Thinking with the ideal is tenderly dangerous because the rawness of realism is lost. Protestants and anti-protesters are victims of themselves. That is, its ideal, its interpretation and its biases. Both believe that what they see on their social networks is the version and not a version of a supporter.
Social networks are condescending to the training desires of their users. The user mistakes his reality for the real thing. Your version with versions. What you want and want to see with what it is. The real does not exist in the digital world. It lacks complexity, breadth, disagreements, oppositions, nuances.
It may interest you: Cali: protest, art and dignity
In networks, the algorithm floods the user with information, drowns him: it does not give him time to think. Thus, it deforms it, instead of forming it. The excess of information misinforms. The user is convinced of his version because he plays many similar versions. Loses critical sense of his own story. His story is imposed, because the networks feed his version with the versions of other users who think the same.
There is no room for other stories. The other stories are there, but the user convinced of their position ignores them. Or he does not know them, they do not appear to him, he does not value them. The other does not exist for users clinging to their trenches. In the networks, the other has disappeared. The entrenched user makes it disappear, but does not know. He does not know that it feeds his desire, because he does not know that what he wants to see is a wish. Reality is not a wish, the world is not a wish, what happens in the protests is not a wish. All that is.
Thinking with the ideal is tenderly dangerous because the rawness of realism is lost. Protestants and anti-Protestants are victims of themselves, that is, of their ideal, of their interpretation, of their biases. Both believe that what they see on their networks is the version, and not a version of a sympathizer.
We suggest you read another text related to the role of the arts in social protest: The arts take the lead in the street
Then the place of the other is lost. Without taking the place of the other, there is no dialogue. It is talked about, it is demanded, but the conditions to carry it out are not sought. Without knowing a broad version of the other, it is impossible to know him. The informative condescension of the networks makes it chimerical to know the counterpart.
In Cali a group of people take to the streets with an obtuse slogan, lacking in wit and oblivious to the national pain: “The march of silence.” This is promoted by entrepreneurs, micro-entrepreneurs, people who call themselves “good people.” In reality, there are citizens of all kinds – I mean: good people who do not enjoy the privileges of “good people” -: workers who have been affected by the blockades within and on the borders of the city, workers , housewives, drivers. But given the antecedents of people in white shirts, the expression is stigmatized, scorned, annulled by that clumsiness with which “good people” have acted before.
Follow the news of El Espectador on Google NewsHere comes one of the many problems of networks. The user who completely ignores the historical dynamics of Cali is limited to following what other supporters say. It is deprived of analyzing the nuances: of listening to the voice of those who are being hit by the effects of the causes of the strike, who may not know what they share, or what they support but are used to enduring. The problem with this user is that he does not understand that he is depriving himself of something because he does not know what is outside his something.
You might be interested in reading a report on the state of the cultural sector in economic terms: Colombia: without culture the crisis could be eternal (II)
These projections (photos, videos, memes) are legitimized by an irony alien to the perception of today’s militants: neoliberalism. Likes and retweets, and social media reactions in general, are successful to the extent that they go viral. In other words: media, great, celebrated. One of the pillars of neoliberalism is the quantification of everything.
A video with many reactions is assumed to be true. But that video is not the truth. It is a subjective fragment of the truth. The truth is also what makes us uncomfortable, what we do not like, what challenges us, what we do not agree with. The truth is not what we want it to be, it is what it is, even if we ignore it.
One can support the national strike, one can denounce misgovernment, but that does not mean that each of the occurrences of those who lead a social movement with whose causes coincide, but with which one can differ in many of its forms, is applauded. to operate. Do you really think that blocking streets will win the support of the people?
It is true that drastic measures are necessary to be heard in Colombia. Would the government’s attention – which is not much – be the same without the videos reproduced by the international press and without the blockades? I doubt it. In Colombia the extreme is necessary.
We suggest you: Cali: Art and social protest
But by doing one, the other is lost. The common man does not understand this. Unemployment, which at first seemed to be for many, has become that of a few. Traditional media contribute to defamation. The blockades despair of the ordinary worker. Some think that if we were bad before, now we are terrible. Colombia outdoes itself in that. Schopenhauer, without knowing it, predicted it: today is bad and every day it will be worse “until the worst arrives.”
A self-critical voice is needed among the headless leaders of the national strike. It is necessary to shed the condescension fed by the networks. It is necessary to listen, observe, look at versions other than the common ones. If we do not look at ourselves in a mirror that is not ours, one with other lights, other angles and other discomforts, it will be impossible to find a way out of this mess.
