From 2008 to the Middle East: A world seen as lost

From crisis to crisis: A society that sees its world as lost

The paradox is uncomfortable: no indicator certifies the end of anything, but a part of society has been saying goodbye for some time. It is not the lament of a bad quarter, but the sum of a sequence—the 2008 financial crisis, the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the open conflict in the Middle East—read as a single process and not as isolated blows. "We have reached here," summarizes the thesis. The diagnosis, say those who defend it, is not that a collapse is looming, but that we are already inside and no one wants to look it in the face.

Markets function. Salaries are paid, most of them. That is the material from which the official version clings. The problem is that a part of the public conversation has stopped believing in that version, and not because of a conspiracy video, but from accumulated weariness.

2008, the pandemic, and two wars: the sequence that was not cut off

2008 is not remembered as a point accident. It is remembered as the start. That crisis pushed hundreds of thousands of people out of the country and, for many of them, it is argued, life never returned to its place: there was no recovery, there was relocation. That is the first link in the chain that is now completed with the pandemic and with two simultaneous wars.

Some place the origin of the war cycle in the Military Games held in Wuhan in 2019. It is a hypothesis, not a proven fact, and it should be treated as what it is: another piece of a narrative that tries to make sense of what, otherwise, seems like a succession of coincidences. What is verifiable is the fatigue. The war in Ukraine has stopped being looked at: Sick of it, one intervention summarizes it, there is no stomach left for another video.

And on top of that, the Middle East. Israel's declaration of war for survival, in an environment of rising enemy countries and allies among themselves, is read as confirmation that the board breaks on several sides at once.

The haste of an empire dying by killing

The most repeated analysis has a clear subject: the United States. The thesis is that the empire is in a hurry to reset the board before the rest of the world eats its toast, and that January 1 is the date marked in red: that day, according to this reading, the enemies of the United States and Israel join the BRICS. The end of an order, even if it is an order that turns itself inside out while it dies.

The formulation is crude: an empire that dies by killing, with all the tricks of a gambler learned. It should be stressed: it is a scenario, not an official statement. No one has published the script. But the feeling that messages about defeat are no longer disguised runs through much of the conversation—reserves, rationing, recommendations for household savings in several countries. The narrative of shared sacrifice has ceased to be a metaphor.

Why does the 2-euro-per-liter scenario appear in all conversations?

Because behind geopolitics there is a very local antiestéticar. The scenario that emerges is not an instant hecatomb, but a slow erosion. Fuel at 2 euros per liter. Mass layoffs that, they admit, do not arrive this year but in two, three, or five. And, at the end of the slope, a minimum income of about 400 euros coexisting with high prices.

The mirror placed on the table is Argentina: a country that, it is argued, has burned several times without getting out of the hole, proof that the exit does not come alone. Against that, the hope placed in a strong leadership is considered, within the discussion itself, another daydream. The desire, they admit, was to see a country burn to rebuild it quickly. The problem is that the fire does not choose the neighbor.

Wanting the fire and not wanting to be inside

Here is the contradiction that best defines the atmosphere. The purifying burn of the system is desired; it is desired to see everything start anew. But those who desire it recognize, in the next sentence, that they do not want to see it from within: "Do you realize the pain you will see and suffer?" The answer does not come.

The misanthrope who fantasizes about extinction in the abstract discovers antiestéticaring concrete pain. It is not cynicism, it is biology. And in between, the realization that the individual salvation that many boast about is a lottery with very few winning tickets.

The recipe of the thread: church, cemetery, or hospital

If there is anything like practical advice in all this, it is rare. Specifically rare. It is recommended to step into a church even if one does not pray, sit in a cemetery, or pass through a hospital. The goal is not religious: it is to recover depth of thought and get out of screens that, they argue, are full of lies.

Alongside this, the biblical framework appears. The signs before the end—wars and rumors of wars, nation against nation, plagues and famines—are cited word for word, and some fix the good date, the October for real, in 2027, after a tribulation that, they say, has already begun.

A more elegant note, which circulates in the same discussion, comes from the Greeks: they distinguished between chronos, the time of the calendar, and kairos, the perceived time. In major cycle changes, kairos accelerates and events overwhelm any capacity for reaction. Maybe that is the key to the vertigo.

And what if the world does not end, but simply becomes more uncomfortable, more expensive, and noisier, and it is we who do not want to admit that we have been saying goodbye for years?