‘Odio gli indifferenti’: Indifference in the Digital Age

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Oriol Corcoll Arias

With the victory of Donald Trump and the rising wave of global conservatism, I find myself once again, to the point of exasperation, hearing one of the worst phrases that exist: “History repeats itself!” or its variant, “The past always comes back!” In the end, what always returns (much to my dismay) is this worn-out mantra tinged with indifference about the cyclical nature of history. It is incredibly irritating to perceive man as incapable of learning even the smallest lesson from history as if each individual were to drag the weight of the past like Sisyphus under the pessimistic threat of a deterministic history that seems doomed to crush him with every political setback. But we are, if anything, talking about a completely different kind of damnation. The problem is not the repetition of historical error but the indifferent acceptance of it. Contrary to what Camus stated in his Myth of Sisyphus, we are facing an indifference that, before liberating us, will enslave us. The digital Sisyphus, the new indifferent, not only accepts his punishment, but he enjoys it.

The world is no longer governed by a visible and clearly defined status quo in which only the coercive institutions are apparent through their brute force. Under a new framework of algorithms and dopaminergic control, the new power has perfected itself with cunning and little transparency. It is necessary to revisit classical social theory—not for intellectual nostalgia but to update it with the urgent need to create a resistance comparable to the new 2.0 domain. Taking Walter Benjamin as an example, we are in a Jetztzeit, a “detonated moment” in which time stands still, with historical significance. We must radically transform the present by recovering the past from an emancipatory perspective. Beyond a past that always “returns,” it must be seen as a past that “grants” and “liberates.”

Antonio Gramsci was clear about the indifferent in his manifesto Odio gli indifferenti. For the author, they are direct accomplices, through their passivity, in the perpetuation of power. But the digital indifferent is not like the classic one. The new indifferent has been stripped of the awareness of being free to choose. His ignorance is a direct consequence of a digital neo-hegemony perpetuated through educational devaluation. If an individual thinks, in the end, he “is” and, therefore, is free. Or, in other words, if there is cogito, there is sum, socially speaking. But the new indifferent becomes diluted in an exaggerated sensitization that distances him from genuine knowledge. Paradoxically, we see in education the axis around which the victory or defeat of power pivots, embodied in the individual’s freedom in his awareness. Yet in this Schrödinger education, full of potentialities, the indifferent one created should not be hated since he does not even know he is indifferent. Instead, we must repudiate those who make them.

Indifferent teachers create indifferent students. The following phrase from Gramsci’s manifesto seems perfect to illustrate this:

“I hate the indifferent also for this reason: because their constant whining of being eternally innocent annoys me. I hold each one accountable: how have they tackled the task that life has set for them and continues to set for them daily, what have they done, and especially, what have they not done.”

Isn’t a teacher who accepts the current educational problems without complaining an even worse indifferent? Life did not place this task before them; they took it on voluntarily. A teacher who creates the indifferent is an aberrant oxymoron of the educational system.

The problem is the techno-optimistic arrogance of the educators who perceived progress as linear. Because of them, there is an educational devaluation characterized by absurd pedagogism. A plan that has displaced the students’ critical thinking through pseudo-absolute truths and, above all, comfortable ones; a plan that offers a technical and fragmented way of learning where historical memory seeks to be diluted by an excess of sensitivity. It is so blatant that we should start referring to it as pedawokism. It must be remembered: although it is comfortable for the teacher, emotional hyperreactivity without analytical depth is learned and is one of the best long-term control tools.

Gramsci once said that the key to resistance is the teacher as an organic, transformative intellectual—a professional capable of rebelling against what is imposed if it is unjust or harmful to future society. Against the indifferent educator, we must reaffirm the role of the educational partisan—a teacher who participates actively and challenges the new digital hegemony. A partisan committed to a struggle that attacks power through the rejection of any technocratic pedagogical trend and that, once and for all, transcends education based on competencies and domains. His objective must be to create an intellectually emancipated adult who can reject the values of a culture of offense and empty victimization, the siren song of the digital age. Therefore, this neo-teacher must not only, under any circumstances, tolerate the elimination of content related to intellectualism and the critique of power—such as literature, history, philosophy, or science (or their dissolution into maliciously diluted fields)—but must also work to establish a new front of resistance against the prefabricated emotionality of the digital hegemonic system, offering critical rationality to the student. It is the only way. A constant conflict with the student’s comfort must be ensured, for emancipation does not arise from complacency but discomfort.

In any case, the partisan educator must break free from the insipid educational bureaucracy to take complete control. This must be done within a space equipped with its own tools of struggle, far from the technological instruments perpetrating digital hegemony. An emancipated education is an education that does not depend on technology.

We are one generation away from being crushed by Sisyphus’s rock.

Source: educational EVIDENCE

Rights: Creative Commons