Reflecting a little on today's society, I have come to the conclusion that modern democracy has reached that point of political freedom of which Tocqueville spoke. He said that political democracy was the ability to decide a future together as a society, abolishing privileges and with a high degree of equality. Today's democracies are based on the promotion of equality not only in economic, but also in social and cultural spheres, this derived from the exhaustive work that came from the generation of May 1968, that generation that for its own benefit raised childish men who cannot make their own decisions, put emotionality before facts and do not take responsibility for their actions.
By then Tocqueville had already visualized the risks that freedom would suffer at the hands of equality. At that time this kind of political freedom was not seen as a threat because information in societies before the technological revolution circulated reasonably through rudimentary conversations and media. Today technology and the massification of the media have multiplied the reach of the minorities that control the circulation of knowledge and decision making, therefore, we do not live in a truly democratic society, because knowledge is limited by a few hands that have the hegemony of what we think and even in many cases feel.
For a society that does not have an understanding of this, freedom and what it implies is of no importance. This is why it is necessary to reflect on the most important freedom we have, that of free thought, that which allows us to discern and distinguish between different types of opinion in order to achieve that ideal called truth. Freedom and truth can only go hand in hand, and that is why dissenting from the opinions that are imposed on the population in today's democracies is courageous.
When someone makes known a truth contrary to the prevailing prejudices he is immediately seen as the center of mockery for the media, being taken as a conspiracy and mad. Consequences as serious as these are palpable in our society, a clear example is what journalism has become today, journalism was one of the most prestigious professions throughout the twentieth century but today for fear of disagreeing the powerful journalism has become a joke that only sells drama stories to entertain on Sundays. And if that weren't enough, the technological crisis of the media has widened that submission cultivated by the business lobbies that buy and buy journalists, policemen and judges.
In this new environment of political freedom, voters without making rational decisions about the upcoming elections will be content to be the legitimators of what those who have convinced them that they are working for them do. Because through the use of vague ideology and thanks to the diffusion of these great media it has already been convinced that what would be best for them is what they are ordered to say. They are free to decide who will be their next masters.
Most people do not feel deprived of liberty. They believe that the State already provides us with what is necessary, we come to convince ourselves that education is good and we think that public health is the best in the world, and all this is sustained in the absence and/or manipulation of information. Many people aspire to be granted some remuneration by the public authorities, and that there is no limit to what we can ask of them. In exchange, the state decides how much money to steal from us with an unjustified cause.
However, I like to think that a select group of people are not ignorant, they simply choose what is best for them with the information they have. The problem is that there is never a new alternative in the political sphere of these democracies, because in many cases those who propose to fight against this type of evil have been thieves and have not shown that they really want something different.
If freedom is defended, it must be defended seriously, and not from a position that no one can discuss, or by protecting dishonest informants hour after hour. Freedom is, in fact, at risk of being crushed by a crowd of zombies of satisfied consciences, of incoherent clichés and stories made of lies, but that cannot be dismantled without starting from below, without telling the truth also when it is painful. It takes a long breath to put an end to so much mediocrity and so much lying.
Today's political culture is prey to anacolutes, half-truths, and dozens of cloakroom clichés; it needs to be changed if we are to continue to maintain the progress we have been making over the past 200 years, but as long as subordination to alien powers and captured truths are accepted nothing at all will be achieved.
