By Dr. Nurfer TERCAN
They say it is an old Chinese curse:
“May you live in strange times…”
Today it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell whether this is a curse or a destiny humanity cannot escape.
Because we really are passing through strange times.
This is an age in which truth is devalued, morality is counted as “being out of step with the times” and conscience is seen as weakness.
Never in history has humanity been so connected to one another.
And at the same time never has it been left so alone.
Billions of people live inside a single digital network. Everyone can reach one another, but no one can touch one another.
We lead lives squeezed into a handful of screens.
Our fingers are constantly moving.
But our minds are growing ever more motionless.
We do not think.
We consume.
We do not question.
We watch.
We do not remember.
We scroll.
And the modern world calls this “progress”.
Yet it is not only technology that is advancing.
Surveillance is advancing too.
Manipulation is advancing too.
The techniques of managing human behaviour are advancing too.
In the past, those in power feared the public squares.
Today people fear one another.
Because the greatest model of governance of our age is not to bring society together, but to rule it by fragmenting it.
With identities.
With labels.
With algorithms.
With the engineering of anger.
People are now divided into camps before their ideas.
Societies that listened to one another have been replaced by crowds that shout at one another.
And what is graver still is this:
No one is searching for the truth.
They merely buy the lie that suits their own side.
On television screens, in social media feeds and on political rostrums we watch different actors of the same play.
Fear is being sold.
Anger is being sold.
Belonging is being sold.
Even hope is being marketed.
The world has turned into an age of one great psychological operation.
Economic crises are no longer merely economic.
They have turned into instruments for eroding a society’s memory, its resilience, its self-confidence and its faith in the future.
As the worry of making a living grows, a person’s horizon shrinks.
The individual who falls into debt grows silent.
The society that grows silent begins to obey.
This is the slavery of the modern age.
The chain is invisible.
But its effect is stronger than before.
Today humanity, at the end of the journey it set out on with the claim of becoming free individuals, faces the danger of turning into digital herds.
Everything is recorded.
Everything is measured.
Everything is analysed.
What you watch…
What you laugh at…
Where you pause…
Whom you love…
What you fear…
We are no longer merely citizens.
We are at the same time a data set.
And the greatest empires of our age rule not territories but human behaviour.
We are living in strange times.
Because ignorance is no longer merely a lack of knowledge.
It has become an organised force.
Information has increased.
But wisdom has diminished.
Communication has accelerated.
But people have become estranged from one another.
The crowds have grown.
But the human being has shrunk.
Perhaps the greatest illusion of our age is the concept of success.
There are now those who become experts without putting in the effort.
Those who hold opinions without reading.
Those who are visible without producing.
Those who build careers by presenting the ideas of others as their own.
Those who obtain office with copy-and-paste wisdom.
Those who prefer show to depth.
We live in a period in which not the content but the packaging wins.
And evil no longer shouts as it did in the old days.
It dresses very elegantly.
It gives motivational speeches.
It prepares corporate presentations.
It organises seminars on “human rights”.
It chants slogans of “a greener world”.
It gives conferences on “freedom”.
And then it contributes to that same world becoming more unequal, more lonely and more controllable.
On one side, companies whose wealth is greater than that of countries…
On the other, millions who use up their lives merely to make it to the end of the month…
On one side, orations on freedom…
On the other, societies afraid to think…
And everyone silently asks the same question:
“Why does nothing feel normal?”
Because we lost what was normal long ago.
The human being lost the bond with nature.
Lost the bond with truth.
And in the end began to lose the bond with the self.
Perhaps this is the greatest tragedy of our age:
While producing technology, humanity forgot the human being.
Today people share not their thoughts but their trends.
Conscience has been replaced by visibility.
Virtue by engagement.
Wisdom by speed.
Truth by the algorithm.
And the greatest irony of the age is this:
The human being is talking more than ever before.
But saying less than ever before.
We are living in strange times…
Because people now prefer not the truth, but the illusions that comfort them.
Yet the most dangerous periods of history are those in which societies grow accustomed to false normals.
Because decay first becomes ordinary.
Then it becomes legitimate.
And in the very end it becomes the order itself.
And it is then that strange times become commonplace.
That is the real danger.
Notes from the Blue of the Windy City…
https://www.5gvirusnews.com/yazarlar/tuhaf-zamanlarda-yasayasin-h1890.html
Translated from the Turkish original.