The era of “pensavelox”: police of thought and language for a society without merits
Let's start from here, that is, from a trivial fact that occurred to me a short time ago. As soon as I set foot in a clothing store, a pretty trendy- looking saleswoman looks at me and begins with: "Hi, what can I do for you?" . Inevitable my answer: “To begin with simple things, you could give me something of her”. Yet I assure you that I show that age that would allow me to even be the grandfather of the shop assistant and that the shop in question has pretentious signs and windows. It is used like this, they tell me, just to put customers at ease. But if I, maybe, were more comfortable giving and receiving "her" with people whose names I don't even know, what do you do? And if it were even my subdued expectation to live in a world in which normally (but today it is said by default ) one calls "her" to those who are visibly at least 40 years older?
It would seem that in our times full of tiktokers , of influencers of various backgrounds (but mostly all belonging to the circle of boring parlor communism) in an age of social media as the first and most authoritative source of culture, it works just like that. If we also put smart working and Dad, the picture becomes surreal. They are telling us that the kids who go to school do not even enter it and participate in lessons in their underwear (because, in the meantime, the camera frames only from the bust up and in any case it can be turned off at will) will not be culturally and socially penalized compared to the pupils. of the traditional school. They also tell us that the work done from home connected remotely but with the TV on even makes it more profitable than that done in the office.
It may be, even if I have some doubts about it, but the point is another. I have the distinct feeling that the general trend is characterized by a growing tendency to adapt to the needs of the moment with excessive indulgence on the cornerstones of civilized life, which are less and less leaders and even less solid. Okay, come on, let's add a nice ladle of populism and let's say it's healthy to have lost the habit of calling a doctor a doctor, a professor who is, a commander who has been named such. Maybe let's go to the extreme and let's say that getting rid of the sinister and classy business card in favor of an anodyne QR code is a social achievement (but here I must say that however far I may go I would have a great desire to release myself and go back) but then that's enough. Stop. We get off at least at the stop of reason, since at that of decency we were distracted by the air-pad headphones and we skipped it.
I like to give the example, let's say, rail and tram because I find many similarities with what we are experiencing today. If it is true that the tram cannot follow the path that each of its users would like and that it is the passengers who have to adapt to the tram line, it is equally true that there are stops and that no one can tell the poor masked users "you get off here, while you go down there ” . Getting off the public transport, perhaps when you move away from our set goal is the very least we still have, and so let's do it. The same should be said of the supreme right of associates to think as they prefer, but we know that this is not the case, indeed the opposite happens. Too many of our decision makers like to place us in the categories they invented and made mandatory, applying labels of conformity of thought, arranging who must travel in the freight wagon and who in the cattle wagon. Too much luxury to travel in passenger carriages, because in those to which we are allowed the destination is fixed and the stops are not optional: we get off where they want to take us.
Therefore, our rulers being so attentive as to spare us the trouble of thinking, it happens, however, that, for example, we become racist's office for having written "negro" instead of "black", "disabled" instead of "disabled " and so on. It seems irrelevant that those who forbid us from using a term that is not offensive and used for centuries have understood the meaning of the term "racism" and even the doubt arises that it could be a boomerang for him, but whatever, what they could deal with more important?
Let's also say that, in the end, it is easy to scroll through the handbook of prohibited words to establish who is a decent person and who is a habitual offender. Simple and effective: you carry on with your work, enrolling in the column of good Italians or in that of the enemies of the nation whoever utters certain words. But, while the dull, thoughtless bureaucrats triumph in every sector of public affairs, reason, common sense, the duty to be clear are being torn apart to allow people to behave well without undergoing the treatment typically reserved for cattle. Like the ridiculous speed cameras installed only to make cash in streets that do not present real dangers, every day they give us a new “pensavelox”.
Woe to think outside the limits imposed on us. We no longer realize how hateful the thought police are because too many times in a single day we have to stop and think (and I'm talking about normal people and not terrorists) because saying or writing a single word we could have criminal trouble without having the minimal intention to harm anyone. It is thus easy to find the enemies to fight (at public expense, of course): it is equally easy to finance (strictly always with everyone's money) symposia, rallies, conferences, commissions and even special courts to find and punish those who use one word instead of another and other amenities that form, increase, sustain and make politically heritable a sideshow of moralists without morals, of unclean thought policemen who would do better to equip real policemen with the equipment so that they can do their duty.
It is an elephantine and very expensive, albeit lopsided, shanty which is climbed by co-optation and never by merit. Password of the keepers of the sideshow? We flatten everything down so they don't tell us we're doing favors for the powerful. Now they even want to remove the law from degrees, you don't pay for having invented so many that make you laugh only in the name. We put together those who have made a huge bunch to study and train with those who wear the right multicolored scarf as the only merit, we unite scholars and researchers with the tiktokers and the Sardines and we charge overpaid theoretical bureaucrats to regulate in detail the work of self-employed and professionals, continuing in the now glorious Italian tradition of total minestrone. In addition to educational qualifications, we also abolish good education and due respect for who someone is.
Because, like it or not to our thought workers, there has always been in the world and there will still be those who have become someone and who will continue not to count a damn because they don't know a damn. The classic rule of merit was simple: it consisted of the sum of intelligence, sacrifice, study, application, ambition, ability. Luck counted in completely residual percentages and not infrequently "the right friends" favored people who were still capable. How badly there was, then, in calling a professor a professor, a priest reverend, a prefect Your Excellency, and so on… today's moralizers cannot explain it to us. "It was ugly" and tasted of fascism with an immanent coup d'etat attached, huh? Likely.
Now that an elementary school child (sorry … primary school) is authorized to appeal to his teacher by calling her by name and calling her "you" and that the same can be done by a middle school boy (oops … first grade secondary school) in towards the professors we have evidently taken a huge step forward to make society more just and democratic. Do you know what I tell you? Let's laugh. Or maybe even worse …
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/lepoca-del-pensavelox-polizia-del-pensiero-e-del-linguaggio-per-una-societa-senza-meriti/ on Sat, 22 May 2021 03:55:00 +0000.