2023-09-03 02:55:00
Revolutions are born to end, in an optimistic and determined way, with an established order. And revolutions are not made respecting the laws and the order once morest which they are fighting. This is what the Italian sociologist and essayist Francesco Alberoni says in his classic essay Enamorado y amor. Whoever leads a revolution, Alberoni points out, presents himself as a messiah who brings the good news, the one who will change the known world, put joy where there was pain, hope in grief, and make new shoots grow in dry and barren land. Those who believe him, his devotees, parishioners and followers, even though the messiah is an ordinary person, with as many defects as all people, or even more, have the same attitude towards him as a lover towards the subject of his love. He is the person with whom they prepare to live an extraordinary experience.
Some 30% of those who voted in the recent PASO elections, those who elected Javier Milei, seem to have responded, in the field of politics, to this description of the Italian essayist, to whom inspired works on values, hope, friendship, optimism and eroticism. In this quasi-revolutionary state, as Alberoni paints it, reason has little space and almost nothing to do. It has been displaced by pure emotionality, and elemental passion. In The Language of Emotions, one of his interesting essays, the American philosopher Sam Keen points out that the culture of modernity seduces us with the dangerous illusion that everything can be achieved in the blink of an eye. That awareness, intelligence, receptive listening, access to reality with open eyes and responsibility are not necessary to respond with presence, attitude and actions to the consequences that one’s own acts generate in others.
Although they are usually considered that way, reason and passion are not antagonistic. These are human attributes that are enhanced when associated. Otherwise, reason without passion produces conclusions that, however accurate they may be, end up in passivity and sterility. For its part, passion devoid of reason becomes a blind, devastating and often destructive impulse. They are like a rider without a horse or a wild pony without a rider, as the case may be. Israeli cognitive psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics for his studies on the incidence of behavior in economic events, recalls that humans are emotional beings who reason. In other words, they are able to get out of the reactive and basic emotional state (typical of our ancient reptilian brain) and access the development and management of emotions (something possible thanks to the neocortex, the most evolved layer of the brain). The fact that the conditions for this association between rider and horse are present in our morphology does not mean that it will inevitably occur. Kahneman points out two systems of thought. The One, impulsive, reactive, who takes any information for true without checking it. And the Two, which evaluates possibilities and information, does not respond to desire or impulse, dismantles beliefs and illusions, connects with reality and its conditions. The One is immediate and responds to emergencies. The Two needs time, distills information, makes arguments, discards thoughtless optimism. It is not immediate, you have to get to it.
The Milei phenomenon continues to cause enthusiasm in many and confusion and fear in many others, both (also the main candidates who oppose it), appear as examples of what happens when passion banishes reason to propose dangerous or improbable futures. , and when reason does not create reasons to move and hope those who need to believe in a possible future. When Alberoni’s idea regarding revolutions is taken up once more, it can be seen that most of them were effective in destroying an order, but not in creating a new and better one. So they ended up looking like the old or allying with it.
*Writer and journalist.
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#divorce #passion #reason
