Paper freedom

     Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms                                                                                                  FREEDOM ONLY IN PAPER 

 

 Paper freedom

 By Antonio Lorca Siero: Freedom has never been talked about as much as now, but it turns out that it is only present on the paper where legislative activity is officially collected, in publications and little else.

 In the real plane, it is enough to observe it as a virtual image, because when you try to touch it with your fingertips, it vanishes. Of the negative freedom of Berlin, nothing at all, and as for what the author calls positive freedom, it is practically unattainable, given the panorama that is offered at sight. The obvious thing is that freedom has been kidnapped and kept gagged and even chained. Examples of such a situation there are too many, but some are striking. This is the case when, using the argument of controlling the pandemic, defending health interests and those of the citizen at a greater distance, travel and activities are limited and the occasion is taken to recharge them with additional obligations; in short, you are prevented from living his own life. Regarding freedom of expression, a key point in the exercise of freedom, the gag is more discreet, because it reaches a certain point, but at the slightest slip, censorship and repression lurk and act without contemplation. Already on a more sophisticated plane, and therefore less perceptible, technological manipulation, ready to influence, inhibit and chain personal freedom from the appearance of freedom, has become the generalized practice on all possible fronts of action.

 The limitation of movements, a company that is already moving towards the completed year, could be reasonable if results were obtained, but reaping failure after failure it has ceased to be so. The curious thing about the matter is that the respective leaders, far from assuming their incapacity, without the slightest shame blame the public for what is incompetence of the rulers and some people are labeled as reckless, which, although it could be true, it does not prevent each one from assuming their share of responsibility. The fact is that time passes and everything remains the same or worse, despite restrictive measures of personal freedom. Lots of scientific advice, too many unconvincing explanations, too much propaganda, full blast publicity, verbiage and rhetoric gushing out, but no effective solutions at this point. Despite all this, demanding accountability from those who have hijacked the freedom of the people is not foreseen on the horizon of future political events. However, despite the hijacking of real freedom, the full validity of paper freedom is maintained as a kind of consolation for the inconsolable citizens. 

 Comment, yes, you can comment or at least do something similar, because that is what social networks are for, encouraged as a business of data traffickers. Even traditional media activity works at full throttle, exploiting this occasional vein that the days bring them, recording the appearance of freedom, always served, under the direction of the board of directors, by the respective union members who are selected to face the the auditorium. It should be clarified that it is a freedom of circumstances, because everything that is not within the doctrine promoted by the media fence, that is, the one that follows the slogans of political power and economic power, remains in the subsoil. At this point, both have a minor problem served by the other internet, the one that acts outside the networks, where there is always something that escapes control, but you have to have censorship, which is simply crossed out of the scene and that's it. . Sometimes it does not work, because the matter has taken too much flight, but for that the fake news is used, from which the anecdotal is extracted to provoke the hilarity of the well-thought. But if it is appropriate to set an example and practice repression, it is enough to speak of an apology for something, seen as an incitement to anything, of promoting or simply hating - because it is fashionable - to have an argument. , even if it is totally inconsistent, that it allows to apply the justice of revenge and punishment, in order to serve as an example to the disciplined citizens who dream of regaining freedom without a gag.

For its part, technological manipulation works hard at all levels, even long since it has touched on the issue of the manifestation of current democracy, which is advertised as the very essence of freedom. We have an example in the recent experience of someone who controls world opinion, at least on this side of the imaginary line that separates the two worlds. What has been happening with the electoral process, limping in the matter of the expression of the citizen's vote, can be extrapolated to almost all levels of collective existence. It is now almost public domain that social engineering works with its bots and the corresponding algorithms to extract personal opinion and put it on the side of the highest bidder to manipulate it. To this end, big data has been designed, nurtured by instruments derived from citizen use of the internet that are then marketed. Innocent cookies are also included, which is why the most experienced, after releasing a roll of cheap verbiage covering the control formalism, use to enlighten themselves about users and that if you do not host them on the computer and show intimacy, it turns out that they get angry and that's it. they do not allow browsing. It is a fact that computational propaganda works at full capacity in the networks so that users feel free and thus, while being manipulated, drop their respective nonsense, which is always noted to extract, based on millions of terabytes of data duly processed, the profitability of the business. At this point, it turns out that individual freedom has been chained so that the demands imposed by the multinationals in the sector are met.

 Either by one way or another, that of those who govern, and take advantage of the slightest opportunity to deploy in all its dimensions what to command, and those who are dedicated to the practice of the business of intrusion into the privacy and intimacy of people via the internet as a commercial activity unduly consented to by the public powers, the fact is that people's freedom has become a utopia on paper. There is no real freedom and users ignore it or if they know it they are complacent, because it is enough for them that the freedom is there, even if it is only formal.