-Essay-
BOGOTÁ — “But it’s so long…” secondary-school students are heard telling their teacher at a philosophy class, on being asked to read a passage from Aristotle or a bit of What is Enlightenment? by Immanuel Kant. “And what is wrong with that?” he replies. “You must read at length to grow up,” he says, despondently, before making a joke to perk them up!
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There is no time in our time, or none at least for the most important things. Our minds follow our eyes to focus on the surface. If it glitters, we like it. It’s safer that way, or politically correct as they say.
Who’d want to offend those in charge who, in their kindness, wish for us a life of perpetual fun?
Even the partisans of progress have softened their tune in these strange times. They prefer to look away as imperialism comes marching back and one nation tries to subject another. They are not averse to change, mind you, but now prefer its disemboweled variety, as in the French saying, plus ça change…
Formatting our mind
We are in an age of posturing, self-involvement and disdain for old books. They are long, yes, but even worse is that they might admonish us. They might offend our gender sensitivities — imagine that — the great liberation of our time and pearl of human progress!
Someone decided it’s time to format our minds, like a tablet, and repeatedly, if we insist on infecting them with thought. For do we need it, when it can offend? Thought — this outmoded function — keeps looking around, like a nervous child, spotting the hidden cameras and radars and devices. Why pry, when we can enjoy ourselves instead? Have something to say? Here’s 140 characters, and don’t step out of line. Let’s have a snippet; there’s no time for a sermon.
As our mothers and aunts might have told us as children, you never know, he might be right. Who? Those deranged novelists who anticipated calamities and foresaw idiocy spreading like a pandemic (though not to those who peddle it). Those who feared they’d be burning books again and you’d be given a pill, or a jab, to stop fretting.
Everything has become as flat as our screens.
As one philosopher said, those who think more, suffer more. And we are not here to suffer but ‘chill out,’ so please, let’s shut that busy mind of yours…
People want preachers and messiahs
With language on a leash, the stage is set for the standardization French philosopher Michel Onfray warns of in his Théorie de la dictature. As for science, it must be made to serve not freedom but its opposite. It must enslave, but always in the name of progress.
Everything has become as flat as the screens that feed us our news. Those papers, the radio and television that used to be so sharp and critical have bowed to the powers, whichever their color. They will say what sounds right in the golden age of superficiality.
Two thousand years ago, Philo of Alexandria hailed the word as the creator of things, no less. Where would he be today? Left speechless no doubt, like the schoolteacher facing his pupils’ aversion to reading. Yet, it’s a great day and age for big leaders, cheeky politicians and anyone else lapping up adulation like champagne.
Who would have thought we would be back in the age of preachers and messiahs? But that is what people want: fix me everything, they say. I’ll even bow down and kiss your feet if you could just run my mind.
