Essay on the Historical Failure of Democracy in the 21st Century. Democratic Postmodernity as a Means of Destruction of Freedom and the Modern State, by Jesús G. Maestro
The first thing the Anglo-German and French Enlightenment did was destroy literature—its own and everyone else's. Destroying its own wasn’t too difficult, we must acknowledge. Yet, every April 23, seizing the occasion of Cervantes’s eternal anniversary, they parade out Shakespeare. Shakespeare, the best friend of ghosts.
However, as I was saying, the Enlightenment, although it single-handedly ruins the interpretation of its own literatures and tries to ruin others as well, could not bring down Spanish literature, let alone the Golden Age. On the contrary, the result was one of admiration. A sublimation that, despite all its vaunted rationalism, Germany was never able to explain beyond epiphanies and mystical exclamations spilled across page after page by Goethe, Schiller, and the fraternal Schlegel brothers. All of them multi-purpose figures for various emotionally charged quotations, especially when there’s nothing to say.
This is what the Enlightenment owes to Romanticism—its verbose resonance, its academic euphony of hollow verses, behind which hides an unprecedented literary emptiness. All the same, no philosophical demands can silence literature. Nor is there any religious or political prohibition that can silence or intimidate it.
For that very reason, there is nothing more ironic or ridiculous than those writers and literature professors who, driven by who knows what kind of inertia or ignorance, call for a return to “Enlightened reason.” I don’t know if it’s an intellectual ritual practiced by those who, in the throes of philosophical or academic narcissism, seek visibility through any form of publicity. But what I do know is that such a declaration is utter nonsense.
Talking about “Enlightened reason” is galvanizing an oxymoron, within whose core lies the very extermination of literature. Enlightenment rationalism is incompatible with literary rationalism. It is a pseudo-philosophical rationalism, idealistic and narcissistic, like that of Plato and many others, which expels literature from the State and submerges the human being in a third semantic world, utopian and bleak. Literature is incompatible with “Enlightened reason.” The rationalism of literature does not fit within the idealism of philosophers nor in the self-deception of courtiers, academics, and their ilk.
By defending ideologies so much, scientists have lost sight of science—that is, their own knowledge. The aim of science is the objective understanding of reality, a knowledge that by its nature must be scientific, critical, and systematic.
In contrast, ideologies, philosophies, and religions have a very different objective from sciences. Their goal is not to know or recognize reality, but to intervene in scientific knowledge in order to manipulate and distort it according to their own ideological, philosophical, or religious interests.
The independence of science from the power of religions, philosophies, and ideologies is absolutely necessary to preserve human life in the best possible conditions of freedom and intelligence.
It is the endless story of Plato against Homer, Belarmino against Galileo, Kant against Newton, Protestantism against Darwin, Nietzsche against Maxwell, Heidegger against Einstein... it is also the struggle of literature against its enemies, past and present.
Because literature, which is not at all a science, shares with the sciences the challenge of facing a triple alliance of adversaries: ideologues, philosophers, and gurus.
The State, as a political configuration established in the Modern Age, is not just in crisis, but in fact and by law, it is a totally powerless institution when faced with current events, and even more so with those to which the globalization of the 21st century is propelling us.
Similarly, and simultaneously, democracy is a system of government equally powerless to resolve conflicts that surpass its legal, economic, and political capacities.
However, human beings are incapable of finding either an alternative to the State as a political institution or a restoration of democracy. Let alone its necessary transformation or conversion into a political regime more favorable to the freedoms of honest, hardworking people, and much more respectful of each and every one of us.
Human life is an individual self-deception. Political life is a collective self-deception. But we all know that neither the State nor democracy are eternal or everlasting. And we also know that this knowledge is perfectly compatible with self-deception, both individual and collective.
There is a generation with which the internet has conducted all sorts of experiments: the millennials. It is not they who experiment with the internet, no, but rather the internet with them. Without realizing it, they have become the first generation upon which the Anglosphere has relentlessly saturated its psychic and social laboratory. But they don’t know it.
The present is too entertaining to stop and think about anything that might distract us. The internet trials are numerous and on a massive scale. Millennials are the blueprint for the new times. They have been chosen as human resources to test and verify the first and foremost manipulation of 21st-century globalization.
They are the main protagonists of the largest experiment ever conducted to date on dominance, deception, and artifice. The consequences of this information radiation are only visible to certain professionals in specific sectors. But this is just the prelude. Because the experiment has worked wonderfully. And it remains highly active.
The results, for now, are preserved. There are only two generational movements that are the vortex of our time: boomers and millennials. Everything else are peripheral groups that participate in one or the other spin cycle, assimilating or integrating into one of the two whirlwinds. And let’s not forget that millennials are a construction designed by the boomers.
When an allegedly intelligent person places the origin of modern rationalism in the Enlightenment, it tells us a lot about their education, thinking, and originality.
It tells us, above all, that they lack original thought and personal education. It tells us, above all, that they have no alternative to the conventionally received education, and that they have settled into it, uncritically and irresponsibly, as one might become entrenched in any kitsch, in an eternal hibernation.
It also tells us that they are incapable of perceiving, identifying, and even less so interpreting, the essential rationalism of the Modern Age, that is, the rationalism of the Baroque.
To equate reason with the Enlightenment is to graze in the barren field of the infertile seed of Anglo-Saxon idealism. In particular, the most sterile of all seeds, that of German idealism. And —with Rubén’s permission— it tells us, quite clearly, "we do not know where we are going, nor where we come from."
Those who explain Cervantes' rationalism through the rationalism of the Enlightenment and Romanticism have not lost their reason: they never had it. Nor do they know what reasoning is. Those who fail to realize that Quevedo is more rational than Rousseau are not just missing a summer: they are missing three decisive centuries of the Modern Age, including the Golden Age, of course.
This is the way of "thinking" of almost all of our intellectuals, philosophers, professors, and the rest of the clan. A broken record that has been playing and reciting the same message for over 300 years. The same nonsense. The Enlightened Eclipse.
The Scam of "Emotional Salary" and the Loss of All Private Property
The 21st century seems to impose, with subtle cunning, a concept of property very different from what we have historically known, at least until the 20th century. Today, it seems that the idea of private property has shifted from ownership to use or occupancy.
A home ceases to be the property of its owner and becomes the property of whoever occupies it... Perhaps whoever inhabits it. We can call it many things.
A text ceases to be the property of its author and becomes public domain, even against the conventional laws of intellectual property, which no one on the internet seems to follow, whether in the name of free culture or in the name of digital piracy... Most academic researchers and university professors publish their works openly, on multiple websites and repositories.
This is perceived as a form of self-promotion, avoiding the obstacle of payment for the potential reader. But in reality, it hides something unconfessable: no one would pay a cent to read what is written because it is worthless. Proof of this is the current agony of digital journalism. Intelligent people read the news more out of hope than curiosity. And they don’t pay for it because they believe the news isn't worth what it reports, and they don't need the emotions of pseudo-information since they have other options. I'm talking about intelligent people, don't get confused.
The academic world has renounced the ownership of rights in exchange for the narcissism of seeing themselves in a public space, which is, in reality, a library without readers or passersby. A dead-end alley. There are only idle onlookers and malicious gossipers. The new researchers. Intellectual property has vanished in the university.
How many people write, without signing their own name, what they contribute to global online encyclopedias and multiple websites? How many of our colleagues, out of sterile narcissism, renounce the ownership of their intellectual property, and even their own name and surname, replacing their identity with the most absolute anonymity?
The social and communicative relationships of the 21st century have destroyed the sense of ownership in all aspects of human life: social and political, scientific and ideological, communicative and literary, artistic and even oral.
Today it is possible to clone anyone's voice and image freely, with impunity, and for amusement. What is dangerous is not only not perceived as such, but is exhibited and promoted as funny and libertine. Fools always play with fire... in the haystack of their own life. Without knowing it. In short, today it can be said that no one is the owner of their own voice, their own face, or their own image, which anyone can usurp, use, and flaunt quickly and easily.
The impotence of laws and those responsible for them is absolute. And unprecedented in the history we live in and the one that awaits us.
A musical work ceases to belong to the composer and becomes the property of whoever performs it publicly.
Crisis and consumption, with all kinds of economic urgencies and needs, dictate the outcome.
In the United States, the country of capitalism par excellence, many people have always shared washing machines and laundries in their condominiums and residences. In many cases, under conditions similar to those of the failed Soviet Union. Such a thing was unmentionable for decades, but not for that reason untrue. It was and is undeniable.
Today, these practices have reached the heart and urban life of European cities, the continent of the supposed middle classes. Today, "coliving" is sold as a triumph of progress. Undoubtedly, it is a triumph of the progress of misery, of inescapable needs, and of the lowest human dependencies. Today, people in every neighborhood already share washing machines and laundries.
The most recent generations have to share apartments. By force, not by pleasure or devotion. Soon, they will also share rooms. And it won’t be for pleasure either. This always happened in convents, barracks, and hospitals—three places where life is never normal but rather isolated, belligerent, or sick. However, such a thing had not been generalized before, as it is today, as it is now, in everyday and normalized life. At least, it had not been generalized as a mandate of the "friends of commerce."
Because 21st-century life, designed by the United States for the entire global world, ceases to be private and becomes more public every day, not just because of the childish narcissism of social networks and the internet. It starts with sharing a washing machine and ends with sharing an apartment, a room, and a bed. A shared bed, yes, but not with a partner, but with the enemy. That is the future fate of the younger generation: to share their insomnia with the enemy. And pretend that such a thing is beautiful and happy. And therapeutic.
The payroll of workers will no longer have the known compensatory bonuses but will include jokes and memes. The meme has a happy name, and it's called "emotional salary." What is the content of this foolishness called "emotional salary"? The usual: creativity, volunteering, connectivity, proactive leadership, mobility, emotional intelligence... and whatever other nonsense the actor hired to promote it can think of.
Let’s not forget that volunteering is a form of slavery, consented to in the name of moral supremacism, whereby one works for free for a stranger. Something like the "God will reward you" of times past, but with more cynicism and humor. On the other hand, talking about emotional intelligence is the same as talking about emotional ignorance, that is, nothing and the opposite, because one and the other are the same, simultaneously. Mobility really hides the worker's shuffling, reduced to a puppet or a plaything of the international republic of money.
The boundaries between what is mine and what is yours blur, legally or illegally, and the differences between mine and yours disappear. Everything belongs to everyone because nothing belongs to anyone. And when something belongs to everyone, it’s because no one has anything. Enjoy the globalization of nihilism. But don’t expect me to believe it.
Ideologies have become the scam of democracies today. Originally, ideologies were synthetic responses to guild interests, primarily labor and economic concerns. Today, they are merely emotional and neurotic slogans. Sometimes, they are even psychotic imperatives.
Their purpose is not to solve problems but to preserve conflict and division, to deny shared experience.
Every ideology secretly harbors, covertly and, of course, obscurely, objectives that are contrary to the interests of the majority of the population—the very population that, ignorant of this, adheres to the promotion of these deceptive, restrictive ideologies.
Fear, lies, and guilt are part of the massive media spectacle. The magnetism of the abyss, that is, the greatest paradox of democracies: managing the emotional discord of the population through ideologies.
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