Skepticism appears as a convenient refuge in times in which the end of utopias has been declared, as well as the end of socialism and even the end of history. It is easier to say one doesn't believe in anything, that it's all the same, that nothing is worth the bother of it. According to this version, socialism has become tyranny, politics has become corruption, ideals are reduced to interests. Human nature is simply evil: egotist, violent, given to corruption.

Under such a scenario, it would be better not to believe in anything, to consider everything junk, nothing is better, it is all the same. Exercising skepticism means attempting to say that no alternatives are possible, none are credible. Some are awful, others are impossible. Some media, as we have said before, are devices for destroying reputations. If someone is respectable, if one or another alternative shows that he or she can gain support and lead proposals for effectively improving on the present reality, then skepticism could not be justified.

In fact skepticism rapidly reveals itself to be cynicism; both justify inertia, in order to let everything go on as usual. This is even truer when skepticism-cynicalism is serving the interests of dominant powers, who are accustomed to employ such devices, giving them recognition and using them for their own designs.

Their message is that the world is getting worse all the time, is on the verge of ecological collapse, everything is falling apart. They promote this pessimistic vision, encouraging skepticism and inertia, which allows the dominant powers to continue to dominate, the exploiters to exploit, the deceivers -- such as themselves -- to go on deceiving.

Although they insist that everything is worse, that the last century was a continual horror -- as if the world were a better place in the nineteenth century -- that nothing is worth doing, they are incapable of analyzing concrete reality. To go no further, it is enough to look at Latin America, a theme on which the ignorance of these people is especially acute. It is impossible to pretend that the twentieth century was not the most important in its history, the first in which the region began to take charge of its own history. From agricultural exporting economies, some countries have moved on to industrial economies, to urbanization, to creating systems of public education and health care, the development of worker's movements and recognition of the rights of workers.

Yet it is enough to look at the recent period, in the today's world, to realize that Latin American societies – on the most unequal continent in the world -- at least most of them, have made significant advances to overcoming inequality and poverty. Even more so in contrast with the countries at the centre of capitalism, the central reference point for the skeptical-cynics, who present a false vision with respect to policies that Latin America has already surpassed.

The peoples of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador are living better than they did before the governments of Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales and Rafael Correa. The Argentina of Kirchner is better than that of Menem. The Brazil of Lula and of Dilma is better than that of Ferando Henrique Cardoso.

The skepticism and cynicism refuses to see the concrete reality. It does not know history. It is ideology in a pure state, a state of consciousness that allows the powerful, those it has chosen, to leave the world as it is. They attempt to spread sentiments of great angst in the face of world problems, but this is simply a trap to promote their engagement to prevent any real change, to leave everything as it is. The world is a good place for those who eat from the hands of the rich and powerful.

Being an optimist does not imply refusing to recognize the serious problems of all kinds that afflict this world, not because human nature is essentially evil, but because we live in a system based on profit and not on human needs: capitalism, in its neoliberal phase. Not to recognize the historical roots of our problems, not to understand that we are dealing with a system that has a history, that is a human artefact, and that can then be undone, that had a beginning, had a middle course and can come to an end. That human history is an open process open to alternatives and that those alternatives that succeed in overcoming this skepticism and cynicism that brings water to the mill to leave everything as it is, taking aim at the conscious, organized, solidary action of men and women living in the real world.

(30/08/2011 )

- Emir Sader, Brazilian sociologist and scientist, is the executive secretary of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLASCO).

(Translation: Jordan Bishop and ALAI).