Before I begin to explore the questions that motivate this text, I feel obliged to say that the title of this article was the subject of a theft committed by me and that Marcelo Rubens Paiva, who, in 1982, wrote the book Happy Old Year. This excellent title is perfect for this text, as the dear reader will see. I do not see my conduct as theft, but as a tribute, although I doubt that this argument is legally convincing.
Made my confession, let's begin.
There are few things that annoy me as much as the expression "unprecedented." It is not the expression itself that generates in me such irritation, but the fact that it is used almost always wrongly by people who, in reality, seek some way to emphasize the severity of the subject they are discussing. Almost nothing is unprecedented. The history of the world is long enough for us to have precedents for almost everything.
The idea for this text emerged as I watched an interview made to the presenter, interviewer, comedian and writer, Jô Soares, conducted by the Brazilian interview program Live Wheel. The episode of the program, which still exists, was recorded in 1995, exactly 30 years ago. In it, at some point, the theme of "politically correct" is addressed by an interviewer who begins his question with "we are living in a world of politically correct".
This question treats the phenomenon of politically correctness as something new. Today, this popular theme, which inspires books, articles and documentaries, is always discussed with the same surprise, urgency and uneditedness with which it was discussed three decades ago.
The war between Ukraine and Russia, serious economic crises, housing crises, lack of freedom of expression and so many other cultural, economic and political phenomena are categorized as unprecedented, by the headlines of newspapers, newscasts and sensational news sites.
As for the war between Ukraine and Russia, we are facing a country with broad military power, governed by a leader masking its authoritarianism as a democratic and a result of the will of its people. Unprecedented? There are historical precedents for undemocratic and illegal occupation of a state in recent Russian history itself.
As regards complaints concerning the absence of freedom of expression and freedom of the press. In the 1950s, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), subcommittee (linked to Senate Judicial Committee) The Senate was led by Republican senator Joseph McCarthy. In it, "communists infiltrated in American society" were persecuted, arbitrarily arrested and, in certain cases, sentenced to death[1].
In addition to people effectively convicted of espionage, the committee banned and confiscated books and persecuted writers and actors—like Arthur Miller, Luis Buñuel and Charlie Chaplin—considered suspected of links with the Communist Party, with the Soviet Union and other practices and characteristics considered by the committee as "anti-Americans" and which were detrimental to the integrity of American society. Those persecuted by the committee were added to blacklist Hollywood and were victims of ostracism, unable to work in their respective branches.
The example of McCarthism is only one of some possible examples that make it obvious that even in the United States—often seen as a great bastion of individual freedoms—, there are dark historical precedents for undue restrictions on freedoms, such as that of expression.
Today's problems, if reduced to their essential issues, are rarely new. The criticisms of Democracy, by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle are still relevant, even after 2500 years. The concept of Banality of Evil, created by Arendt in the second half of the last century, remains relevant and useful to explain certain political and social phenomena, being written, every year, numerous books and doctoral theses that try to revisit and "reactivate" his theory, which so current, does not require (nor admit) rehabilitation. Finally—and my favorite example—Walter Benjamin, who in 1935 wrote The Art Work in the Age of Its Technical Reproducibility. Benjamin wrote the book in question exactly 90 years ago, more than eight decades before it reached its peak of topicality and relevance. For those who have not read the book, with only the title and living in the Age of AI, it is even difficult to imagine what the book is about if not about artificial intelligence.
Clearly, if we stick to certain details, everything is new. It is evident, recovering Benjamin's example, that artificial intelligence brings challenges never before faced and issues never before thought. But not completely. There are problems that just seem to be new, but they're not. In these cases, we stop carrying the weight of being the first. The weight we carry comes, exactly, from not being the first and thus having some duty to learn from what has already happened.
If, on the one hand, the notion that a particular phenomenon is "unprecedented" serves to attribute gravity to a given event, saying that there are historical precedents for a given event is a strategy used to minimize the severity of the reported situation. In one case, the idea is to create panic because we're living something completely new. In another, the goal is to say, "Humanity has been through this and it is not over."
During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, for example, they were parallel fabrics with the Spanish flu (1918–1919) and the Black Death (1347–1351). Although humanity was not extinguished with the last two, a third of the European population was decimated.
Honesty is—as it is very often—In a gray zone. There were, in 2020, historical precedents for a great pandemic with catastrophic results, but there was no precedent for a truly global pandemic, since the world has never been so globalized and the flow of people, capital and information has never been so intense. So in situations like these, what do we do? Should we be terrified because we are the first to face something or should we minimize the importance of the challenges that are presented? Of course, the only reasonable answer is none of the two options. We must understand the phenomena that arise, and history is useful for us to understand how certain scenarios can develop.
The most fundamental thing is to understand that history does not bind humanity and its future. A strategy that has always been successful does not guarantee that it will continue to deliver good results. Likewise, it is not because a strategy has never been successful, or has never even been put into practice, that it will not be the best option for current or future cases.
In my last text, I presented the idea hegeliana that philosophy and history are always too late. I don't have the illusion or the naivety that we'll learn anything from history. But I am naive enough to believe (being more wishful thinking than a real belief, I admit) that we can learn to value history properly and attribute due gravity to the challenges, crises and wars that are emerging.
Port, 2025.
Daniel Sister.
[1] Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, for example.