There is a Brazil that is dying out as a new one emerges, but this transition cannot be perceived simply by looking at the political sphere. Since the democratic transition, we have been used to detecting in the ups and downs of political and institutional life the underlying social and cultural energies, the ideas that were in dispute, the values and ethics that were being put to the test in the new times of the 1980s and 1990. Cultural and social life was incorporated as an accessory for understanding the political sphere, defining choices such as listening to Caetano Veloso or Chico Buarque. Nothing escaped politics; not even the choice of toothpaste.
However, the sphere of politics is not necessarily in correspondence with the social aspects and cultural life of a country. Paradoxically, this can come to detach itself from what is believed and transform itself in people’s daily lives, in their tastes, values and interests, in the ways they face their challenges, to consume, to love and to be recognized by those who who are close to them and for others.
The world of work, religiosity and aesthetics have developed significant changes in the last 30 years, while the political sphere still seems to reproduce itself in ideological disputes between left and right that do not cover much of the social sphere. The last 20 years of political progressivism around center-left governments, materialized in a cycle of social and economic ambiguities, have led to an apparent dead end where the political sphere stutters for air.
It seems that its oxygen has run out and what kept its eventually creative energy has ended up in the antithesis of politics, in its negation as a game of dispute of the free interests of citizens in a democratic society. Materialized in identity battles and “appropriate languages”, “economic aid” policies for the poorest and personal accusations, the negativity of politics dominates through superficiality and lack of creativity and debate about political projects and ideas. The a priori of each argument is the end of politics as an exercise, and of the sphere of politics as a place of creation and transformation of people’s lives.
The Brazil that is gradually ceasing to exist is one in which it was believed that people lived around continuous demands, conflicts and the understanding that in every social bond there is always, at all times, a logic of power at play. The society that had become so tense due to the proliferation of situations in which it was believed that there would no longer be room for notions such as dialogue, consensus, “mulatto”, transition, mixture, hybridization or encounter is being left aside.
The Brazil of the imposition of perspectives, where what could be said was determined –as if it were predetermined– disappears. There is a certain weariness with polarized Brazil, where everything is discussed and where positions are taken on everything as if this implies the exercise of citizenship. Fatigue for hard populism.
While this Brazil is being diluted, a large part of the population is witnessing the emergence of values, tastes and lifestyles that influence the world of work and people’s self-perception. Music, aesthetics, the sphere of culture itself, indicate how this emerging Brazil is associated with the so-called Brazilian “battlers”, millions of people who have been building subjectivities and desires.
These are those who have already gone through the so-called “compensatory policies”, on which, paradoxically, they try not to depend. These embodied a certain ethic of “self-construction” that is not necessarily the product of having seen self-help videos on social media, nor of having internalized some neoliberal logic for the good of capital, as some intellectuals believe.
Perhaps this current can be understood as a direct and indirect product of the evangelical churches and their multiple facets. It should not be forgotten that if in Brazil in 2010 there were just over 15% of evangelicals (Pentecostals, Neo-Pentecostals, etc.), in 2020 they are 31%, more than 65 million Brazilians. According to estimates, within 15 years, evangelicals will be the majority among the Brazilian population.
But beyond this fact, emerging Brazil is not limited to evangelical Brazil. It is made up of people who have incorporated the culture of initiative and who part of their identity is integrated into the ecosystem of the individual or collective entrepreneur, a characteristic proven in their enormous resilience and in their ability to build networks of relationships and solidarity, exchanges of goods and services. .
In this environment, these fighters built themselves around a discourse in which they do not accept guardianship or intrusion, mainly due to an absolute distrust in relation to anything that does not come from their own efforts and actions. The State is a distant and close figure insofar as it plays a minor role in the development of their personal lives.
Emerging Brazil is not included in the current dysfunctional political sphere. Much has changed socially and culturally in the country in the last 20 years. Neither alienated nor intellectualized, the emerging Brazil knows what it doesn’t want: a repetition of tragedies. The question that remains is: for the October 2022 elections, will the political sphere look to the millions of people in this emerging Brazil?
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Source: Folha
