Víctor Rolando Arroyo, UPECI
PINAR DEL RIO, June - Mass culture, mass sports, mass education; mass ideas,
mass values, and mass political events. It would seem to be a mania, this
business of the massification of everything.
They say as people get older they become prone to manias, but sometimes,
such as with massification, they go too far.
Massive, according to the dictionary, refers to a large number of people.
Massification, then, is about great multitudes that are easy to manipulate and
to drive.
Massive derives from masses, and that is precisely what is needed: a mass
that appears uniform, whose mind can be shut in order to induce a single idea, a
monologue, and who will, as the government spokesmen say, close ranks.
This all becomes very convenient to a totalitarian government. With
massification, all is common and single. There is a common enemy, a common
hatred, a unique party, and "to boot" this great, single mass, with a
common idea and a common line that claims to possess the common, single truth.
No possibility for discussion or diversity.
Everything belongs to the uniform mass, yet it doesn't quite manage to feel
it belongs, but rather that it is owned.
This old man's mania is really Machiavellian.
If a monologue is established among all, there are no free men, there is no
tolerance or open dialogue. This is what is called "mass culture."
You don't have the right to choose; you are constrained to join the
multitude or, otherwise, to hope for the U. S. visa lottery or to take a boat or
whatever, but to leave as quickly as possible because massification can be
dangerous for you.
An old, maniacal massification such as this one, needs conflict and a "necessary
enemy" to unite the people through fear and rejection, and you may become "a
traitor in the service of the enemy" or you may be labeled a "lackey"
or worse, an "annexionist," and end up fueling the conflict.
But think it over. Don't let yourself be manipulated and don't give up
what's yours.
No one can wish for a uniform country. There are still some who are willing
to trailblaze, without regard for how far they must walk, to make real that
which today seems a utopia, an impossibility.
Right now, the thing about massification doesn't so much seem an old man's
mania, but rather his madness.
Versión
original en español
CubaNet does not require sole rights from its
contributors. We authorize the reproduction and distribution of this article as
long as the source is credited.
| 
