As the climate crisis deepens, the ultra-right that denies and diminishes the depth of this crisis is on the rise. How is Colombia doing?
I give you a couple of clues to identify a populist (of any ideology): 1. He is in constant search of an ideological enemy. 2. He oversimplifies social and economic dynamics, making them appear to be "black and white". It seems that the world is becoming increasingly populated by these, while social cohesion continues to crack and we seem to be entering a time of profound hopelessness on the part of humanity towards the future.
As the climate crisis deepens, the ultra-right that denies and diminishes the depth of this crisis is on the rise. Today it is almost impossible to find a country where politics does not seem to be a war full of polarization and resentment.
What is happening today in the world (and in Colombia) evidences a truth that is becoming increasingly clear: that the current multilateral, economic and political system is failing to meet the challenges of the present generations. This failure of the system then manifests itself in everything we are experiencing: the different blocks and strata of society blaming each other, lies and manipulation as the media strategy par excellence to indoctrinate society and a planet where the environmental impact continues to increase and increase. Everything seems unbridled.
But out of every crisis comes the inception of a different way of doing things. In the world of systems studies, we speak of "panarchies" as the manifestation of human cycles, where the conservation and maintenance potential of any "system" begins to crumble little by little, to make way for a new way of organizing ourselves and doing things.
Across the world thousands of communities have realized that the hegemonic economic and social system is incapable of delivering on its promises of human well-being, or the Sustainable Development Goals. Also that the current system is costing humanity the ability to regenerate itself into the future, as the degradation of the planet has reached the point of putting our social systems in check.
This truth, evident to anyone who seeks to look at the figures objectively, is beginning to create new ways of organizing ourselves and understanding the world; across different latitudes. Names such as the donut economy, Buen Vivir, El Gran Giro, Post-growth, ecofeminism, the politics of belonging, etc. have emerged. But, not surprisingly, they all point to the same thing: to build an economic and social system where economic profit is not the lodestar, to rediscover sufficiency and to relate to the non-human living world from a holistic and respectful understanding.
The great Colombian anthropologist Arturo Escobar proposes as an introduction to the new world that is approaching the concept of the "poliverse", where the countries of the Global South break free from the chains of the developmentalist ideology that marked the 20th century and what has come of the 21st, to seek their own paths and cultivate their own societies. It is still too early to know which way the balance of this convulsed world will tip, but I see in these new narratives a possible convergence that may tend towards what the planet desperately needs: A new narrative.
