It might sound surprising, but most of the social problems
we face today have already been depicted in great detail by the great thinkers
of mankind and they have already explained in the past that our crisis is,
fundamentally, an ethical issue with socio-economical consequences, but this
aspect seems to be invisible to the majority of contemporary men.
The
malevolent plan of those in control of this pitiful society is, and has always
been, very clear: they do not want general liberty because this would endanger
their power. Free people are dangerous for those that want to control them. So
they implement all possible measures to avoid real liberty and twist the idea
of it to make it coincide with just petty material means. The great poet Joseph
Brodsky used to say that “Free means not free but liberated”, i.e. real liberty
is awareness. Our educational systems have been turned, more or less, into a
standardized training or indoctrination apparatus -- if not worse -- and students
end up going to universities to buy a degree in the same way they go to a
supermarket to buy groceries. Paradoxically, modern universities are damaging
knowledge almost to the point of no return and clearly, if the leaders and
managers that are nowadays trained by the same diploma mills learn just
techniques to attain power or make money and not a cultural/ethical attitude
toward the world and society, later we don’t have to wonder about their
mediocrity and moral corruption, it’s just the logical conclusion. The
contemporary utilitarian approach to life induces the majority of students to
believe that the only scope of knowledge is for personal gain or manipulation.
As a result the deeper questions are neglected and men go on living, day by
day, their unhappy lives of narcissistic happiness.
Confusion generates more confusion
and standardized thinking has never led anywhere. We live in peculiar dark
times presented as the brightest of all ages by a simplistic system of mass
indoctrination. Individuals that are still capable of reading and pondering
over the real questions of life understand that we live in a regressive phase
of civilization (Giambattista Vico, 1668 – 1744, defined these stages of
history as “the cycle of course and recourse”), but this understanding means
nothing for the standardized man (or The
One-Dimensional Man according to Herbert Marcuse). We have probably reached
a point in history where real intellect cannot be understood because the
questions that our society poses are no longer intellectual, but fundamentally
trivial and deceptive. One example could be the immense confusion between
intelligence and intellect. If individuals of real intellect would nowadays be
showed on any media around the globe, just a tiny portion of the audience would
be able to recognize the meaning of what they are trying to express because
they speak a language that cannot be understood without awareness of meaning
and a desire for knowledge. A deep person can speak the same language as the
shallow person and yet, they speak two different languages: the same occurs in
the difference between lover and beloved, as one cannot speak the language of
love to someone who has never experienced that feeling. Real words are to
chatter what music is to noise and real love is to fake love what a diamond of
light is to a ring bought in a crowded mall. So, the more we become oblivious
of ourselves the more all deep questions that could bring us in touch with our
real humanity will become more and more inaudible, until all is left is the
silent scream of our forgotten lives. And all of this in a society that claims
to be the most advanced of all human history. Well, after all, history does
have its peculiar irony.
(From: Sergio Caldarella, The social problems we face today, in Rantrave.com)
