RAYMUND FERNANDEZ
Consider Duterte and Trump. They are purveyors of authoritarianism. And yet, they have achieved and will achieve very little that is of any historical significance in their terms.
The world has changed in a way we are only now beginning to understand. Since the end of the 1800s (For us Filipinos, the beginning and end of the Katipunan Revolution) the world had moved into the Modern Age.
The Modernist projects were: the emancipation of the individual, Capitalism, Industrialization, and the establishment of democratic representative governments.
After the devastation of World War I and World War II, we have come to question the viability and credibility of those goals.
Which is why we have come to the Post-Modernist age, wherein we grapple with these questions: How emancipated can the emancipated individual properly be?
Isn’t Capitalism at the root of the political, social, and economic disparities which afflict us now?
Are all industrial and technological development really progress?
Is Freedom and Democracy at all possible?
These questions are steep in irony.
World War I was supposed to be the war to end all wars.
World War II was supposed to be a war against tyranny and authoritarianism.
And yet the immediate consequence of World War II was the rise of Communist China, the expansion of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the rise of the United States of America as a global power, whose first acts after World War II was the establishment of authoritarian regimes (including the Philippines) world-wide during the Cold War.
All these are global movements toward Authoritarianism.
The end of WW II brought about the end also of the Modernist dream.
The Modernist dream was driven by a vision of Utopia.
Both Communism and Capitalism were sold to us as a way of establishing a system of order in the world that would free us from poverty and inequality.
The dictatorship of the “proletariat” was supposed to be only transitory as society moved into the Communist Utopia where the individual would truly be emancipated.
On the other hand, Capitalism was supposed to lead to unimaginable progress where everyone would be free and happy.
These are dreams that have now become impossible to sell.
Who would believe us if we tried?
The truth is that the Modernist dream is by all intents and purposes quite cold and dead.
Which is why the world now seems quite lost.
We have moved now into the age of post-modernist skepticism, disbelief, and to some mysterious extent, confusion.
Especially where concerned are the issues of Authoritarianism vs. Freedom.
Consider Duterte and Trump.
They are purveyors of authoritarianism.
And yet, they have achieved and will achieve very little that is of any historical significance in their terms.
By the time they both pass away, however, they will have left us a good lesson on the value of freedom.
Freedom is all we really have that is of any significant historical value.