The senses of urgency and transformation are one of the most visible symptoms of the discomfort we experience today. There is a kind of moral duty to find answers in the air, which is imposed on people, regardless of their age, culture or social group. The crisis situation is amplified because it seems that we do not have minimal answers or, when we do, they seem to be impractical or without the support of other people.
There are a series of demands that suggest that all decisions, whether on environmental issues, traditional political impasses or choices around education, are out of step with the real needs we have. If this disconnect were not enough, there is also a feeling of irreversibility in the choices that must be made. The lag and the irreversible nature refer to the annulment of the historical condition of people and the supposed choices that, in Western culture, populate the imaginaries around the alleged autonomy of subjects or social groups.
The combination of the duty to change and the impotence of answering questions leads us to the perception of being dominated by chaos. Chaos is often presented in a positive way, as in ancient theogonies, it would precede the existence of an ordered world. In the first decades of the 21st century, however, we can translate it as an interpretative fatigue in the face of a world that seems not to be built or constituted by us. There are no answers that indicate the existence of forces that can bring together solutions in the face of so many impasses. The great explanatory keys seem reduced in the face of a world that has grown larger: the state, social classes, utopias, policies, cultures, for example, continue to be important, but without the same meaning and agglutination as before.
Times change, desires change, trust changes
Camões masterfully recorded the transformation driven by modernity. Centuries later, we experience the decentralization of universalizing categories and the dispersion of voices, subjects and experiences. The difficulty in finding the answers we seek is not related to a reflective or creative interdiction, but to a sudden change and acceleration of events. Conservatism, which never ceased to exist, is strengthened today as it is the known response to insecurity regarding the future.
The reconfiguration of everyday lives, mediated by technologies, has produced a sense of autonomy that, paradoxically, can nullify the condition of subjects. When each person establishes what they want to see, believe and build their own logic and worlds, the result is the emptying and insignificance of this world. Hesitation and fear become companions that, to disguise insecurities, are transmuted into inflamed, virulent and ineffective speeches. Trust, in this case, is only apparent. When other visions and expectations do not fit into a world, it is a sign of reductionism and simplification that erases differences and makes the construction of alternatives unfeasible, as demonstrated by fundamentalisms of different orders.
The call for change does not mean, as modernity has projected, a progressive or linear path. The rejection of the concrete and objective conditions of the current world coexists, calmly, with notions such as rescue and return. Reliving the past, as we know, is not possible. But nostalgia can be an advisor to those who, ignoring or fearing the future, only know what has already been experienced and, without boldness and imagination, resort to the weight of traditions.
Should we change?
Even with the uncertainty of the direction to be followed, changes surround us and happen. Changes are not equivalent to a bet on the future, nor do they need to be seen as irremediable. Evidently, there are issues that are more urgent than others, but viewing them all as a continuous and repetitive exercise leads nowhere. Without knowing why or where, the changes only mean an accumulation of stressful uncertainties.
However, changes occur even in a calm environment. The contradiction between permanence and change is at the genesis of philosophical thought. There are things that we demand and hope that they are permanent and there are others that are uncontrollable, because we know, echoing Heraclitus, that we do not enter the same river twice.
Resisting change is pointless, as it changes even because of our eyes. Too much time in the same situation generates some form of accommodation that, due to exhaustion, can produce new ruptures. But throwing yourself into a cycle of incessant disruptions can be futile.
Education, politics, the economy and various social and cultural configurations can benefit from any movement that means transformation. Changes mean the articulation of contradictory forces and interests between what is sought to be achieved and what remains. Historians like to chronicle ruptures, but changes are often slower than narratives record around historical and social processes.
Even in accelerated times there is time needed for new configurations and contexts to emerge. The political, technological, behavioral, economic and moral apparatuses interfere in the re-elaborations that, systematically, people seem to want to ignore when placing on themselves and their activities the weight – with the anxieties and potential glories – of leading a process of change, especially in relation to the unknown.
Having time to decant and assimilate decisions is essential so that we do not act like Cronos who, in a desperate and innocuous way, made decisions that did not guarantee him the power he imagined preserving in his act of destroying his own children.
