About the loss of faith in our political system
As I grow older there is a feeling of bitterness inside of me that I’m not able yet to understand to its full extent. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nothing like this cliche behaviour of an ancient guy, sitting on his porch an yelling at people not to get any closer to his lawn or errupting in a vulcano of dispair due to a couple of kids riding a bike in front of his house. It’s the kind of bitterness that overwhelms you when you realize that there is not much you can do to make people around you understand your point of view. Better to say, a sustained and on multiple occasions proven point of view.
In the las few years I’ve been politically engaged in a society that is still struggling with its past. Communism as it was portrayed and lived here is still a tabu people do not talk about, science is not revealing its complete darkness and the political scene is still governed by people educated and prepared in that era. An era that took maybe the most important thing a human being can value: TRUST. Trust is the clay that keeps society going, that makes the economy function and that keeps us safe in dangerous times. Since trust is something extremely hard to gain our elite has not been very eager to acknowledge this and treated its importance with some sort of ignorance that is now firing back big time. It is about these little things that add up. The lack of faith in an election process, this misbelief about vaccines that, in fact, made modern society even possible and improved our living standards in a way that only electricity has before, the fact that the competence of one person can be solely put under the sign of question by a tweet, a post on Facebook or a meme o Instagram. When did this bitterness start? Where is it leading us? And how can we confront it? No, I will not start to analyze these particular questions in detail at this point. But we can, though, put a starting point at the beginning of the age of the internet and concur that it is leading towards troubling times. Times that will see deepen the lack of trust in democracy. Once this point has been overtaken the leap into a more and more authoritarian regime style will become only a formality. And since control is the ingredient that society wants to see that the elite is having the fact that innovation is hitting us hard is creating a vacuum that needs to be filled somehow. The wide spread conception is that we cannot match the pace of innovation. And, well, in some point, it is true. Old beliefs and conceptions, values and traditions stand in the way of the change we all agree upon is needed. History showed us that it is part of the process before being able to make that next step into a new era. But for now, we are living in this mess that brought a maniac into the White House, that makes democracies disappear as Freedom House states again and again and that makes Putin look sexy.
But there are solutions. And, other than most of us might think, this future lies in this case mostly in the hands of our children. Think about it for a second. Do you in any kind feel connected to your children concerning their beliefs and behaviours? Do you fully understand their need for digital attention in a world that is moving into a virtual space? I’m only 27 years old and I can’t say I understand it. As the generation that got early in contact with social media, the iPhone and this huge amount of online entertainment, I cannot grasp the morale and values of the ones born after 2000. And here lies the exact problem and solution. My bitterness comes from the fact that as an educated young adult I have learned to inform myself properly and to use channels in a way that help shape a truly educated opinion about various subjects. Hence, I am not using solely digital devices to do so. And if I do, I check on verified and trusted sources that respect some sort ethical conduct. No, I am not saying that everyone needs to do this. No, I am not having the expectation that everyone who does not do so is not capable of anything. What I am saying is that teaching our children from a very young age to use digital tools properly would help me, and many other, overcome this bitterness. The solution I am offering here is to use, for example, in math class an example of an algorythm used by Facebook, Instagram or TikTok. Some examples could sound like: What made Charlie D’Amelio hitting 100 mio followers on TikTok? How does Google Ads work? or just why do I see everywhere products I looked for the other day? An hour in political education, English lit or any other subject that focuses on language could offer some insight into the responsible use of online written content. Why is it important to check information and the source of an article? What is the difference between a website that goes by a funny name such as trumpsallegiance.org and the Wall Street Journal, the NYT or the Guardian? By this we could challenge a dilemma that has the potential to cause a change to massive and disruptive for us to be able to cope with it.
It would be such a relief for my bitterness seeing an honest effort on tackling these one particular challenge.
