Thinking philosophically now
In reality, the light of screens darkens, dazzles and confuses, and prevents us from wanting to know how things really are
PalmaThinking philosophically is now more difficult than ever, because a large part of humanity has turned its back on thought, and no longer dares to think. We have lost the habit of reading and the custom of thinking. We have become empty and passive receptacles that delegate, out of laziness, the resolution of problems to a minority of wise men and experts. Furthermore, this passivity is aggravated by confirmation bias, a psychological mechanism that acts silently in our minds, and through which we only listen to what we want to hear and believe exclusively what is in accordance with our beliefs, with what suits us and benefits us in a particular way. We no longer seek the truth, but rather consume information uncritically.
My personal perception is that we have voluntarily renounced leaving ignorance, that, even knowing that we live in a deceptive world, we prefer it to the true world, because abandoning the fantasy in which we live installed requires too much effort, and because it is much more fun to live life as if it were a video game.
Knowledge and unhappiness
One of the most deeply rooted contemporary myths is that knowledge makes us unhappy, that to be happy we must be ignorant and live life with indifference, because aspiring to know is equivalent to wishing to be unhappy. The myth of happiness conveys the idea that it is better to avoid problems and live carefreely, in an egoistic way, with our backs to reality and to what surrounds us, accepting inequalities and injustices with resignation and conformism, applying the law of least effort, abandoning the spirit of self-improvement and the desire to know that humanizes us and protects us from fanaticism, hatred, and irrational violence.
In The Tragic Sense of Life, Unamuno launched a very controversial proposal that was summarized in the phrase ‘Let them invent!’, and which could be interpreted as a renunciation of the Europeanist tendency to think about the world scientifically in favor of the vindication of a more mystical and literary thought, the path reserved for Spanish philosophy. In contemporary societies, Unamuno's intellectual provocation has turned into the wish ‘Let them think!’, directed towards anyone else, and which has been even more radicalized with the universal acceptance that it is neither good nor convenient to even think. In this way, the idea has become popular that it is not necessary to think philosophically about existence or the values that should guide conduct and coexistence, that it is simply a matter of living and being happy without worries, because understanding things has ceased to be a priority, since it is more comfortable to reproduce the narrative constructed by economic and political powers.
The renunciation of truth, or post-truth, is a personal and social wound that we had never had so open, and that not only affects philosophy and its zeal to seek the truth and aspire to total understanding, but also makes us vulnerable to manipulation and leaves us defenseless against exploitation and slavery, given that without knowledge it is not possible to be free. Never before had ignorance acquired such a high degree of popularity. In fact, being ignorant is not only well regarded, but it is perceived as the straightest path to happiness, because the act of not thinking is collectively interpreted as a good, a healthy way to simplify life.
On the other hand, the discourse of the democratization of truth has taken root, which has equated any opinion, even the most absurd one, with knowledge. Under the false idea that all opinions are equally respectable and valid, an epistemological relativism has been imposed that defends the lack of objective criteria to determine the validity and certainty of an argument, and which does not recognize any legitimate authority to decide what is true and what is false.
Under the excuse that expressing an opinion is a right that demands the greatest respect in itself, chatterers have appropriated media loudspeakers and have intoxicated public opinion with their lies and conspiratorial alerts, protected by the postmodern frame of reference that approves the truth of all points of view. The phenomenon of "cunyadisme" (mansplaining/know-it-all attitude) has gone global and its impact, previously limited, has moved beyond dining tables and bar counters; now it has found its most natural refuge on social networks, where chatterers have been able to viralize their intellectual poverty at great speed.
Social networks are the new total entertainment industry and have been capable of capturing the attention of atomized individuals through the personalization of content and the design of irresistible images and audiovisual stimuli, tailored to personal tastes and preferences. This human-controlled algorithmic gear is a factory for new addicts to ignorance and to the compulsive consumption of images and ephemeral aesthetic trends, without pause, control, or reflection.
Everyone lives recluse within their own world, a technological bubble that accompanies us wherever we go through mobile devices, makes us hyperconnected, and demands that we always be available. This availability without spatiotemporal limits has stolen our privacy and has transformed leisure into occupied time, sacrificing silence, pause, and boredom, inseparable from philosophy since its birth and still essential for maintaining a thoughtful and reflective life.
What appears on luminous screens generates two apparently opposite reactions, but which feed back into each other: "I don't believe anything" and, therefore, "I believe everything." From this skeptical credulity arises the danger of discriminating in favor of the gaze and taking as true only that which we see and is tangible. Attention to the gaze and to the precept "if I don't see it, I don't believe it" does not imply an attentive gaze, but rather an over-gaze that places the accent on the appearance, on the surface of things. In reality, the light of the screens darkens, dazzles, and confuses, and prevents us from wanting to know how things really are.
Philosophically, the acceptance of ignorance, of the Socratic 'I only know that I know nothing,' had been the first step toward knowledge. But now this declaration of ignorance no longer becomes a stimulus for its overcoming, but has instead become a permanent state from which one no longer wishes to emerge. Ignorance no longer needs to be hidden under the bad conscience of shame or ridicule; on the contrary, the pride of being ignorant, intellectual disinterest, and the paralysis of curiosity have spread.
Learning to think
Post-truth negatively affects the teaching of philosophy because it nourishes the students' initial prejudices and the inherited perception of having to learn useless knowledge, which does not respond to their highly compartmentalized real interests and their academic expectations of specialization. The radical division of knowledge is based on the dominant utilitarian trope, neutralizes philosophical curiosity, and increases doubts about the convenience of learning to think, if one nevertheless wants to pursue studies in architecture, medicine, physics, and some engineering, or if one simply considers oneself 'a science person'.
Philosophy that still resists the commodification of knowledge and has not renounced teaching how to think does not position itself in favor of the sciences or the humanities, but rather demands a humanistic education founded on the existential challenge of wanting to understand the world in its totality, without raising borders or trenches to knowledge; and it naturally invites digital disconnection and to dispute the truth with analysis, argumentation, method, pause, and composure.