Emperor Carlomagno left his paladins in review in the midst of a great military campaign against Muslim enemies when he left behind a rider in immaculate white armor, Agilulfo del Guildiverni. Unlike his companions, he does not stand before the Great King. Asked by the sovereign why he did not show his face, the rider replied:
-Because I don’t exist.
Inside the armor there was nothing material, there was no body.
Carlomagno then asked Agilulfo how he could perform his military service without existing.
-With the strength of will, with faith in our holy cause!, the paladin would answer.
Así empieza “The non-existent horseman” by Italo Calvino, published in 1959.
A possible interpretation of the fable invented by the writer is that it is a metaphor for time in which individuals do not exercise true free will, although they act totally conditioned by external influence. Agilulfo embodies – in flesh and blood – the spirit of an era, its clichés and its rituals. It is the symbol of a robotic man who fulfills mandates without critical thinking. In a revealing passage, he will say: “I strictly adhere to the provisions”. “Do it yourself and you won’t go wrong,” the young Rambaldo recommended.
This interpretation of the metaphor deserves special attention at the present time, because the manipulation of people’s thoughts is produced by mechanisms of terrifying sophistication. The intention has existed since the ancient world, but contemporary media bring a Luciferian potential to the subject, through its scope, its precision, its effectiveness.
Here we are, Europeans, exposed to ferocious campaigns aimed at conditioning our thinking. Trumpism wants to destroy the EU and promote its European national-populists. To do this, you must manipulate their minds through large digital platforms. Therefore, it sanctions those who promote actions of control and proof, asserting that these are actions that repress freedom. A so-called public Leviathan that stifles private freedom is criticized. The real goal is to inhibit the action that contains the rise of the digital Leviathans that favor your political project. Oddly enough, there are not many sanctions from Washington against the Russian authorities, who mindlessly suppress freedom of expression and quietly and completely block these same platforms. Ah, there’s no fact-checking, just a ban. But it’s the same, because the manipulation of Russian minds has no interest in Trumpism. From there, on the other hand, he deals with the Kremlin, which also does what it can to manipulate ours, precisely through the platforms that Washington wants it to be able to act without control.
It’s a theft. The aim is to intoxicate the minds of Europeans and destroy the EU.
Before the sanctions against Thierry Breton and others, this time there were dialectically firm responses from the European authorities. Convenient however, a retaliation measured to measure in the plan of the hechos.
The seriousness of this existential assault which comes from the support of the Trojan horsemen should not make us forget another plan, that of obfuscation which, in Europe, promotes traditional forces in a perspective of sometimes myopic, sometimes miserable partisanship. The roar of the political drums that call for battle like Carlomagno’s troops, and in this alienation there is no room for much of my own thinking, but nevertheless criticism, not to consider that in some aspects the enemy hams against those who are urged to the offensive are the only allies with those who can successfully repel the external assault described previously.
This second plan makes a defense even more complicated and difficult in itself. Because in the digital space, today essential to shaping people’s thinking, we do not have the necessary software or hardware. We don’t have big social media platforms, search engines, sellers; we do not rely on the hardware assets of data centers and hyperscale computing clouds; We are not at the forefront of innovation.
We therefore do not rely on the material and immaterial assets that mark people’s digital lives, an existential space into which virtually everyone finds us sucked with ever greater intensity, especially young people, often convinced they are surfing on a beach while being swept away by a tsunami. It is the tsunami that shapes life, not the surfer.
I think I exist, in the words of Descartes. How long do we exist if our thoughts are radically manipulated? How long will we exist if thought atrophies because it systematically outsources work to machines? How many non-existent cavaliers and ladies are there among us, ready to fight with a volunteer force that is not their own, adhering to provisions that are not questionable? It is advisable to ask these questions. Who writes if they do, for themselves and for their children who are approaching adulthood.
Duda as a method is another fundamental lesson from Descartes.
Dudar, at this time, is a form of rebellion. This rebellion is the pillar of resistance against the assault. Self-reflection is the most effective form of combat compared to combat without self-reflection.
Europeans cannot therefore give up even a millimeter in regulating the digital environment. Giving up the commercial ground and sinking about 15% of money will result in monetary damages, but there will be no loss of soul. Returning to the field of the fight against mind manipulation is a mortal risk. We barely resisted in the military or commercial trenches, from the inside we evaporated.
To do this, it will be necessary not to go backwards in regulation, but to progress in innovation and in the creation of European digital assets. Airbus, for example, warned this week of its desire to migrate to a European IT cloud, moving away from the widespread use of those of the American giants. The movement of the business sector is fundamental to generating a new ecosystem.
But the beginning and the end of everything are individuals. The young Rambaldo, who quickly and sadly understood that “everything followed rituals, conventions, formulas” – which would today be the traditions invoked by retrogrades and algorithms – did not succumb to this petrification, he kept the shell of his heart alive.
They are trying to anesthetize us and make disappear a model that goes from Roman law to the Renaissance, and from there to the illustration of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights up to the constitution of the EU as a peace project. He must keep the shell alive, keep a body inside the armor, his own gaze beneath the cell.
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