Free Reflections on the discursive arena

Control Society

The other night I woke up at two am. I could not sleep. I sat down on my couch and had started thinking when I wanted to turn on the TV. It was as if a survival instinct was telling me that meditation was not the best idea for that hour. The rush hour had gone but the programming was repeated for sleepwalkers. Today I still ask myself why I turned on the TV that night. The first thing I saw was a beautiful brunette who asked the audience to call her for five hundred pesos to guess the word “bacteria” in the anagram.  I changed the channel and I came across a TV show about vigilance cameras. Well, what can I say about that? – “Crime always pays the bills”- a teacher said to me once at the University. He was referring to the string of jobs that can “produce” crime: specialists in criminology, judges, lawyers, writers, television programs dedicated to crime integers. Today I think he was a wise, but above all a good man.

Buenos Aires, the art city, is dominated by the eye of the camera. The big brother trend has collapsed the streets. Furthermore, they have militarized Buenos Aires with border gendarmes in all the towns. -Control -they said, but the “insecurity sensation” is the same. The watching does not cure  the suffering. We are witnesses of a social paradox: reasons are discovered but plans are still missing.

However, the fact is the fact. Nowadays we are living with six pesos per day, said the National Institute of Statistics in Argentina. According to it, today eight millions of people live below the poverty line. Abel Albino, president of CONIN, an institution that fights against malnutrition, said that in Argentina twenty out of a thousand babies are born dead because of that disease. The kids who have suffered that disorder and live today have great difficulty learning. In words of Abel Albino in medical circles they are called “work brains”. The expression means that these guys have lost the ability from birth to be inserted in a labor market increasingly competitive because of that disease. They could never be work force, they have lost the opportunity from the beginning.  

Nevertheless, money breaks controls. We control citizens but not our resources; I said the wrong thing, our land, wrong too, what we owe to our children. Someone said that what is free has no value. Nobody controls and the planes fly high from the North carrying drugs thanks to the absence of radar in traffic areas. Am I asking for control? The drugs are introduced every day. The market grows up and the corruption condemns thousands of children to silence and anonymity. You can see it from the tourist bus every morning. The government has admitted these things even to equilibrate the trade balance. We need another kind of reserve, generational, to begin with.

I am part of a generation called NI-NI. We are a generation of Youngsters that neither work nor study. The social liability grows too and that it is the generational future we are leaving to our children.

No, our sources have not lied to us. We are not at war but we declare enemies every day. The society of control is divided. I ask myself when the discrimination became a culture. You and I are different persons. In the city of art some platitudes must be explained.  

The facts are the facts, but they always have their symbolic side. The media has built a dichotomy society. They portray and draw negative images of us. - The crime always pays- my teacher said to me and the camera repeats criminal acts on the news every morning. We must stop the morbidity instinctive. I do not care about the red blood on the screen. Roses have to come back to their places. So, the news plays. No, they build editorializing information programs. Discrimination flourishes. Therefore there is nothing like a camera and a suspicious behavior detector. The suspicious attitudes become thugs’ faces. The State speaks but they do not prevent murder. The feeling of insecurity prevails.

The camera repeats ... repeats, repeats. Today more than ever, sight prevails over the other senses. Our identity relies on our appearance. This is said from the market. We copy model movies and TV series in films and the camera repeats, repeats, repeats.

Do we convince ourselves that we are –bacteria- that needs to be monitored in the microscope of our leaders? Yes, the word was Bacteria in the anagram. All of us have or had mums. They should be more respectful of what they think about us. Someone must stop the clock for once to think what kind of future we want for our children. Repeating the same mistakes should not be an option. I want an explanation but above all I want some examples. The examples are always important.

How do we convince ourselves that technology is freedom? I feel a heavy world on my shoulders. We have to stop the clock, we cannot think clearly. Stop the rotary press, we cannot live clearly. Did the teacher have nothing to teach? We are lukewarm because we refuse division. They said to us. But they are wrong.

We live in an addictive society: addictive money, addictive narcotics, addictive fears, addictive to the media, addictive secrets. I want the truth. What has happened to trust? When did the actions of men cease to be human? The metaphor of social control has achieved, more than any other trope, the illusion of a State that will protect us, but the control days must end. I cannot have a home, but I will not be an orphan.