[John Enright translated this short piece by María Marty summarizing her interview with me. The video of the 12-minute interview follows.]
Stephen Hicks is the author of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault and Nietzsche and the Nazis. A Personal View, which have been translated into several languages, including Spanish.
Hicks also lectures around the world. In this role he has visited many countries in Latin America and has managed to arrive at a good philosophical diagnosis concerning which problems they have in common and which steps these countries should follow in order to escape what has so far appeared to have been their destiny.
In one of his visits to Latin America, PanAm Post decided to interview him to get to know his point of view on the Latin American context.
Hicks points out that one of the things that has surprised him most is the cynicism and victim mentality of intellectuals and Latin Americans in general, and that the first step to solve our problems would be to take responsibility for our destiny and begin to see ourselves as agents of change.
He also acknowledges that the biggest problem facing Latin America today is corruption and the acceptance of corruption as something natural, a corruption that not only attacks politicians, but also a large part of the business community.
In addition, he is critical of the form that nationalism takes in Latin America; he warns against shutting out the world financially, under the pretext of national pride, when the only thing that generates is the continuation of poverty.
He also points to Latin American intellectuals, whom he considers guilty of having learned only one or two ideological perspectives: often traditional Marxism or new forms of Marxism, leaving aside the ideas that have proved successful in other parts of the world.
Finally, he tells us whether he is optimistic or pessimistic about the future of the region and leaves us with some tips for accelerating progress.
Topics:
1. What’s unique about how Latin Americans think about their problems.
2. The view that Latin America is primarily a victim of outside forces.
3. What internal changes are needed most: political, business, and intellectual cultures.
4. About the forms that nationalism takes, good and bad, in some Latin America countries.
5. Whether he is optimistic or pessimistic about Latin America’s future.
The video is below or at the PanAm site here.
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Excellent exposition of our troubles in Latin America. As a Brazilian I fully agree that we are knee-deep in pessimism and victim mindframe. The intellectual class in my country is largely postmodern or marxist, and to make matters worse people are very religious. We need to read the classical liberals and open ourselves to the world.