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In times like these, where there is a massive flow of information and everything that is requested can be found with a simple click and condensed into a single page, critical and reflective thinking becomes of great importance in order to discern and discriminate what is sold to us as truth when in reality it is a lie disguised by the mass media. Philosophy is a discipline that involves critical thinking and questioning and is also a practice that requires us to deal with all those social events in our current society, hence its importance for today's society that discriminates and sees it as impractical.
Today's world sells us philosophy as something devalued, meaningless and impractical. People see philosophy as a waste of time, trying to make sense of the world through reason and logic seems boring to them because of the amount of time that has to be spent on it. One has the idea that the philosopher is not part of society because of his own madness; he who reasons, thinks and questions is called crazy. The necessity and importance of this is not taken into account.
It is true that philosophy is a demanding discipline and cannot be practiced by many. Some certainty lies in the affirmation that access to philosophy is a long and arduous road to travel, implies commitment and a basis in training that leads us not to take everything for granted and question everything, prejudice, common sense, subjection, science, etc.. If there is no doubt, no question that society is failing or why we are still subject to the same paradigms we faced in the past, we are still anchored to the knowledge developed through years of constant training in the social drift of the current global system.
However, its value to society is totally underestimated. In this society that gives more value to the practical and financial use of scientific disciplines than to the value of the knowledge it may have. And precisely for this reason that philosophy does not fit within the current parameters of society because knowledge is not reduced to simply valuing it in economic terms, it refers to valuing it in terms of a contribution to discovering the truth and finding the meaning of the world we live in.
As if that were not enough, philosophy is seen by all those authoritarian figures as a threat and an imminent danger, and it is precisely for this reason that they do not promote these types of disciplines that develop critical thinking and questioning. The figures of power do not want to be questioned, they want to be praised and venerated as omnipotent gods. And that is why we are taught in schools about dogmatism and not about the value of questioning what is already established.
All this discomfort in the relationship between philosophy and society lies in education. Philosophical formation is a social interest and therefore should be part of the curriculum in the higher secondary education of any nation that thinks about growing and standing out from the rest. However, it turns out that those nations that include philosophy in their curricular area teach it as a prescribed and dogmatic discipline. Hours are even taken away from the subject because of its "impractical" use for the society according to "educational organizations" such as the OECD, whose instructions are followed to the letter by all governments.
There is no doubt that the political powers benefit from the ignorance of the citizens, these powers have been responsible for having more ignorant, defenseless citizens, lacking the necessary tools to take action and know how to discern between what benefits them and what does not, tools guaranteed by philosophy. Any individual with basic knowledge of philosophical principles is more likely to question actions that interest and benefit the rulers and factual powers that through the media seek to dominate society by submerging it in a cave of ignorance where stimuli predominate over knowledge and truth, just like Plato's cave.
To form citizens in philosophy is to form better citizens in reflection and questioning who will be able to demand with greater exigency and scrutiny a better performance on the part of the political class, let us remember that in democracy there are two forces correlated among themselves, the leading force and the people, both coexist in a balance to maintain sanity and peace - according to the utopian vision of this form of government - however, when the balance is disproportionate exactly what is happening today, citizens who are over-informed and that allow governments to commit acts that were unimaginable a century ago. Citizens who are more informed but more passive, less thoughtful, more subordinated to the paternalism of the state.
We are currently facing very serious problems without a doubt. Philosophy could undoubtedly be a tool to alleviate the burden of many of these problems; it must now be taken up as a challenge for all of us who feel a passion for knowledge to spread it beyond the university and high school classrooms. As I already mentioned, philosophy goes hand in hand with better citizenship as well as contributing to solutions to the various problems presented today. Let us remember that the illustration was the end of the autocratic regimes and was the door for entering into systems based on the freedom of individuals, much was resolved by changing the paradigms of thought at that time and certainly much can be done to change many mistakes in this society.
Philosophy is and always has been a determining factor in promoting freedom and truth as fundamental pillars of society. There is a current repudiation of history and the cultural heritage bequeathed by minds that have been questioned at such a high level of exigency that they have laid the foundations of our civilization's thinking, there are both Aristotle and Plato in our society and there are advertising brands. And that challenge is what philosophy faces today, the lack of innovation in the face of new paradigms, contemporary philosophy is immersed in a series of problems that require it to address the reality of the world as it is presented to us.
People today do not understand where all the thoughts that formed their civilization come from, a clear example of how significant the philosophy of problem-solving has been was justice. Justice led us to reflect more rigidly on any problem. Because of this we are able to understand that concepts and historical reality always differ from the way they are applied. The philosophical postulates and the worldview that is promoted is influenced by the ideology that legitimizes the ruling class in that particular period of time and which ends up maintaining the privileges, hierarchy, to that elite that has strengthened its political, social and economic power. In the face of this, the philosophy of justice implies that honesty should be put first and political, economic and social interests should be set aside. Justice seeks to set aside feelings and address the facts from an intellectual point of view in which no concessions of any kind are considered.
In today's society, the concept of justice has been manipulated from its philosophical foundations; relativistic epistemology, post-truth or postmodernism have greatly influenced the way in which today's society views justice. In this postmodernist society, there are people who are foreign to their own nature, the nature of the questioning, with a frank stance deny the thought and the benefits that result from it: reflect and be critical of today's society. And it is precisely for this reason that the concept of justice has been devalued along with the truth, they believe that both are taken into account due to cultural perceptions of good and evil and that a universal knowledge of it does not exist, that this concept is simply proper to human beings. Socrates answer for this problem would probably be: Knows thyself before you try to understand the world.
Philosophy does not mean solving the fundamental problems that a society is going through. Answers to moral and political problems are not the only tasks of philosophy; the resolution of these conflicts requires a more critical society, which deserves a socialization of philosophy. Both the media, which is in charge of propagating banal and idiotic contents and the misuse of technologies, function as tools for the idiotization of society, plunging it into a state of intellectual laziness that makes the idea of critical thinking about society's current problems drier.
The world has progressed a lot and we too as humanity, however, cannot silence the problems and scourges that plague us today. There are still different problems such as injustice, inequalities, poverty, corruption, fanaticism, ignorance, nihilism, irresponsible use of technology, systematic violation of rights, violence, and criminality in all their radicality and nonsense, among other problems that we must face today. Where will the solution come from if we continue to deny philosophy? will the solution to the ills of humanity and the planet come from the hand of corrupt and indifferent corporatist governments? will it come from religious fanatics who lead to intolerance and who deny the freedom of conscience itself? In short, this is a somewhat dense call to all those who are interested in philosophy and those who see the importance of critical thinking, is central to the critical formation that will allow us to face the problems as they are presented to us today.
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