The Tyranny of Low Standards
I recently spent one week in Brazil. Despite many opportunities, I am proud of myself for not being engulfed in lengthy debates about Master Bank case, about Vorcaro, about Alexandre de Morais, about Bolsonaro, about Lula, about US interference, about CV and PCC, about voting to “avoid the worst”, about how politics in Brazil is a circus and nothing can be done about it.
The political debate here in Brazil is not much different from what I see in the United States. Everything revolves around politicians, their schemes, and the competition to determine who is less corrupt and bad.
There is little effort to discuss which political ideas or policies are best for the future and why. There is no real ideological debate—only complaints about the people on the stage, while using standards that few will care to honestly assess.
Whenever I try to encourage a discussion about ideas and principles, people often react as if they are thinking, “Why bother? Our ideas are not going to change anything.”
Most genuinely believe that other people decide what happens in their lives, and that there is no point in evaluating or challenging those decisions. They confuse what is man-made with what is metaphysically given. Minds that could be thinking, creating, and changing things—including their own lives—end up passively accepting their circumstances as though they were inevitable.
What follows from this mindset? Passivity. Resignation. Victimhood. Fear.
And ultimately, hopelessness—without realizing that much of it is self-inflicted.
People come to believe they are condemned to be ruled by the worst kinds of leaders, unaware that those leaders are often the product of standards they never bothered to examine. By refusing to evaluate the ideas, values, and criteria by which they judge political life, they surrender their ability to demand anything better.
The result is a society that accepts poor leadership as fate rather than recognizing it as a consequence of its own intellectual and moral complacency.