Worrying results deliver the recent survey Chile Dice of the Alberto Hurtado University and Criteria “Radiography of Chilean society in the face of a new Constitutional Process”. One of these is that 45% of the people surveyed indicate that the result of the plebiscite worsens the coexistence among Chileans; 59% say that the environment is very polarized and that it will worsen in the coming months. Added to this, there is also a very low confidence in institutions, which will intensify in the coming months.
Along the same lines, a recent publication by the Inter-American Development Bank, on trust and social cohesion, points out that the most urgent problem facing Latin America and the Caribbean is precisely trust: only 1 in 10 people believe that others can be trusted. When there is no trust, society and all its members suffer; politics is unstable; the quality of public policies deteriorates; economic growth slows; Social equity and individual well-being decline.
And mistrust increases when there are asymmetries of power and information.
Undoubtedly, coexistence and trust are strongly affected in our country, which has been evidenced in different studies and has been transformed into a permanent problem that requires analysis and actions by different sectors of the political and social life of the country.
The current moment, in which fears are exaggerated and responsibility is attributed to other, instead of making concrete proposals that allow progress in the common good, it requires building a horizon of coexistence, and recognizing ourselves in the existing diversities and differences; where the other different or unknown does not become a threat.
We need to build trust, develop capacities to establish bridges and open possibilities to create connections between opposites; Recontextualize the relationships we have and rethink how we can and want to live together. As well as generating agreements aimed at creating conditions of coexistence, and promoting concerted solutions to the most urgent social and political conflicts.
Follow us on
The content expressed in this opinion column is the sole responsibility of its author, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial line or position of El Mostrador.
