Approximate reading time: 1 minute, 45 seconds
A few days ago, in the final of the 2024 Super Cup played between Colo Colo and Huachipato, the National Stadium was once again a place of violence carried out by fans. The White Claw is spoken of as a structured organization, but it ceased to be such a long time ago; Today they are the sum of individuals and gangs who dispute leadership and recognition among their peers.
Strongly hierarchical structures such as the Church, the family, the school or the political system that repressed us to submit to their values and behaviors ceased to exist. Even the brave bands stopped playing a role in aligning their members around common objectives, just as was the irrelevance of political parties in the social outbreak of 2019.
In this process of destructuring of society, as Elsa Punset points out in her book Compass for Emotional Navigators, “we live in a world that overwhelms us with temptations and multiple decisions and we have to decide alone, without clear references, who we are and why we deserve “it is worth living and fighting.” We have abandoned self-reflection, giving way to defining ourselves, not by what we are, but by what others think of me.
It was a world with more certainties than uncertainty and few had the courage to rebel. To this day, testimonies are heard such as those who long for punitive discipline with the use of violence as a method to put girls, boys and young people on the right path. Even more, many adults dare to assert that the use of physical force was useful to them in their adult lives, believing that these attacks left them no consequences.
The main and most relevant consequence is that today’s adults with the scars of the past behave in the same way as their parents did. This behavior, whether as a mother, father, teacher or spiritual, political or community leader, is refractory to the new generations who have more freedoms in a world loaded with stimuli and information.
It is not possible to go back or expect them to insert themselves into a system that does not respond to their needs or provide tools to pursue their own dreams; nor paralyze in the face of this new reality. Insisting on this will only generate a more violent society in all its dimensions.
The same author reinforces that we must work for a new paradigm by pointing out that with the advancement of neuroscience we know that: “Each repressed emotion will stealthily leave its mark on our behavior through emotional patterns that decide for us, probably against us.” of our interests. Knowing our emotions represents, therefore, the only way to dominate our nerve center, whether it is called the brain, conscience or free will.”
The challenge is to find how and where to establish emotional literacy. Just as in the 18th and 19th centuries the teaching of reading and writing and basic mathematical operations was based in the State, in the 20th century, it is the State that must assume the leadership of emotional literacy with its students to cut the spiral of the violence.
Marcelo Trivelli
Seed Foundation
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