John Stuart Mill was a man ahead of his time.

Son of a well-connected intellectual, he received an experimental education where he learned Greek and Latin from an early age, as well as being introduced to classical works.

A pioneer in defending women’s rights and a staunch liberal, Stuart Mill published, in 1859, at the age of fifty-three, On Liberty, in which he advocated for respect for individuality and freedom of expression.

On listening to what others have to say, Stuart Mill declared: “The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that is a robbery of the human race; both of the posterity and of the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth produced by its collision with error.”

An important lesson. To listen. To respect an opinion different from our own.

At the last UN General Assembly, Brazilian representatives did not attend the speech of the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu. A deliberate absence. A “diplomatic move”, if one may allow this paradoxical term. It is true that the Israeli delegation did not applaud the speech of our president the day before, but at least they listened to what Lula had to say.

Two weeks earlier, on September 15, during a debate among candidates for mayor of Brazil’s largest city, one of them, reacting to gross provocations, threw a chair at another. Live and in color. In reality, there was no longer a debate, as the candidates were not paying attention to each other. The chair-throwing brought the event to a conclusion consistent with the lack of civility that characterized that regrettable meeting.

Have we unlearned how to listen to others?

Based on prejudices of various origins – political positions, religious beliefs, identity positions, soccer team preferences, media choices, etc. – we close our ears.

“I don’t read that journalist because of this or that position”, “So-and-so can’t speak about a certain issue because they haven’t experienced the hardship”, “That person has no right to speak”

With superficial statements like these, people are disqualified to the point where what they have to say is disregarded.

Fareed Zakaria, an Indian-born journalist, a Muslim, long settled in the United States, gained fame in 2000 when he was appointed editor of Newsweek. He also became a celebrity when he started hosting a program on CNN.

Last year, Zakaria released The Future of Freedom, in which he presented simple yet powerful ideas: he argued, for example, that the success of democracy in a country is closely related to the success of the economy.

Zakaria also emphasized the importance of institutions by giving a good example: the Roman Empire fell despite its excellent laws. It fell because the institutions became corrupt: the laws were not enough to prevent the downfall. The book was a resounding success.

Zakaria became known for taking positions. He supported Barack Obama in his presidential campaign, and in 2003 he approved the invasion of Iraq. Later, in 2017, he expressed support for missile strikes against Syria under the Trump administration. Like a good journalist, he made clear his commitment to his conscience.

Recently, Zakaria released The Age of Revolutions, which has just been released in Brazil by Intrínseca. The first country mentioned in the book is Brazil, to illustrate how global politics is dominated – or bogged down – by the Manichean division between what qualifies as right and left.

The book delves into history, recounting, from the earliest liberal revolutions – in the Netherlands and England – how the world, stumbling along, has reached today, always driven by disruptive changes.

Zakaria explains, early on, the origins of the terms “right” and “left”, which emerged at the beginning of the French Revolution. From there, these concepts gained new dimensions as major changes unfolded.

Models are replaced, and as Marx famously said, “the relations that replace each other become antiquated before they solidify.” In Zakaria’s perspective, the Industrial Revolution was the “mother” of all other revolutions. Quoting Hobsbawm, he develops the idea: “The (British) Industrial Revolution swallowed the (French) political revolution.”

The Age of Revolutions serves as a history lesson, with a confessed and founded liberal bias.

This economic perception of history leads to another book, which I read 40 years ago, still in school: Man’s Worldly Goods: The Story of the Wealth of Nations, by Leo Huberman, published in 1936.

Huberman, a Marxist, starts from the same perspective of the importance of economics in the construction of History, but unlike Zakaria, he believes in the State as a universal panacea. (Many of my generation drew from this source; some managed to overcome it, others suffered permanent damage.)

In his new book, when analyzing our polarized days – marked by a profusion of information and a lack of real dialogue – Zakaria warns: we must trust in civilization and its achievements, including freedom, lest we succumb to a new dark age.

Zakaria is criticized for being liberal. Based on this, some refuse to even consider his ideas. Here lies the impasse. Conservatives only want to listen to conservatives. Progressives do not tolerate anything that is not progressive. And so the cycle continues, with the loss of the practice of listening.

How will we know the truth of others if we do not know it?

In Aeschylus’ Oresteia, the goddess Athena teaches that the accused, no matter how abominable their crime (in the play, Orestes confesses to killing his own mother), deserves to be heard. Orestes receives a fair trial. The recognition of the benefit of this model of behavior, which took place 2500 years ago, where even the criminal deserves to be heard, shines as one of the great achievements of civilization.

More recently, humanity had another opportunity to demonstrate its strength. Right after the Second World War, the main Nazi leaders were brought to trial in Nuremberg.

They were treated differently from how they had treated others years before. The victims of the Holocaust were not given the opportunity to defend themselves. The Allies, however, victors of the conflict, ensured that those criminals, despite the barbarity committed, had the right to speak in a tribunal organized by clear rules. If we had repeated the arbitrariness with the Nazi leaders, we would have just proven that nothing was learned.

What option can prevent wars and build a just democratic society if not dialogue? Maturity (and even intelligence) shows that for a healthy and harmonious life, one point of view is not enough. Tolerance for other truths is necessary, even if it is to disagree with them.

Pre-emptive cancellations and “diplomatic moves”, chair-throwing, censorship, booing before someone even speaks, and any behavior that prevents the sharing of ideas distance us from this dialogue, without which there is no healthy society.


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