Social manipulation and synthetic reality
Many families don't suspect that they're living with digital trolls and coordinated bots in their homes and that their teenage children have become night owls on Vox's farms. We were taught that realities were either objective or subjective; today our children have transformed them into synthetic ones. Therefore, we shouldn't be surprised that in the next elections (whatever they may be), despite having raised young people within a moderate center-right environment or a domesticated or liquefied socialism, young people will overwhelmingly vote for the far right. What's happening? What's happening to us? Is it happening all over the Western world? When and how did this process of manipulation begin? Who are the people, or are they, who are running this global network? What's their profile?
Let's not be naive and face, with dignity, the anthropology of human history. The "great masses," social communities, have always been deceived by the necessary "big lie." When we began to mature and were able to coexist between magical thinking and rational thought, we were able to discover and understand that absolute truths do not exist. In truth, we have lived surrounded by big lies, dogmas that have guided humanity. It's as if, in some way, we have always been chasing ideas. Despite these comings and goings throughout history, today we are making variations of a collective desire to personify ourselves as deities and demons with familiar faces. Society's desire makes current political leaders the equivalent of the magicians, druids, and priests of ancient cultures. What has changed most are the forms of leadership: there is no longer natural selection; the process has become synthetic, pre-cooked.
Has today's society suddenly become more vulnerable to manipulation? Is this just the case now, or has it always been manipulated? A controlled society or a manipulated society?
Many of us yearn for that "solid modernity," in which family, stable work, neighborhood, or town gave us a semblance of security. Everything had its place. Why is it that today, if we look around, we find or perceive more people as insecure, lonely, and fragile? A fragility that predisposes us to attractive manipulation, because they promise us security and identity, regardless of whether it's political, commercial, or religious. Diffuse fear—of climate change, of terrorism, of immigrants—dominates our daily lives. A fear that we find difficult to control and locate; hence, the masses, society, allow themselves to be guided by leaders or parties that offer simple and clear answers. Fear—since the first day of humanity—has become a tool of mass manipulation, perhaps the most powerful.
Young people are the most fragile on the scene; their psyches haven't fully matured; they're in the process. Their "nerves" are growing. They need to interact, to share with people who have gone through the maturation process and who can help them in this research. Unfortunately, we're moving backward. Young people mostly interact with machines that process and store information, but which, for the moment, aren't living entities with critical and emotional capacity. The new digital age invites us to become isolated within ourselves, forgetting that learning the tools necessary to live "peacefully" is in the analog world outside: on the street, in the family, at school. With the recent arrival of AI, this process of closure and confusion has accelerated much further, and we no longer talk about how we often treat AI systems as substitutes for humans. We already have ministers, conversationalists, lovers, and scoundrels in AI. However, we must be clear that we are at the beginning of a new era where, sooner or later, we will have to set limits and filters that currently don't exist. The challenge will be to manage not to get lost along the way.
Regarding learning and the role of school, I found Carme, a high school student at IES Can Peu Blanc in Sa Pobla, interesting in her essay on the topic. She said: "...school is not just a place to learn subjects, but a living space where one grows as a person. When children participate in school councils, act as mediators, or assume responsibilities within the school, they learn that their voice matters. They become protagonists in school life, and this gives them confidence, a sense of responsibility, and a critical spirit." Valuable training for other areas of their lives.. Digging deeper into the conversation with Carme, you soon realize that the topic of manipulation and synthetic reality is of little concern to students. It's rarely discussed, it doesn't generate debate, and with a bit of luck, you can find two or three students per classroom who are seriously concerned about it.
We need to believe that the landscape before us isn't so bleak. While young people receive their daily dose of romanticized fascism, meant to camouflage an authoritarian ideology, those of us who are more frayed or mature must continue to strengthen and build, as Carme says, critical thinking in all its forms. This would be one of the building blocks for the future. Without forgetting that human relationships, especially those within families and schools, are the best antidote to manipulation and dehumanization.
