Is there a more perfect democracy than one that satisfies all the demands of its citizens without compromising the rights of the rest of the population? Is this a time when the freedom and personal aspirations of each of us became the great mission of democracy for society as a whole? Wouldn’t achieving that be tantamount to finding the holy grail that political scientists around the world seek in their books and essays? And what better ally to achieve this political state than the digital society, the power of today’s processors, and the most elaborate lines of code programmed by the best computer engineers?
Victor Lapuente (Chalamera, 1976), a political scientist and political scientist at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden – member of the Piedras de Papel collective and collaborator of elDiario.es – plays with these elements in his new novel. immanence (AdN, 2025). But La Puente does not weave in a utopian, well-thought-out essay about the kind of fully egalitarian society that developed in the early 21st century, instead speculating on the possibilities of the then-novel network that would eventually become today’s Internet.
On the contrary, the Aragonese, who graduated from the University of Barcelona, received a PhD from the University of Oxford, and was appointed professor at the University of Gothenburg, depicts a dystopian world oppressed by the efficiency of computer development, which dominates the so-called complexity of society. western republic In the year 2086, it is embodied in a ruthless algorithm called FRIDA, a sort of Orwellian Big Brother made from binary code.
Under FRIDA’s rule, humanity became more free, but also less human than ever before in human history. With no emotional connection to his parents or siblings, and no contact with his offspring, he lives a life devoted to the physical pleasure of the moment. There is no memory, no personal history, no life story. He sees himself as a new being, freed from the yoke of capitalism, but despite his supreme personality, he is not a strong-willed superman like Nietzsche, but a timid, ignorant subject like the one depicted in Robert Musil’s novels. man without attributes.
novel in three acts
Now, beyond this dark vision of the world that takes up a third of the novel, the edifice of La Puente stretches out. immanence It is divided into three acts, which alternate throughout the story. One is a memorable and endearing local production that depicts the youth of one of the protagonists, Martín, in Huesca, an arid rural area bordering Catalonia. Arcadia has lost its memory compared to what the future will bring. In an innocent, analog world, Martin and his friends fantasize about finding the Holy Grail, which, according to legend, is hidden within the ruins of the penultimate Templar castle in the West.
In the other act, Martin himself appears in the present from 2025 to 2026. Already a renowned programmer and professor like La Puente in Gothenburg, he is seduced by a Swedish businessman to develop the definitive algorithm for a complete democracy. The third and final scenario tells the story of Anna, an ordinary woman from 2085 to 2086. western republic He meets the mysterious librarian Björk, who will tell him about the darkest parts of FRIDA.
Lapuente said in a phone call with elDiario.es: immanence It’s a project he started hooking on in pre-pandemic times, an itch that leads him to confront the complexities of a plot that unfolds over 460 pages. “The idea was always to delve into the extreme individualism we live in these days,” the author comments. “It seems that everyone, at the political level, is increasingly doomed to seek the immediate gratification of their desires as the key objective, without broader vision or social decency,” he added in the explanation.
Silvio, it all started with you
For La Puente, the current social boil-over has decisively forgotten the values of community, which is to concentrate on purely personal interests, without worrying about consequences such as the climate, the quality of democracy, or housing. But he does not want to fall under the accusation of neoliberalism, but refers to the selfish, completely narcissistic and nihilistic “post-neoliberalism” that he believes Silvio Berlusconi embodies better than anyone else in Italy. “Big changes in European history always come from Italy,” he comments.
“Reagan and Thatcher had a certain morality in their contempt for society, even if it was due to religious training,” he observed, adding, “On the other hand, in Berlusconi we observe that only personal interests are translated into political philosophy.” “It is the sum total of individualism and hatred of community,” he concluded. However, he also points out that left-wing ideology has also become “oriented toward satisfying individual pleasures.”
“I live in a typical social democratic country,” he says, referring to Sweden, “where the Scandinavian social democrats had the phrase ‘work hard and demand your rights’ to a greater or lesser extent.” He continued: “Virtually all left-wing speeches now only talk about rights without mentioning effort.” “There is very little collaboration with local communities, very little assistance,” he adds, illustrating a lack of social engagement that “only leads to disappointment and loss of trust in the institution.”
Populists like Millais and Trump are using this disappointment as inspiration, but their proposals amount to nothing more than dismantling the social welfare systems that prevailed in postwar Europe. According to La Puente, populism aims to “end all intermediary institutions.” “They don’t want anything communal or organized. They just want individuals who don’t answer to anyone and operate with cryptocurrencies without the presence of central banks or regulatory bodies.” A kind of world where the strongest, richest, and most powerful laws prevail. “Mistrust in all of our state institutions is at an all-time high,” he added.
God as an antidote to narcissism
Exactly, western republic Lapuente said: immanence It is a form of this anti-social individualism, but the populist libertarianism currently in vogue has been algorithmically modified to align with the maximized rights of each individual in a republic in a full democracy where FRIDA does not have to vote for all of us. And the amount of information you process allows you to make better decisions.
So, immanence It points to the path that perhaps our society will eventually tread: a canyon of absolute mistrust, mistrust of community, and narcissistic deification of the individual and his pleasures. These wickers already exist today and can be seen in everyday life in social networks such as “I think Elon Musk has already pointed out a solution in this sense, so imagine…”, Lapuente jokes.
Logically, like any dystopia, the problem is that FRIDA does not recognize the existence of alternatives to what her calculations dictate. It is impossible for a woman to hope for parents, siblings, stable partners, and children to be separated from her a year after giving birth. Nor can we read certain books that encourage transcendental thinking or profess religions that encourage a sense of community and moral development, as is the case with monotheism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. FRIDA’s greatest enemy is transcendence.
And it is precisely this religious transcendence, the transcendence of primitive Christianity that prioritizes community over dogma, and ideal communal existence over our individuality, that is the solution that La Puente offers his protagonists in the novel’s third act. An exit that will determine whether they are saved or doomed when they are executed by FRIDA agents to ultimately reach the human dimension. As he himself emphasizes, “It is about making God exist so that none of us can be God.”
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