The sad image that we Spaniards give when demonstrating how manipulable we are

@ElentirENG ES 8·30·2023 · 7:00 0

It is often said that the most difficult part for a person to solve a problem is to take the step of acknowledging that they have it.

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This step is even more difficult when we talk about problems related to thinking. It is much easier for someone to say "I feel bad" when they have a physical ailment, than to admit that you are wrong when you have made a mistake that may call into question your pride, your vanity or your belief that you are better than others.

In today's society, and in particular on social networks, where everyone has an opinion on something (even when they don't have enough information on the matter in question), finding a "me" I was wrong" is harder than seeing a green dog. And if it is already difficult to find someone who admits a mistake, it is even more difficult to find a person willing to take the most difficult of steps: admitting that you have been manipulated, that someone has taken advantage of your prejudices, your weaknesses, your ignorance or your desires to deceive and use you.

This step is perhaps the most difficult because to do so you have to first assume that you were partly responsible for the deception, by allowing yourself to be carried away by your defects. That's why it's much easier to fool people than it is to find someone who admits to being cheated. Those who take advantage of others know this, those who have manipulation as a way of life, because these people exist, although some do not want to find out.

We have just seen all of this in this crazy controversy that has arisen in Spain over a kiss in celebration of the victory of the Spanish team in the Women's Soccer World Cup. I have tried to warn from here that we were facing a scandal fueled by the government, that not everything is worth to sink a person (no matter how unworthy their behavior may be), that we are facing a lynching promoted by politicians who do not make even the slightest self-criticism for much more serious mistakes, and that we have witnessed much worse things without anyone resigning and without to make such a fuss.

I admit that all this has been for nothing. I have wasted my time miserably. We live in a society in which the programs that are successful are not those that encourage the use of reason and logic, but those that appeal to the emotions and encourage criticizing and tearing others to pieces, even for reasons of their private life. , forgetting that wise warning from the Gospel of Saint Matthew:

"Do not judge, lest you be judged. For with the yardstick you judge you will be judged, and the measure you use will be used for you. Why do you look at the straw? What's in your brother's eye and you don't notice the beam that's in yours? How can you say to your brother, "Let me take the speck out of your eye," if there's a beam in yours? "Hypocrite, first remove the beam from your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."

Instead of realizing how they are manipulating us, we take sides with one of the two protagonists of that kiss, as if it were a bad person against a good person, turning this into the typical content of a program sensationalist, without realizing that we are talking about two people who are being used by others, two people with their strengths and weaknesses, like each one of us. We have turned this into a movie in which there has to be a good guy and a bad guy, a movie in which we can identify with one part and feel like judges of the other, as if we were beings of light that they have never committed any sin.

This is a controversy in which we Spaniards themselves are giving the sad image of demonstrating how manipulable we are, something that we will end up regretting as a society, sooner or later.

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Photo: Anthony Tori.