Author: Jairo Alarcón Rodas
The one-dimensional individual is characterized by his persecutory delirium, his internalized paranoia through mass communication systems. Even the very notion of alienation is indisputable because this one-dimensional man lacks a dimension capable of demanding and enjoying any progress of his spirit. For him, autonomy and spontaneity have no meaning in his prefabricated world of prejudices and preconceived opinions.
Herbert Marcuse
How much control do people have over their actions, will they be owners of their decisions? It seems that, more and more, the fact that their behavior obeys what Fromm calls characterological actions increases, that is, programmed actions that do not require any type of reflection, they are simply carried out. Thus, given that many actions they perform are carried out without thinking, automatically, which places them in the world but does not give them the power to take control over it, they are absorbed by the synergy of the moment, with the consequent margin of error and what it represents.
Today’s world, with its immediacy and reification of the human, demands doing more than building, following the script more than thinking, obtaining results in any way without considering the means. The system does not care if this causes a harmful impact in the future, which causes damage to the environment, to the other inhabitants of the planet.
In this sense, taking the time to think turns out to be an arduous and difficult task, since you do not have the tools to achieve it. On the one hand, adverse circumstances deny this possibility and, on the other, the ideological apparatus has been responsible for neutralizing concerns, assigning domesticating educational programs, in which programmed criteria are imposed that numb the conscience. Skinner noted: The scientific analysis of behavior dethrones the autonomous man and places control on the environment, over which he presumably exercises said control… That is, he must be controlled from now on by his environment and especially by his peers..
Hence, men and women who are alien, in a certain way, to reality, settle in the world as another cog in the system because, for them, repairing things requires theoretical elements that allow them to clearly see the horizon. in which they operate and the possibilities of success and error in the decisions they make, which is quite a challenge for them. This is how human programming takes its course.
Evaluating what the procedure should be, in a given scenario, given that one lives in society and that what one acts has an impact on others from the moment one shares an existence with others, seems foreign to the programmed subjects. Lost in their scripts, they only respond to the behaviorism of the stimuli that are configured from rewards and punishments.
How autonomous is human action, is he really the owner of his decisions or is there a phylogenetic origin that makes him behave in a certain way, which responds to his own nature of his species, acting thoughtlessly without being aware of it. People’s animal behavior, acquired hereditarily, gives them a certain predisposition to certain forms of behavior, but it is the circumstance that establishes the path to follow and forces them, whether consciously or unconsciously, to rethink their actions.
People think less and less, they simply act robotically and a clear example of this is driving motor vehicles which, for some, simply consists of steering the wheel, accelerating and braking. Consequently, in a country like Guatemala, where corruption allows drivers’ licenses to be acquired without passing the corresponding exams, without learning the road culture, drivers do so without any social responsibility, they think that, when acquiring their driving license, driving, they are entitled to behave however they want, everything is allowed.
Hence, they care very little about pedestrians, other vehicles, or road culture, since they consider that the act of driving is limited to learning the mechanics of driving, a simple means to obtain an end and they program themselves for this, they do not think in the impact of traveling through the streets and arteries of a city nor the social responsibility that this entails.
For them, driving a vehicle is knowing how to operate it mechanically and by gathering what is called instrumental rationality, the car constitutes only a means to achieve their personal objectives, without considering others. Rationality which refers to a way of reasoning that gives priority to the use of objects or instruments as means to achieve certain objectives, without necessarily measuring the impact.
Mechanically operating something, automobiles, computers, industrial machines, in short, following pre-established patterns, is made easier for them, since it requires nothing more than skill to achieve it. On the other hand, knowing how to drive entails assuming a responsibility towards others, which forces them to be aware of their actions, of how to do things, respecting the rules, having the criteria to do so, which is summarized in thinking.
In the case of driving vehicles, knowing when to brake, accelerate, yield, that is, respect traffic laws, an aspect that, in Guatemala, a large majority of people find difficult to perform, Because reflecting is implicit in this and they do not have the time or the tools to do so.
And what can we say about those people who live in unfortunate environments, where personal relationships have deteriorated, to such an extent that they consider confrontation to be the natural way of living together. It seems that, for them, there is no reflection that guides them to recompose their situation in pursuit of harmony and, on the contrary, they live in a vicious circle of pernicious actions, programmed for conflict. In them, the atmosphere of discord has modified their behavior to the point of making understanding impossible.
The system programs in a way to limit the reflective concerns of people and, at present, it is accentuated even more to give life to the prevailing system. Thus, between distractions and enormous primary requirements, most people immerse themselves in a volatile world of instability and practical requirements, where, in the best of cases, there is no time to meditate.
In relation to that, Krishnamurti said, man is programmed to be Catholic, Protestant, Italian, British, and so on. For centuries he has been programmed: to believe, to have faith, to follow certain rituals, certain dogmas; programmed to be nationalist and go to war. It is all part of the learning he receives from the culture, which shapes him to respond to pre-established plans, to follow the script imposed on him by the system, his society, the group to which he belongs and which he does not realize determines his behavior, their beliefs, their way of being and infringes their autonomy. Questioning their beliefs, what is imposed by culture, should be an exercise for every person to display the condition of critical subjects who give meaning to humanity.
Returning to oneself, reflecting on what has been the action in the scenarios experienced, achieving a soliloquy that allows one to evaluate what has been done to face the present and the future in a better way, is only possible in a critical mind, one that pays attention. to reason and understands that, to understand the world, logical tools are required that limit emotional outbursts, translated into value judgments and spontaneous impulses and programmed actions.
What a large part of the world’s inhabitants think about, perhaps their mind is focused on solving threats or immersing themselves in distractions and banalities. The first respond to an innate impulse to survive and the second, to a demand that circumstance and the system impose on them, as a mechanism to numb consciences and prevent them from becoming critical subjects.
In relation to the above, the pragmatic mind, Karel Kosik accuses, is not interested in understanding the why of things, it simply uses them and discards them, consequently on more than one occasion it does so wrongly. It is the world of trafficking and manipulation, that is, of the fetishized praxis of men that does not coincide with the critical and revolutionary praxis of humanity.. World that increasingly involves people and does not allow them to clarify what things are or take control over them.
Awakening these consciences, making them reflect on their actions, in the face of their circumstance and their social nature, making them aware of their situation, of what that represents, constitutes a challenge for any educational project that aims to re-emerge consciences to human progress.
