natural condition than from our social conditioning. To put it somewhat provocatively: it is easier to change sex than gender roles, to decide on the natural fact of death (through a euthanasia law) than on the social reality of old age (with adequate policies and services). ).To put it somewhat provocatively: it is easier to change sex than gender roles, to decide on the natural fact of death (through a euthanasia law) than on the social reality of old age (with adequate policies and services). ).To put it somewhat provocatively: it is easier to change sex than gender roles, to decide on the natural fact of death (through a euthanasia law) than on the social reality of old age (with adequate policies and services). ).

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Society interprets the crisis as an anomaly after which the previous normality must be restored.

After the confinement, there are those who maintained for a certain time the illusion that it was easy to keep the population at bay, that the evidence and the corresponding learning were imposed, that the States decreed the appropriate changes and these were produced with all the necessary radicalism.

We had lived a unique experience of control and docility that could have led us to draw the wrong conclusions.

The rapid return to old uses and customs reveals the extent to which major problems such as climate change or irresponsible consumption can hardly be resolved through direct and centralized intervention in social routines.

After the confinement, there are those who maintained for a certain time the illusion that it was easy to keep the population at bay, that the evidence and the corresponding learning were imposed, that the States decreed the appropriate changes and these were produced with all the necessary radicalism.

We had lived a unique experience of control and docility that could have led us to draw the wrong conclusions.

The rapid return to old uses and customs reveals the extent to which major problems such as climate change or irresponsible consumption can hardly be resolved through direct and centralized intervention in social routines.

that the States decree the opportune changes and these take place with all the necessary radicalism.

We had lived a unique experience of control and docility that could have led us to draw the wrong conclusions.

The rapid return to old uses and customs reveals the extent to which major problems such as climate change or irresponsible consumption can hardly be resolved through direct and centralized intervention in social routines.

The use of war categories to understand that strange situation, however inappropriate, responds to the fact that war has been the only phenomenon capable of similarly integrating the centripetal forces of the health, economic, legal and political spheres.

That is why wars have been a powerful element of integration and construction of national States.

Only in war and confinement is it possible (temporarily) to control society and align its different logics.

The confinement momentarily integrated society, but then it immediately returned to the logic of differentiation.

Some demanded the reopening of schools, others that of shops or culture, others considered that rights were finally back,

In the midst of the shock of the pandemic, a lot of expectations of radical change were triggered. The most pathetic example of this euphoria was the magical transmutation without subject, program, or definition, announced by Zizek as a mortal blow that nature, not society, was attesting against capitalism. This hope that a stroke of fate will do what we should do shows how little we trust in our own capacity for transformation. We compensate for this inability with the expectation that a natural catastrophe will automatically produce what should have been the result of social action in any case.

Ways of life are not usually the consequence of rational decisions but the result of established practices. Our actions (also those that, for example, favor contagion or damage the environment) are reluctant to change because they have become habits and have not found sufficient incentives for their modification. In order to achieve social change, the appropriate means must be provided. That individual people stop taking the car is only possible if there are public means of transport that facilitate the desired journeys; the type of behavior that we have to maintain to stop contagions must have adequate information; Moving towards greater digitization will require better training and concrete help so that no one is left behind.It is true that great transformations demand sacrifices, but society will not make them if it does not trust that there will be a profit, personal and collective, and that the costs will be shared equitably.

When we talk about the things that the pandemic has taught us, we usually allude to something that must be done, but perhaps it is more interesting to have verified to what extent it is difficult to change society and what our attitude should be in the face of this difficulty.

If we are to change society, we should begin by understanding how limited our ability to transform it is, how insufficient it is to know what to do.

Daniel Innerarity

is a professor of Political Philosophy, an

Ikerbasque

researcher at the University of the Basque Country and a professor at the European Institute in Florence.


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Source: elparis

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