The Japanese created words to name phenomena or moments that have no name in any other language. Komorebi is what they call the light of the sun on the leaves, turning them on as if they were light bulbs. And natsukashii is the word that translates as “sweet nostalgia” and refers to the ephemeral moment in which memory illuminates a kind memory, a happy moment.
The last few decades are eliminating the collective natsukashii. The part of humanity that lived through encouraging moments in history, such as the defeat of the Third Reich, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of military dictatorships in Latin America, is reduced. It also generated global optimism to see Mandela emerging from Robben Island prison and leading South Africa from a racial dictatorship to liberal democracy.
In a few decades, there will only be people who remember a world plagued by wars and unusual leaders postulating the triumph of meanness and indifference. Conquerors with imperial delusions and with less lucidity and sensitivity than egotism and ambition.
Those who were born when climate change was taking hold due to the human impossibility of overcoming a world order unfit for the existential challenges of this time may never have a collective natsukashii. In the memory of recent generations there will only be governments and leaders silenced by powerful economic interests based on fossil fuels and other greenhouse-generating activities.
While the gravitational laws of liberal democracy are altered to the point of festering inconceivable leaders who claim cruelty, many parts of the planet incubate potentially catastrophic wars while other war conflicts continue their destructive and unreasonable course.
The dystopian trance that the world is going through multiplies conflicts and apocalyptic dangers. It also multiplies pathological leaderships fermented into euphoric conservatisms that naturalize political hatred and contempt for the vulnerable and the different.
With the precision with which he reached checkmate, Garri Kasparov reflected on the propaganda that shapes anti-liberal leaderships such as those of Trump, Putin, Netanyahu and the far-right leaders who worship them. And the conclusion of the famous chess player is that “his objective is to exhaust critical thinking and annihilate the truth.”
That was what the propaganda of Marxist and Nazi-fascist totalitarianism achieved in the first half of the last century, creating gigantic dystopias. And it is what is weakening liberal democracy and secular rationality so far in the 21st century.
Russia continues to practice an expansionism that expired catastrophically with the Second World War and is now reinvigorated by Putin’s desire to rule over the entirety of Europe. The regional imperialism of the head of the Kremlin slows down, but managed to metastasize to the United States, where Trump already poses as emperor of the Americas.
It is not bad for banana dictators like Nicolás Maduro to fall, nor would it be bad for a medieval regime like the Persian theocracy to fall. The bad thing is that his falls fuel the power of an immoral “egocrat” who manages the greatest superpower as if it were one of his companies.
In the memory of today’s young people there will be a world with its back turned to the blood that flows through Sudan and the rest of the Sahel. Gaza will also be converted into a gigantic tomb of civilians who were used by Hamas to demonize the Jewish State with their sufferings, and massacred by order of Netanyahu and the extremist clique that prevails in Israel.
They may also see a war between two neighbors who have always been allies: Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The tenor of the accusations of the all-powerful Saudi prince Mohamed bin Salman against Mohamed bin Sayed al Nahyan, the emir of Abu Dhabi who presides over the neighboring country, as well as Riyadh’s incitements for some emirates to break the federal monarchy, would have been inconceivable before the intervention of both countries in the internal war in Yemen and the alignment of the UAE with Trump and Netanyahu. But in today’s world it is no longer surprising that two old allies become enemies.
The generations that did not see the defeat of Hitler or the fall of the Wall or Mandela ceasing to be prisoner 46664, will see China’s invasion of Taiwan and, possibly, Japan confronting the Asian giant.
Even more dystopian: they may see a war between the United States and Europe for control of Greenland. In fact, they are already seeing the “egocrat” emperor advance on the gigantic island that is located between Iceland and Canada. And since it is voracious for the minerals that climate change is leaving exposed, perhaps later it will go through the Canadian Arctic, annexing what it has already proclaimed as “51st State of the Union.”
It is not a linear advance. That several European countries sent troops to Greenland showed that threatening Denmark and the rest of Europe with war had the opposite effect than expected. That is why he made a U-turn during the Davos Forum, saying that he will not resort to force. The other good signal emitted at that Swiss conclave was Marc Carney’s speech that dazzled the center-right and social democratic leaders.
As in Pierre Trudeau’s time, the Canadian prime minister radiated leadership and lucidity, becoming the most explicit of Trump’s critics, and warning the middle powers that “if we are not at the table, we will be on the menu.”
However, the protagonist of the moment is the New York tycoon. He is the one who redesigns the world stage.
Current generations will see the democracy with which the United States was born die. Unless an impeachment trial, added to a massive reaction against the totalitarian signals emitted by the manhunt launched against immigrants, brings down Donald Trump and shows him sitting in the dock.
If, in addition to the fall of the millionaire “egocrat”, the world sees Russia rise up against Putin’s bloody warmongering, and Israeli democracy putting an end to Netanyahu’s brutal expansionism, the resurgence of natsukashii would become possible.
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