How narcissism and the obsession with authenticity became fuel for reactionary revolution.
From Rousseau to social media, Western culture has turned authenticity into a moral imperative and unpolished sincerity into a virtue.
The result is evident in politicians who claim to embody values rather than represent them, in presidents who confess their desire to seize another nation's resources without further explanation, and in judges who persecute comedians for not knowing how to read satire.The abandonment of propriety and mediation is portrayed as a triumph of truth. But if courtesy is a lie, violence alone is the truth. If evil had no need of camouflage, it had already triumphed.
Pedro Valin, one of the most prominent journalists and cultural critics of his generation, traces this impulse in intimacy that was transformed into display, in craftsmanship that eliminated cynicism, and in politics that mixed transparency with barbarism.An article that takes up the ideas of Harari, Guma, Nietzsche, and Rousseau to think about the present from a grassroots, citizen perspective, and proposes an ethics of withdrawal as the only possible way out.
