There are women and men more than their CV. The times, values, and patterns of existence are represented. These and those whom we call here disappeared “the twentieth century heroes” from the places of decision, newspapers and coffee conversations.
They were neither heroes nor saints, but they are numbers of the time that scarcity and war constituted, through the very concrete idea that civilization is a thin line between chaos and order. They lived and inherited a memory characterized by shocks: trench, bombing, legalization, deported neighborhood, colonial heritage, and wars across nations – this experience turned their view of the world: they suspected an easy speech, avoided assignment as a means and exchange simple solutions.
They had faith in the state, but they were not statistics. They defended peace, but they knew what was assigned to defend him. They saw the right as a fragile but necessary shield. They were, above all, institutional figures: until they believed that there were times when the system should be waived.
This profile that disappears. The type that smelled the smell of collective fear, which he knew what was living for fear of a state without brakes or is a wrong costume. Therefore, the warm parliament preferred from the box of anger, an agreement between parts to a deaf war by the absolute.
The time of Helmut Cole and Metran was written by Mario Suares and Mandela, Simon Phil and Jorbachev. All different, yes – but everyone realizes that after terror, commitment has become more important than victory and that democracy, with all its faults, was better than the danger of the alternative.
Today, this generation came out of the scene, without major speeches, without an epic, which also brings an idea of the politician as a responsibility, as a containment, as an area where the conflict is managed, and it was not encouraged.
Eric Hobbsum was not given simplification, but it left a simple and wonderful idea: the twentieth century was short. It started in 1914 with World War I, and ended in 1991 with the fall of the Soviet Union. What came before belonging to the ancient world. What came later, well, what came later/is/will be something else …
In an area less than eighty years, humanity has known two global conflicts, the rise and fall of fascism, the cold war, the end of colonialism, the atomic bomb, the race to space, television, social state, and digital revolution. It has never changed much at this short time and the collective fate was never conditional on the decisions made so quickly.
Thus, Hobsbawm is divided this century into three times: the disaster age (1914-1945), the Golden Age (1945-1973) and the era of the crisis (1973-1991). This “short century” was the central center of order, chaos, progress and destruction. This is what such heroes were born in the twentieth century: people who knew that everything is strong could collapse in a moment. Hence the wisdom, and then the bet on institutions, and then – almost naive – in the ability of countries to control the fate of peoples.
But the end of the Soviet Union, its sudden collapse in 1991, changed everything. Not only on the political map, but in global imagination. The Cold War, with all its dangers, despair, hallucinations, errors and real winners, was an advantage: imposed limits. The world lived in organized tension, with rules, treaties and mediation. The Soviet collapse not only achieved victory on one side – it brought the end of the symmetry. The road paved the way for what will come: time without a center, without balance, without a specific discount.
The Soviet Empire fell with the explosion and without invasion. Not bombing the allies. Without military collapse. It fell inside – erosion, stagnant, exhausting. Since the seventies of the twentieth century, the Soviet Union has decreased in an irreversible decrease: the stagnant economy, the war of Afghanistan, Chernobyl, corruption, and a state that is no longer able to hide or reform.
Gorbatchv tried to save what was with Perceroica and QuantityBut the system opened too much – and it is too late. Within a few months, the building collapsed, the republics declared independence, IELTSIN Rose, reduced the Soviet flag and millions of people stopped the presence of a country, currency, security or horizon. The nineties were chaotic – and in this chaos, for example, the imperial nostalgia that Putin will explore later.
What came later was a break – gap. The world lived from 1991 to 2001 what we call the separation between centuries. It was a strange time when the usual enemy disappeared. Liberal democracy was considered inevitable and its declared victory without exceptions. The market has become infallible and the story ends. “There are no alternatives,” said Fukuyama with conviction. He was The end of history.
Just no …
Under the euphoria, the real world moves. Yujal’s wars showed that Europe was not immune to hatred, Russia collapsed, and Africa was still ignored, nullified inequality, and the idea of competence, forgot the idea of justice.
Then the towers fell … the twenty -first century began, so on September 11, 2001, under the sign of fear.
New York attacks showed that the world was out of safety. The enemy was invisible, unpredictable, fanatic. The West’s reaction was because it was always a reaction to panic: with strength. Afghanistan came, Iraq came, and the Patriot law came. Our time came.
Then a new era began – a permanent exception. As warned AGAMBEN, the law of the law was suspended “temporarily”. But the temporary, in the end, has become the judgment and fear justifies everything: less free, “but” more vigilance, and more control over the balance to maintain the right to comment.
Meanwhile, technology has grown, silent digital networks have become vital environments: the data became new oil, the logic of clicking in the formation of politics began and the truth became liquid. The time has been divided and the movement stopped being physical or mechanical, creating a “new truth”: hypothetical.
We entered, without a wonderful party, in the era of digital intelligence. At a time when the decisions are automatically, the identity is dealt with as Madadu and the energy is measured in the ability to predict behaviors: the algorithm replaces the argument, the speed replaces the ruling, and the competence is replaced by the common good.
It seems that the numbers of the twentieth century, with their containment, their respect for institutions, is polished by the illustrated pain, to be ancronic today. But they may be, specifically for this reason, the most lost numbers make us. Because this new age – fast, dispersed, excessive formation – needs structures. The structures are not improvised: they are based on memory, rules and time.
It remains to see whether in this new digital world there is still a place for the old proverb of citizenship. Or if we will be used for systems that we only understand.
The new generations are waiting for our answer – the risks are our survival. We cannot fail. For them, for us, through the rule of law.
The author writes according to the new spelling agreement
