Since its inception, one of the strategies on which the government has always pinned its hopes to maintain its model of domination is to constantly demobilize the majority of the country that opposes it. And for this, one of its allies is in what Cognitive Psychology calls “negative anticipation”.
Negative anticipation is a particular pattern of thought that leads sufferers to constantly assume that something is going to go wrong, never doubt that prediction, and act accordingly. Typical examples of negative anticipation are phrases like “I better not go because something bad is going to happen to me”, “I don’t call because they won’t accept me”, “I better not even try because I already know I won’t make it”, and others frequently used in some people.
The gist of this psychological pattern is that you anticipate things going wrong without having data to support those conclusions. In other words, a possibility is interpreted as if it were a safe and negative reality, and it is acted upon. And the consequences of this tendency to think like this go beyond the merely cognitive. Indeed, with negative anticipation, the production and combined actions of the hormone cortisol and catecholamines are increased, activating the autonomic nervous system and consequently generating anguish, fear and pessimism.
It is true that anticipating certain risks and dangers protects us and allows us to prepare as well as possible to face them. But as Dr. Elías Abdalá (“The traps of the mind”) affirms, when the misfortunes that the brain anticipates are abstract, exaggerated or illogical, they paralyze us, make us sick and limit us.
At the political level, when negative anticipation is generalized to many people, it not only discourages popular organization but also contributes to consolidating an attitudinal-psychological floor of collective acceptance and resignation on which authoritarian governments build their model of domination. .
If many people are convinced that there is nothing they can do about their political environment, that what will happen is bad but also inevitable, that the only thing left to do is surrender because there is no way to change or even confront those who oppress them, then the model of domination begins to take root and to be perceived as irreversible. Not in vain one of the things that authoritarian governments first seek to sow in the population is to convince it of their very precarious political efficacy, that is, of their very limited capacity to influence political events and much less to change them.
This government has been so bad and so long that it is logical that after so much time many people believe that they are condemned to continue suffering. And not only that: the most serious thing is that you end up thinking that it is inevitable, and that no matter what happens, nothing can be done to change it. If one speaks, for example, of the need to generate conditions to press for a negotiation, the automatic response is that it is not worth it because the government is not going to give in on anything. If the urgency of a greater popular organization that leads to an effective civic pressure on the regime arises, the first reaction of many is to think that it is useless because the government is impervious to pressure. If the population is truly organized around an electoral solution, many will say that even if the democratic alternative were to win an eventual presidential election, the government will not recognize them.
And if it cannot not recognize them, then something bad will happen, simply because the government “is not going to let it go”, as if twisting the majority will of a people were so simple, when this will is organized and willing. Fernando Savater already said it: once a people makes the decision to change, there is no force that can stop it. It’s just a matter of time. But first you have to believe that this is possible, and then seriously decide to organize to be able to do it.
It is time that we begin to overcome the despair intelligently cultivated by the government for many years, and begin to realize that the country we want is not only possible, but that in the end it only depends on us, on our intelligence and our ability to leave partial agendas behind and organize ourselves, not to “wait” for change to happen, but to fight to make it inevitable.
@angeloropeza182
