“Long live freedom, damn it.” When we listen to that mantra that, as a redemptive promise, brings together the new faithful, we are blessed by a certain dose of that elixir called “hope.” However, both concepts are empty signifiers because no specific meaning corresponds to them, because one was the concept of freedom that was claimed in the National Anthem of the Spanish colony two hundred years ago and a very different one was the one cheered today. And each one figures his hope according to his own, very personal story.
The British thinker born at the beginning of the 20th century Isaiah Berlin maintained that what makes the lives of individuals “human” is found in the ability to choose one’s own notion of a good life, the freedom to live autonomously according to our personally chosen principles. . In particular, what defines freedom is not choosing the good or the truth, but the act of choosing itself. And he distinguished positive freedom – the possibility of developing one’s own life projects – from negative freedom, which consists of no one interfering in my actions. And he added the following: “In this sense, political freedom is, simply, the area in which a human being can act without being hindered by others.”
Demographically, Argentina is very distant from the young people who grew up in 2001 and, even more so, from the creation of the supposed ideals that sustained the movement that persisted throughout the last two decades: they do not want poverty, nor plans , nor dependence on an omnipresent State. They demand a freedom that allows them to realize themselves without the obstacles and paternalism of that great state machinery that, in the same gesture, protected them at the cost of impeding their growth.
But in addition to the redeeming mantra pronounced by the young people inspired by the faith of the charcoal burner, we discover a second expression that circulates high and low without distinction of age by the electoral majority. This is “hope”, a primary emotion defined by the Royal Spanish Academy as that “state of mind in which what we desire is presented to us as possible.” But since it is one possibility among many others, uncertainty often follows. Curiously, both “prosperity” and “despair” are derived from the word “hope.” Both terms take on a renewed meaning: we Argentines trust in a future during which we enjoy the prosperity that allows us to fulfill our life plans. But it is not enough to take measures that liberate the economy. If we pursue prosperity that allows us to enjoy a good life, we must each collaborate from our place, knowing that a country is rebuilt with patient work, lending a shoulder. Where everyone looks after the general well-being. Otherwise, if we persist in the “every man for himself,” we will be condemned, once again, to despair.
Doctor in Philosophy. Essayist.
Assumption of Javier Milei as president of Argentina. | Photo: Pablo Cuarterolo, Federico De Bartolo, Ernesto Pagés and Sergio Piemonte.
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