The other day, while walking along a very narrow sidewalk, a teenager, absorbed in his phone, collided with me – even though I had stopped to let him through. He looked up for a millisecond, and his face showed a sense of annoyance and anger at the inconvenience. As if I were a power pole, he did not deign to apologize. His parents, middle-aged people, acted as if nothing had happened. It was an elderly woman, apparently his grandmother, who apologized for the teenager’s distracted and rude behavior.
The story could be banal, completely inconsequential, if it weren’t for the fact that it is repeated daily everywhere, revealing an absolute lack of interest in others. This story is just the tip of a much more terrifying iceberg that grows beneath the surface of a society that is increasingly lonely, distrustful, moody, apathetic and dependent on technology. A society where violence is becoming more and more molecular, reaching street level, while human ties become a relic of older generations that are about to leave us.
And all this brings us to a controversial point that seems to have become a modern taboo: education. The fault lies not with technology, with mobile phones or social networks – those convenient scapegoats to which we try to delegate our responsibility – but with the fact that we live in what the philosopher Marcello Veneziani called an “uneducated society”.
Uneducated Society, the unexpected fruit of a comfortable laissez faire
Positive education has gone too far – although it would be more correct to say that we have misinterpreted and manipulated it to the point of turning it into a blank cheque, a convenient laissez faire with which adults also free themselves from their responsibility as guides and educators of the new generations they have brought to life.
Based on the mistaken idea that we are all autonomous, self-sufficient and rational from an early age, any attempt to educate is seen as an inconceivable imposition, a kind of despicable coercion against freedom and a lack of respect for the personality of the child or adolescent – a personality that, incidentally, is still in formation and will continue to change throughout life.
However, just as one is not born knowing, one is not born educated either. And often self-education or what children learn with their faces stuck in their cell phones is far from being enough to navigate the complex ocean of social relations. As a result, we have a society that is increasingly less educated, uncultured and ignorant – not incipient, which implies not knowing, but a society that practices motivated ignorance, the voluntary act of closing one’s eyes so as not to see what one does not want to understand or is uncomfortable.
Uneducated society is overflowing with information, but lacks knowledge. It demands rights, but forgets its duties. It wants to be seen and heard, but neither observes nor listens. It wants to be inclusive, but ends up excluding. It raises freedom as its banner, but only its own. It thinks it is educated, but it is uncultured.
Turned into a walking paradox, today’s society believes itself educated because it knows how to “function,” but it has forgotten how to relate. It knows how to solve technical problems, but not human conflicts. It knows how to create complex algorithms, but it doesn’t know how to look into each other’s eyes and connect. This society, so confident of its progress, has forgotten the essential: that without empathy, without listening and without purpose, the knowledge we have accumulated over the centuries is of little use.
Extreme individualism and the “because I’m worth it” culture
Education is the great absentee today. It is as if no one feels the duty, the right, the obligation, the desire and the need to educate, much less to be educated.
The act of educating seems to have become an archaic practice, largely because shared principles have disappeared. Education is not just a perimeter of rules to be followed or a collection of knowledge to be applied, but above all a series of reference values from which emanates a constant and unequivocal commitment to the growth and development of the new generations.
However, “the patience to educate and be educated has run out,” as Veneziani wrote. Imbued with a culture of privilege, the new generations want everything and now. They claim their rights while escaping their duties.
And when we are not educated in respect, civility and good manners, when we are not educated in empathy, affective responsibility, in knowing how to behave and how to be, it is easy to develop an egocentric mentality.
The idea of “me first ” or “I deserve everything” takes hold very early on, preventing young people from getting rid of that natural initial selfishness to broaden their view of those around them. In this short-sighted development, others become blurred shadows for whom one does not feel empathy and with whom one cannot connect emotionally.
For this reason, it should not surprise us that the rates of youth violence are increasing alarmingly in much of the world, along with cases of mental disorders at increasingly early ages.
Goodbye to “we”: we live in an uneducated society and we don’t want to admit it
Historically, the main educators have been: the family, the community, the school and the media. However, lately their weight and roles have changed. While the community has practically disappeared, the school has been reduced to instructing; that is, providing an instruction manual to acquire minimum knowledge that can be used to develop a profession. The media, for its part, has become an amusement park where, rather than informing and educating, they entertain.
The family, as far as it is concerned, has given up its role of educating and has limited itself to protecting. Many parents no longer educate their children to mature, assume responsibilities, be respectful, accept their limits and overcome themselves. Instead, they strive to overprotect their children, shield them from problems at all costs and blame others for what goes wrong.
The refusal to apply any form of authority, limits or severity – concepts that are not necessarily negative but essential in their proper measure – often results in spoiled and pampered children who become more vulnerable young people who lack the psychological tools necessary to face life and relate assertively.
Confusing the idea that everyone should forge their own path with an “all-you-can-eat” approach where everything is allowed is tempting because of its convenience in times when we all feel exhausted, but it leads to unacceptable permissiveness. Because when limits are not set, egocentrism grows without limits. And at all levels, from that young man who runs over an old woman or a child because he was looking at his mobile phone while driving to that multinational that destroys all natural resources simply because no one stops them.
Personally, I would prefer a society where we can all look each other in the eye, connect and talk. Where we all respect differences and boundaries. Where we are aware that each person is as valuable as the other. Where we take responsibility and strive to correct our mistakes. Where we understand that the key lies in balance. A humane society, in short. Although that may be asking too much.
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