This year, we have again arrived in the summer break in a very strange climate.
It is perhaps the first time that the enthusiasm for a well-earned rest clashes with what is happening in the world and forces us to reflect on contemporary society.
Many times, when I look back at my age and do some soul-searching, I wonder if I too have not become one of those old farts who nostalgically repeat that “back in their day it was better”. But then, with bitterness and lucidity, I realise that it is not just a generational issue: we really do live in an increasingly dystopian world, similar to those described in novels and films that once seemed like pure fantasy to us.
When the truth is turned upside down: the power of disinformation
For years we condemned war, we propagated that it should never happen again. Yet today we are witnessing the reversal of roles: those who were victims, moral examples to the world, have become executioners. And while all this is happening, in near-total silence, genocide is taking place. Cities are razed to the ground, to eventually make way for future holiday villages.
Meanwhile, the truth has lost its value. The news appears to turn reality upside down: often, what we hear is the opposite of what is really happening. The ignorance of the people is being exploited, forgive me if I say so, and without offending anyone.
People no longer ask why things are happening. For example, no one questions the sense of building bike lanes in already congested cities, taking away space for mobility. The answers? Superficial and pre-packaged: “because it’s environmentally friendly”.
And I could go on with Europe, economic policies, and everything that is intertwined with worldviews too far removed from those of us entrepreneurs. But at this point, the real problem runs deeper: we have stopped thinking.
We have lost our compass: where is the human in contemporary society?
The human being has lost, pardon the pun, humanity, seriousness and awareness, leaving room for frivolity and false values, to an extreme technology that is turning us into lobotomised beings, incapable of analysing the times we are living in.
But it may be the mentality of my generation, it could be that, because of the way I am, I will never give up… I want to believe and hope that, once we hit rock bottom, there is room to return to what we once were: human beings.
Happy holidays to all and… remember that meditating is not lazing around!