There are signs that the world we have known is changing. It may still be too early to speak of the collapse of what, for decades, we called Western civilization, but the fractures in a political, economic, and cultural order that for too long was believed to be definitive are becoming increasingly visible. If we prefer the expression Global North, we might say that its hegemony is being challenged by an international reality that no longer accepts so readily the distribution of power established in the aftermath of the Second World War.
The emergence of new economic and political blocs, the growing influence of China, Russia, and other countries of the so-called Global South, as well as the movements toward emancipation unfolding in some of France’s former colonies in Africa, are changing the geography of power. These developments mean simply that the world is ceasing to be unipolar—and that this transformation unsettles those who have grown accustomed to making the rules.
The war in Ukraine is one example of this change. It did not begin in February 2022, and it cannot be understood through the simplistic narrative of the malevolent aggressor and the victim. History is more complex than the versions offered to us every day.
The same could be said of Palestine, Iran, Sudan, or the Congo. These are territories where economic, strategic, and geopolitical interests converge, and where human life seems to be valued differently according to the identity of the victims and the interests of those looking on. Palestine is perhaps the most brutal example of this reality: decades of occupation, violence, dispossession, and genocide continue to be presented by much of the so-called West in language that frequently turns the victim into a threat and violence against them into an inevitability.
But the crisis of the Western order is not expressed in foreign policy alone. It is also evident within Western societies themselves. The rise of the far right and of renewed forms of authoritarianism is one manifestation of it. In several European and American countries, in both the North and the South, nationalist, xenophobic, and ultraconservative rhetoric is gaining ground politically and socially. In some cases, it finds fertile soil within sectors of religious movements that offer simple answers to complex problems, replacing material hope with the promise of salvation.
There is, however, another battle, less visible, that deserves our attention: the battle for thought. A school increasingly subjected to the compartmentalization of knowledge, permanent assessment, and the reduction of learning to its immediate usefulness risks losing one of its fundamental purposes: teaching people to think. And a society that ceases to think critically becomes more vulnerable to manipulation.
Social media have deepened this reality. They promised to democratize information, but algorithms were not designed to educate citizens; they were designed to capture attention.
These realities are compounded by historical revisionism, which distorts what happened, obscures facts, and whitewashes events.
All of this is carrying humanity toward a future that is difficult to foresee. What comes next will depend, to a great extent, on the ability of peoples to reject hegemonies, whether old or emerging, and to build a new international order grounded in sovereignty, cooperation, justice, and peace.
One thing is certain: we are approaching the end of a world.
Aníbal C. Pires, poet, political and union leader, and activist.
Translated by Diniz Borges