From Brasilia-DF, the capital of Brazil.
I will begin this reflection with a tribute to the Brazilian poet Eduardo Alves da Costa, author of the poem “On the road with Mayakovsky”, however, trying to offer a new interpretation, which goes beyond the traditional topics that were added to this work of art, left and right politically. Here is the beautiful poem (free translation from me):
“First, they run away at night, pluck a flower, and we don’t say anything.
The next day, they no longer take precautions: they enter our garden, step on our flowers,
They kill our dog, and we don’t say anything.
Until one day the weakest of them enters our house alone,
It steals the light from us, it takes our voices out of our throats, and we can no longer say anything.
One day they came and took my neighbor who was Jewish. Since I’m not Jewish, I didn’t bother.
The next day they came and took my other neighbor who was a communist. Since I’m not a communist, I didn’t care.
On the third day, they came and took my Catholic neighbor. Since I am not a Catholic, I did not bother.
On the fourth day, they came and took me; there was no one left to complain. “
The poem portrays clairvoyance in the soul of the poet, tormented by any kind of arbitrariness that leads to various intolerances. There are intolerances of people, things, and ideas.
My soul tormented by the slow and inadvertent murder of reading, caused by the overwhelming wave of videos, leads me to the call to reflection, which I make through the ONBOARD DIARY series, which I idealized, and whose executive and artistic direction gives so much pleasure and satisfaction, with a slight touch of luck for having chosen such cooperative protagonists.
In 2018 my wife and I participated in a “fair” on FACEBOOK / INSTAGRAM, at the Brasília Convention Center. The experts of the multinational were unanimous in saying that the surveys carried out with billions of subscribers to their networks attest that more than eighty percent of people no longer want to read. They acquired a kind of chronic laziness with reading.
The audience was told that social media (like the old ORKUT) started with text messages, but people gradually got tired of reading. To soften, Twitter entered the scene with a limitation of 140 and then 250 characters.
Many people think that strategy is to develop conciseness of thought. It is not! The idea behind it is to be useful to the movement of those who are too lazy to read elaborate content, reconciling in this, too, the fact of stimulating communication with short sentences and ideas of those who barely know how to write. Of course, this does not mean that there is no language and communication! The problem, however, goes beyond simply “grunting.”
The era of videos is today, the lime shovel that the “time seeker” launched when he wrote. Then she ordered us to lower the coffin into the cold tomb of oblivion.
What is the result of a society that does not read? The Brazilian writer Monteiro Lobato, who should not take long to be, even more abhorred by the “eugenicists of the eugenicists”, in the middle of the 20th century said that “he who barely reads, barely hears, barely speaks, barely sees.”
It may seem out of context, but I need to tell you that toxoplasmosis, caused by a protozoan parasite, is a serious disease that can lead to blindness and weakening of the heart, transmitted by feces of cats, dogs, consumption of raw food and bad sanitized such as raw or undercooked meat, which is contaminated.
In this context in which I intend to make an analogy, I think that if Lobato said that whoever barely reads suffers from deafness, he is almost dumb, and in the visual field he has a kind of toxoplasmosis that blinds him, what can I say about Monteiro’s reflex Cub, almost a hundred years later?
I believe that anyone who barely reads, barely hears, barely speaks, barely sees, and who decreed for himself, the death of critical and logical reasoning! People like this complain a lot about personal failures and have a great grudge against the success of others. You know why? Because they also forget that life, in the same way, that it rewards the diligent, punishes the negligent!
Without a doubt, the videos are easier to watch. My dentist, Dr. Bruno Bitar, told me the other day: “Before, if someone wanted a prescription for something, they would open a text and read it. Today, there is a video for everything ”. Neither he nor I criticize evolution. Our talk only emphasized that illusion works with the ease with which the sense of vision can be deceived. What we see is not always what it is!
In fact, the English poet John Milton, in his book “Paradise Lost” says that what seems is not. When some time ago I invested in my singing career in a pop-rock band, I wrote a song (Signs of Smoke) in which, paraphrasing John Milton, I say that “the essence of what seems is not to be”, because if something It seems that it is exactly because it is not. If it were, it wouldn’t show!
As well! The era of videos, which places us in an external and passive position, of those who watch without getting involved in the construction process as in the case of reading and writing, will soon take a step forward, as soon as “games” become popular and cheaper where we all enter the virtual, where our avatar interacts with imaginary avatars. From then on, what will happen to our ability to reason and rationalize physical reality, so different from the image we are creating, perhaps even to escape from ourselves and from the reality that we do not like?
What have we done with our critical and logical capacity? The ancient Greeks became the most emblematic civilization of all because they understood that reading, writing, and reflecting projects the human being to a higher dimension, the dimension of reason.
In my cycle of voluntary conferences in public schools in the Federal District, having already spoken with more than 15,000 students, I have been repeating that the greatest revolution in our lives occurs when we learn to read and write. It is unfortunate that soon after these two activities are detested by students. And, look, it is these same students who become the generation of fathers, mothers, professionals, and government officials who seek to indoctrinate the Nation and lead the State.
To quickly attest to what I am saying, you just need to ask a teacher about the anger students feel when they are asked to read a book or write an essay. There are even educational and teaching professionals who hate reading. This cycle of the murder of writing and burial of reading does not favor development, neither individual nor collective!
The other day he was watching the movie about the true story of the psychopath Jeffrey Dahmer (How a Murderer Is Born), who terrorized America in the late 70s and 80s. In his school term he describes teachers sleeping in class and reading activities, not for the development of students, but only to make the hours in which they must invest in loving their students and charting paths for the future of those who wanted to grow.
Little by little, civilizations and generations after the ancient Greeks murdered reading and buried writing. Today, this general laziness with books, with reading and writing, created a legion of functionally illiterate, regardless of the number of titles they have. Note that literary, legal, journalistic texts, etc., are loaded with ideology and lack the quality of ideas and linguistics. On the website of the Royal Spanish Academy (rae.es) these people are called “donkeys loaded with letters”.
With the ONBOARD DIARY series, I know I am rowing against the grain by asking you to read. In any case, I am guided by the firm belief that waiting for things to be perfect is waiting forever. That is why I do not deviate from the focus of the goal, defined for long by the effort to emphasize ethics with public money and minimize corruption, reduce discrimination and increase respect for differences, and improve the idea that education and the teaching saves whoever wants to be saved.
Tomorrow and until Thursday I publish the ONBOARD DIARY of the second protagonist of the series. I hope you read and reflect. I leave the space between one publication and another on purpose so that we can reflect on the “reboot / reset” that the pandemic gave in the educational and teaching process.
The perspectives are always individual, but the sum of them can point paths for everyone’s progress.
Who has eyes to see, let him see!
