We live in fear. When we drive, we don’t roll down our windows because we’re afraid that someone might attack us. We also do not answer phone calls from unknown numbers as they can be extortionate. We hardly leave the house because we are afraid of being attacked and robbed in our absence. We set up surveillance cameras to monitor what’s happening outside, on the street, always with our hearts in our mouths.

The daily commute is an excruciating pain because of the latent danger represented by this civic space made up of streets and avenues that gather the homeless, but also criminals who often beg, but also intimidate and attack. Because at every traffic light there are poor families begging and spending the day in flower gardens, warming themselves in the sun or freezing in the rain and cold. They, our fellow citizens, often cast disapproving glances at those who, hidden by their vehicles, seem to have everything in front of their obvious helplessness. Some mutter insults against everyone and against life. Others, frankly, cry out their hatred and impotence for their own fates and those of others who have what they lack. We are powerless in this complex situation. Politics, which is directly responsible for the management of public affairs, has failed, because poverty is growing, insecurity is rampant, and social decay is progressing more and more and dragging us down as a people.

Ordinary citizens close themselves in bubbles that want to be impervious, take care of their families, but we never succeed because we live in vast social and natural environments, of which we are an interdependent part. Sometimes we develop feelings of understanding and solidarity with the tragedy of poverty and begging, but behaviors of instinctive and aggressive rejection also appear because we are scared and helpless. Politics is a missed purpose, and the care of citizens by the State has become a desolate dream that turns into despair and anxiety that mark us as a society in these dark times.

(…) individuals must be emotionally strengthened so as not to succumb to interpersonal violence and attacks…

When citizens communicate socially, in common spaces, streets, avenues and others, we often do it out of cautious prevention, deep aggressiveness or fear that is already rooted in our souls. We attack each other, because we are afraid, because we are on the defensive and because we have lost trust in the system and in the other, who is seen as a probable adversary that we must attack and subdue.

Our mental health, as a society, is bad. We are all sick to a greater or lesser extent in any area that makes it: emotional, psychological or social. We must take measures so that unrest and violence do not dominate our lives. The big antidotes are political and economic and are the responsibility of governments. In the midst of decay, individuals must emotionally fortify themselves in order not to succumb to interpersonal violence and assault in response to the harshness of everyday reality. (OR)