La Voz de Galicia – July 9, 2021 →
We thought that having more time to think, to reflect, would make us wiser. We also thought that after having gone through a pandemic, of having to learn to adapt oneself to an uncertain and changing reality, we would have more empathy. We imagined that if we were capable of surviving something so sad and so difficult, we would end up being better people. But history has already taught us many times that we don’t learn much from great disasters, that the loss of collective memory is one of the more common cultural ills in society, and that unfortunately, it has no cure.
We have spent thousands of years repeating mistakes. Perhaps we learn something from each of them, because as Xan says, «you always forget that we are better off than we were a hundred years ago.» But if the world continues to be a habitable place, it is thanks to the invisible human beings who continue practicing goodness, respect, generosity, and kindness on a daily basis. Because they exist, and there are many of them. But for some reason, we don’t notice them or we don’t lend them the same importance we give those who do otherwise.
Nowadays when the news are designed to «hook us,» so that we «fall» into their networks (those that make a market out of our clicks), I wonder what would happen if instead of amplifying those who are violent and merciless, they would amplify others, those who do things as best they can… On the days when one loses hope in the human condition (what is it that drives us to be so violent?) I try to look for news about those who make our lives better, so that I am not carried away by the overwhelming force of violence that prevails on the networks that dominate our lives.
