Everyone and Anyone Can Be Wise

It is quite possible to be well read and completely stupid. They are not incompatible. But, as a sociologist, let me tell you that people who still read, even as a gesture of resistance, have a greater chance of understanding life a little better, and that’s enough. We live surrounded by gadgets that claim to be smarter than we are. In class we always picked on the nerd, the one who had the same emotional intelligence as an amoeba, but who got the best grades, because he or she devoured the textbooks and then threw them up in exactly the same order. After the exam, they would be wiped clean.

I’ve never been impressed by people with the ability to retain data. You might think it’s envy, because my memory is that of a goldfish, a dead goldfish at that, and maybe you’re right, but honestly, I think I’ve come out on top in the end: what the hell good is that gifted memory to you now when ChatGPT will best you each and every time?

All in all, reading oxygenates. In these times of hysteria and urgency it is more necessary than ever, because it forces you to stop and focus your attention for a few minutes on something you can’t scroll with your finger every five seconds. Replacing reading with TikTok is the way contemporary civilization decided to get high and escape from the uncomfortable reality of living. Marx made a lot of fuss about alienation, but we have never been more alienated than we are today.

The truth is that these days there is no excuse for frivolity, nor for literary illiteracy. It is no longer necessary to be rich, travel the world, and attend the most elite schools to become a cultural torrent. All one needs is an internet connection and a certain intellectual restlessness. The 20 million books available on Google Books is much more than any of the great scholars of the past could read in a lifetime.

Digital life is hateful, the modern world repels anyone with common sense, and the 21st century is, broadly speaking, a far more terrifying dump than the unforgettable Argentine tango, Cambalache, depicted:

That the world was and will be a mess, I know

In 506 and the year 2000 too

That there have always been crooks, Machiavellians and swindlers.

Contented and bitter, values and rolled gold

But that the twentieth century is a show

Of insolent wickedness, no one can any longer deny

We live wallowing in meringue

And in the same mud, all of us are groped

And yet, every coin has two sides. We have culture. Overwhelming, universal, timeless. The grand culture. All of it. Old moral codes, the long lost manners, a cultured and elegant writing, the costumbrismo, historical documentation safe from Wokeist poisoners, exemplary lives, prophecies fulfilled, the timeless novels, classical books of philosophy, art, science, religion.

In the past, those who always tend to justify crime (you know who they are), used to say that most criminals, or terrorists who gave their lives over to hatred, did so because they had not had the opportunity to go to school and be morally and intellectually developed. In reality, there is no longer any cultural alibi for anyone with access to the Internet. So the usual people can start working on another speech to justify barbarism.

And then there are those who are no longer capable of feeling, the unscrupulous, over-stimulated children of the digital revolution. Those who fell into cybernetic nets during the 90’s, killing zombies, and who have since then not experienced any brain activity whatsoever. Today they have no excuse either. Because the same poison that digitized their lives during adolescence, the same poison that stole their paper books, the same little screen that made them dumb by the ages of 15 or 20, can now, at 30 or 40, rescue them.

They don’t need to spend more money on psychologists. The choice is theirs. And this goes to show that, even in the worst of times, freedom always ends up appearing to rescue us from captivity, be it voluntary or involuntary. The cultural divide has been broken forever. And so has the left’s favorite excuse to justify their violent revolutions. A big part of what is wrong with Nicolás Maduro is that he has never read a fat book in his life. And a big part of what is wrong with Venezuela is that no one has had the chance to throw one at his head yet either.

READ MORE from Itxu Diaz:

I Am Giving This Script to Disney So They Can Get Rich Again.

The Year the (Woke) Stupidity Bubble Burst

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