2023-05-01 10:30:00
If a foreigner who is not aware of the economic situation arrives in the country and circulates through one of its large cities, they could well ask themselves the question that gave the title to a mythical album by the British rock group of the ’70s and ’80s Supertramp : “Crisis, what crisis?”. It would be enough to see the traffic and the movement that there is in the streets to give him the reason.
During the first quarter of this year, 8.7 million movie tickets were sold. It is 43% more viewers than in the same period of the previous year, the best start to the year since 2019. Unprecedentedly, in the midst of a heat wave, during January 3.7 million people attended the theaters. The most watched movie was “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” with 2.4 million tickets (source: Ultracine).
In the last 12 months, hotel and restaurant sales grew 29% compared to the previous 12 months. In the first two months of this year, the trend moderates, but they are still growing at 10% year-on-year (source: Indec).
That mythical vinyl cover released in 1975 showed a man placidly sunbathing under an umbrella on a terrace. He was only wearing bathing shorts and resting his bare feet on a small beach canvas. At an adjoining table he had within his reach a bottle of water, a drink with a straw and a magazine. The image was in full color. Behind him was a gray environment, with smoking chimneys that look unfriendly to the environment to today’s eyes, and building structures in very poor condition. All of this, naturally, in black and white. The contrast looked (and looks) brutal. rick davieswho took the sketch of the idea to the recording studio, said that, explicitly, wanted to show a chaotic environment. It is often said that, due to their sensitivity, artists are like the blind, they have eyes in their skin.
In our most recent measurements of social humor that we conducted based on focus groups we observe in the population lThe growing sensation of a country that is getting worse, stuck, disorganized, degraded in a transversal way, aimlessly, without a plan, with variables out of control, and overwhelmed with uncertainty. A dense cloud of dark pessimism floats over the citizens. The term that increasingly operates as a synthesis is, precisely, chaos. Both the Spanish Royal Academy and the Oxford dictionary define chaos as almost complete confusion and disorder. In chaos, the complexity to determine the “cause/effect” relationships increases and it is very difficult to predict the future of events.
Was Alexander Lerner, who making use of said sensory quality typical of artists, recently published an open letter to Argentines in which he performed the opposite act of the hypothetical tourist arriving in the country. As an Argentine who knows very well how we are, he traveled to Spain for work and saw what out of habit and bewilderment would seem to be becoming blurred and opaque here for the vast majority.
What Lerner did was build in his mind the same thing that Supertramp put on his cover: contrast. He saw, and felt, the clear, sharp, lacerating comparison between one reality and the other. It was then that he decided to send a message that managed to open a space in the noise because it touched another string, because it brought a different sound, because it said what “is there” in sight, but that had not been known to be said in that way. . She was thus able to capture the attention of a society that chose apathy as a defense mechanism against environmental threats. Thus, his letter had the effect of an alarm clock. Could it have been momentary? One more viral of those that fade in hours or days? Or, secretly, could it be sedimenting in the collective unconscious?
Among other things, he said the following: “Spain is what Argentina could be: a beautiful country with a close language, which is always a relief. The food, the streets, the architecture, everything is familiar, but the big difference that I have felt is that you can live in a climate of calm normality and coexistence. There is no smell of fear in the streets. And that is a feeling that is breathed and shared. People work and progress is a certain destination. The difference between a country of the so-called third world and those of the first is consciousness. Awareness that by working you reach and grow, that doing things well is much better than doing them badly. The worst thing that happens to us is that they convince us that we don’t deserve more than this. And it is sad to realize that this reality to which we have submitted ourselves to live could be much better than the one we have meekly accepted to abide by.
What we are currently seeing in our studies is a society on the brink of emotional breakdown. The surrounding chaos is taking over the psyche of many individuals who have entered a deep existential void. They no longer wonder why what happens – inflation, dollar, insecurity, uncertainty – but rather why they do what they do – work, make an effort, project, dream-. The phenomenon is not new, but it has become more acute. That is to say that the external chaos begins to cross the filters and the natural barriers to pour out on the internal and the intimate. Predicting with some degree of assertiveness the future behavior of Argentine society, in this state, has ceased to be something complex, to become hyper complex.
Citizens know that the situation tends to get worse. The question is no longer if something will happen, but what, when, of what magnitude and for what duration. Most economists have raised the possibility of occurrence of this fact as diffuse and elusive as it is perceptible. Eternal survivors, Argentines carry in their genes the ability to “listen to the drums in the darkness of the jungle.”
For now it would be confirmed worst case scenario for drought: a loss of at least $20 billion. Consequently, the economy would fall between 2.5% and 4% this year with inflation ranging between 100% and 120%. That is, at this time, the “realistic” scenario that not a few consider “optimistic.”
People embraced short-term, ephemeral, pleasant, hedonic consumption, as a way of covering up what hurts to see and experience. They used it, and still use it, as a psychopharmaceutical that allows them to appease, from time to time, anguish. They will stretch that pattern of behavior as long as they can.
The question that opens up for the short-term future is what they will do when the anxiolytic is scarcer. It is not expected to be absent, but the upcoming restrictions will force consumers to do more of what they like least: choose what to cut.
How will a society that is so fragile and on the verge of emotional breakdown react, if the forecasts are indeed fulfilled and it has to face a context even worse than the current one and simultaneously decide on its future?
Could it be that, overwhelmed and confused by the chaos, she will choose to flee forward and go full throttle, even though the abyss awaits her? Are the Argentines flirting with the morbid Thelma y Louise?
Or, on the contrary, Lerner’s words, as often happens with sensitive people, do nothing more than express a hidden and latent desire. What I wish? Simply, some degree of good sense and normality.
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