The four horsemen of the democratic apocalypse

2022-12-03T14:08:15.590Z

If we do not learn to respond with a political and informational tone capable of exchanging contempt and revenge for more repairing and constructive emotions, anti-democratic forces will rule the country.

This summer, while enjoying my first neighborhood meeting as a homeowner, I ended up thinking about the four horsemen of the marriage apocalypse.

Professor John Gottman of the University of Washington characterizes them as the four signs of a disintegrating couple: criticizing, defensive, emptiness, and contempt.

They are toxic communication models, capable of rotting even the deepest love.

I thought about it while listening to two of my new neighbors speak (and speak to me) in terms that I had never heard used among people who share a staircase, but that have become normal in at least two spaces designed to guarantee democratic health: Congress and the media. Communication.

According to Gottman, criticizing the partner is different from complaining because it focuses on the defect of the person (who does not listen, does not clean, does not respect) and not on the problem to be solved.

The person criticized invariably goes on the defensive with over-explanations, victimhood, and the kind of vengeful counter-criticism that in political science is called the "and you more."

When all the discussions are locked, a vacuum is produced.

The problem cannot be solved because the problem is already the people and only frustration remains.

In my new community, the void is the neighbors who don't come down to the meetings because they can't stand the tone and the verbal violence that other neighbors have imposed, paradoxically allowing that violence to spread without hindrance, like a poisonous gas that fills your lungs. when you breathe

Of the four horsemen,

contempt is the most dangerous because it does not seek problem solving, only the petty satisfaction of destroying and humiliating.

And it spreads very quickly.

Contempt is the natural language of fake news, influence operations and dehumanization campaigns.

They are communication tools whose objective is to destroy confidence in democratic institutions and weaken the defenses of the population of a country.

They are very effective: according to a Latinobarómetro study, 43% of Mexicans distrust people from their own community.

In Peru it is 54% and in Brazil, 63%.

When we allow people to be treated with contempt in sessions of Congress, press conferences, talk shows,

podcasts

and opinion columns, the institutions designed to guarantee the well-being of citizens are put at the service of those who want to destroy it.

Trust in institutions is one of the main indicators of the health and economic potential of a State.

I grew up in a community where not all the neighbors were friends, but everyone spoke well to each other.

That cordiality allowed them to defend the trees in the neighborhood park that the city council wanted to uproot one summer to put up a garage and protect public services when real estate interests arrived to reclassify land.

Two meetings later, I wonder if we'll be able to protect or achieve anything when the time comes, or if I'll also resign from meetings to save myself the hardship, delegating major decisions to the worst in the community.