(Expansion) – Nowhere is it written that, in the midst of a pandemic, we must urgently colonize Mars or return to the Moon, when our next crisis on the horizon is the drastic change of climate on Earth.
Nor is it in any specialized book that the world economy must grow all the time or that financial rules are immovable and therefore we have to always measure progress based on GDP or Foreign Direct Investment. However, the general perception is that these issues should not be questioned.
The messages we receive through different means of communication do much more than shape our thoughts, they also keep them within certain limits. Algorithms are still far from dominating the world, but they manage to reduce our range of vision to levels never seen before and to touch certain subjects more frequently than others. It’s more of a distraction than brainwashing, although getting confused is easy.
In the “Bubble Filter”, Eli Pariser explains in detail how the automated mechanisms that bring us the information that we later transform into tabletop conversations work. There are two basic criteria: sending you things you like and connecting with people who share your point of view.
It is not a new phenomenon, most of the information we received before from social networks, from instant messages, and from these data bubbles, was edited (it still is) under criteria of “impact”, “importance for audiences “,” Relevance and opportunity “, that are confused all the time with commercial interests, sponsorships or specific agendas of groups with power and access to these means.
Days ago, for example, we got the news that one of two large corporations that have diversified their profits toward a new space race would receive millions of dollars from the public budget to land another NASA contract that they didn’t win in the first place.
This rescue (very earthly, by the way, of a private interstellar project) again calls into question many of the economic arguments that seem permanent to us for almost half a century. Our goals seem to direct us to the stars, our problems force us to occupy ourselves with this globe.
For several consecutive weeks, in the face of the long-awaited reopening, restaurants, cinemas and bars in many cities have struggled to find workers. The complaint is as recurrent as it is old: nobody wants to go back to work. Although omitted that it is due to insufficient wages, lack of benefits, strenuous hours, and an apparent wave of consciousness about the life that we should build on.
To prove it, an ice cream parlor decided to announce an hourly payment that does make ends meet and had thousands of requests in less than two hours. The case went viral, in addition to fueling the international debate on what we should correct in the economic system that has ruled us for almost half a century and was stripped naked by a highly contagious virus.
If this conversation continues, it is possible that we are facing the opportunity to change not only the indicators with which we measure the prosperity of the planet, but the discourse that has made us believe that the rise of the stock markets, the merger of large corporations or traveling through the Milky Way, is as relevant to most as better distributing income or stopping wasting food.
It can also give space to younger generations, those who today have fewer opportunities, wealth and income than their parents and grandparents, to design another future. One where growth is not infinite and neither are the planet’s resources; one where inequality is finally reduced and the mirages of false meritocracy (take it, carnal) give way to societies with greater balance thanks to the fact that they have authentic Welfare States supported by all.
How will we explain in the future that these contradictions between what is important and what seems to be, will last so long? Well, that’s easy: the opposite of what has been said has been done. And insistently.
While there is a strong claim that markets should run free or with minimal regulations, they have stifled real competition in most industrial sectors. That will never be an expanding economy, not on this planet, not on any other.
In the same way, it will not be possible to maintain the course of this concentrating economic system, which depends on immediate consumption and rarely thinks about the risks that lie ahead.
Maybe that’s why there is nothing on Mars for us and we must pay more attention to what happens on Earth.
Editor’s note: Francisco Hoyos Aguilera is Director of Liaison and Communication of the Federal Center for Conciliation and Labor Registration. He is a communication specialist. Graduated from Tec de Monterrey with a master’s degree from the Universidad Iberoamericana. He was a reporter for the Excelsior newspaper and the New York Times correspondent in Mexico. It has been in public and private communication for two decades. Follow him on and / or. The opinions published in this column belong exclusively to the author.
