Why is sociopolitical engagement so difficult today? Article by Leonardo Boff – Instituto Humanitas Unisinos

“Internalized impotence and melancholy mean that the majority of people, regrettably, young people, are not encouraged to engage socially and politically in any movement or project of transformation. Education in formal institutions is decisive for the socialization of this reading of reality. Vandana Shiva, the great Indian scientist and feminist ecologist, calls it the ‘monoculture of minds’. This monoculture generates in students the conviction that this world is good and desirable, naive consciousnesses that do not realize that they are. co-opted by the prevailing system and made its reproducers”, writes Leonardo Boff, philosopher and theologian, author, among countless other books, of Caring for our Common Home: clues to delay the end of the world (Vozes, 2024).

Here’s the article.

We are witnessing a worrying retreat in the popular bases and in various social movements, particularly those of a political nature, in the commitment to transform society, whether at a national or global level. It is important to recognize that there is a heavy feeling of impotence and also of melancholy. Apart from this observation, we are also witnessing in central countries (USA It is Europe) university youth rebelling against the disproportionate, indiscriminate and genocidal reaction of the state of Israel against the population of Gaza Strip in response to the Hamas terrorist act on October 7 last year.

O establishment politician, dominant in the world, from the Global North, reacts with unusual violence against the protesters. In Germany any demonstration pro-Palestine of the Gaza Strip is officially banned and immediately repressed at the slightest sign of support for the Palestinian cause and against the genocide that is taking place there. In the USA, police repression takes on violent expressions against university students and professors, even against a candidate for president of the country.

Among us in Brazil and in general in Latin America there is a lack of public demonstrations, not even against the genocide, especially of 14,000 children and the death of around 80,000 citizens under heavy Israeli bombing, criminally using artificial intelligence (AI) to murder certain people and their entire families, inside their own homes.

We need to try to understand why this inertia. I add some points that allow us to glimpse some understanding of the current situation, whether concerning the Ukraine being devastated by Russian brutality, be it the massacre and genocide in the Gaza Strip.

It is in force in a large part of society, particularly in Global South but not excluding portions in Global North, a strong feeling of impotence. Firstly, objectively, the capitalist system in its most exacerbated expression of the neoliberalism of Vienna/Chicago school prevailed throughout the world. Those who resist suffer political and ideological repression and eventually coups d’état, as was the case with impeachment from the Dilma Rousseff. We seek to impose what Karl Polanyi in 1944 called “The great transformation”: moving from a market society to a pure market society. That is to say, everything becomes a commodity: human life, organs, seeds, water, food, everything and everything is put on the market and earns its price. This had already been predicted in 1847 by Marx in The misery of philosophy.

This objective fact generates a subjective reaction: we begin to see the world without hope, that there is no viable alternative to this globalized enormity. She expresses herself through TINA (There is no Alternative): “There is no alternative”. The effect is a feeling of impotence and repressed disenchantment. This gives rise to a defeatist attitude that it is not worth going against the system, because it is too big and we are too small. They are forced to make concessions to survive in a profoundly unequal and unfair world, which produces melancholy. This erupts when there is no light at the end of the tunnel. So, why commit to something alternative that has no chance of triumphing? There’s no way around this kind of world, many people think. We must adapt to it to suffer as little as possible.

A second point is the perverse strategy developed by the dominant system: creating a consumer culture. Offer the greatest number of desirable objects, even if more than 90% are completely futile and unnecessary. It is about manipulating one of the most powerful forces of the human psyche: the desire, whose nature, already seen by Aristotle and confirmed by Freud, is that of being unlimited. It has already been said by notable psychologists (example: Mary Gomes It is Allen Kenner) that “this is the greatest psychological project ever produced by the human species”: preventing citizens from no longer considering themselves citizens to becoming simple consumers and consumers addicted to consumption.

To seduce them, trillions of dollars are spent on advertising through the mass media and using all possible resources of seduction. This represents six times the annual investment needed to guarantee quality food, health, water and education for all humanity. It is difficult to imagine greater perversity. But it is predominant in the general way of life of humanity that emerged from it.

Internalized impotence and melancholy mean that the majority of people, unfortunately, young people, are not encouraged to engage socially and politically in any movement or project of transformation. Education in formal institutions is decisive for the socialization of this reading of reality. Vandana Shiva, a great Indian scientist and feminist ecologist, calls it a “monoculture of minds”. This monoculture generates in students the conviction that this world is good and desirable, naive consciences that do not realize that they are co-opted by the prevailing system and made its reproducers.

Against all this, Paulo Freire launched his educational and liberating project, starting with the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Education as a Practice of Freedom and concluding with education with love and hope. He coined the expression “hope”: not crossing your arms (hoping that things will change on their own), but creating the conditions for hope to achieve its transformative objectives.

How to free yourself from the manipulated naive conscience? Just the awareness process is not enough, as critically understanding what happens does not mean changing what happens. We have to move to an alternative practice, confront the dominant system with a paradigm of a different society, egalitarian, non-consumerist but supportive of a mode of production based on the rhythms of nature (agroeology It is circular economy) and another type of ecological-social democracy, from the bottom up, in which the rights of nature and Mother Earth are recognized, creating the Whole, humanity and nature included in the great Common Home, the Mother earth.

(Reflection, looking for alternatives, will come in the next article.)

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