Question. It follows from his book that we live deceived.
Response. We live in the big lie. It looks great on the financial crisis: the perception of things is more important than the reality of things. This is a crisis of perception. And talk about politics, it is the same. Politicians do not argue, do not open a debate, but a theater, a story. Storytelling: tell a story. John McCain has written a book, Faith of My Fathers (The Faith of My Fathers), and Obama called his Dreams from My Father (Dreams of my father) ... Regardless that we like more Obama, the truth is that both have a virtual theater, a string of positions that follow the same codes: storyline, timing, framing, networking ... Perception is more important than reality.
P. And the crisis is also counted as it tells a story or a lie?
R. Since the eighties, the beauty of the business, their cosmetics, has taken a too disproportionate to reality. Take the case of Enron, is the first company of fiction that does not behave in a rational, but as an actor doing a performance before an audience that wants to party and who wants to be convinced that is the most innovative.
P. The newest.
R. But it demonstrates the ability of innovation with professional criteria, but symbolic. Take 10% of workers each year and so you think you are giving a sign of renewal. And it's only acting to see it from Wall Street.
P. In other words, an entire circus.
R. All of a circus. The reality of the economy there, and that there is no goodwill generated, but far from reality. What is happening now is a return, a return to reality.
P. A terrible reality.
R. George Soros has written a book that says the cause of the crisis are not speculators, but how people on Wall Street looks at things through the perception, not reality of things. There is a storytelling of financial management, a marketing storytelling: a brand is a story today. What I have attempted in the book is to show how to build next to the reality, a new order of the story, a semblance of order that replaces reality.
P. In fiction or fiction that is noble, but in politics and economics that has consequences terrible. Flaubert is not the same as Enron.
R. Absolutely. From time immemorial, people told stories. My conviction is that the modern novel was established from a dispute with the storytelling of the time. Don Quijote speaks from his preface to a man whose mind is full of lies, false stories.
P. That the novel comes to clean.
R. A demystified. Madame Bovary is also a reaction against the storytelling, the stories of the day. So the ethics of combat novel is storytelling. And now this tendency to sleep with tales people have taken a force that had never been seen.
P. Now everything is story, it seems. What he said León Felipe: we try to sleep with stories.
R. Antonio Damascius, a neuroscientist, said recently that "the brain is the articulation of reason and hope." That's normal. But today a campaign is a permanent brain attack with a barrage of false news. When Roosevelt spoke on the radio, you had time to think, reason could resume the argument, but today there is no time for reflection, and that takes away the democratic spaces. Because they need some time, an institutional architecture (the houses of parliament, the power executive, the legislature). All this architecture today disappears another scene, a scene of political performance: a man stands before the audience and tries to guide the emotions to himself.
"Since the eighties, the cosmetic companies have taken a disproportionate importance"
P. And besides, this man is not himself, is surrounded by people who whispers what must be done.
R. Are the spin doctors of the candidates, lobbies, storytellers ... I wrote something funny on the first government of Sarkozy. Said the Bureau of the government was like a flower, each one representing a symbol: one was equal, the other human rights, the other was humanitarian. A garden! The ministers are not chosen for their competence, but by his media presence, its capacity for action in the media field.
P. For the flower they represent.
R. It's terrible. For example, Justice Minister Rachida Dati, which will have a child who is not known, it's like Cinderella, that becomes a queen midnight. It's a story as a story. And it is in the U.S. elections, of course, Barack Obama has a story John McCain tells a story. But Barack Obama will win because not only the story: he has a magic square (the storyline, the timing, framing, networking) that allows you to manage time, framing his message, campaign finance adequate militants ... And McCain only has the storyline, everything else has been thwarted. And when Sarah Palin has attracted, it has not amended it worse: he is a president who has an old ideological frame, and she is a young vice president with a completely different frame.
P. Back to the lie. Unsurpassed the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
R. Bush arrived in 2000 with a history (a storytelling) to tell, the entire cabinet was prepared to tell a story, and the attack on the Twin Towers created another reality ... In the days after the 11-S, the Bush White House summoned the directors of Hollywood had to imagine what it was.
P. And the invasion of Iraq.
R. With a tremendous cynicism. An invasion based on stories. And there's a story, the Afghan women to the Taliban pulled out the nails, which began to be in every speech, as if that was standard practice to warrant any repression. And then you investigate it and see that this was only one case and not as serious as it came to be in stories about the atrocities of the Taliban.
P. The lie serves to control public opinion.
R. The power of stories circulated to stay. If I could completely its purpose would be to totalitarianism, but it is still possible to contradict the stories.
P. Should we be wary of everything?
R. No, the experience not to be suspicious. I think we are in a new form of oppression, not only political, but a symbolic oppression that prevents people to build their own lives, think and tell their own experience. This is the time for a new democratic struggle.
P. To exit the story and hell.
R. Exactly. -
