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Project Vision 21

Transforming lives, renewing minds, cocreating the future

18 years      OF Archives

WEEKLY COMMENTARY (AUDIO, 4 MIN., AI generated)

VISUAL PRESENTATION

DISCLAIMER

The commentaries we share here are merely our thoughts and reflections at the time of their writing. They are never our final word about any topic, nor they necessarily guide our professional work. 

 

Please don’t talk about philosophy! It’s bad for my son!

The request was clear and direct: “Please don’t talk about philosophy!” Then, as if to emphasize the urgency and importance of what she was asking, she added, “Philosophy is bad for my son!” And just in case I hadn’t understood, this mother continued, “Ever since my son started reading philosophy, he no longer wants to believe what he used to believe.”

That was the reaction (respectable and understandable, to be sure) of a mother concerned about her son’s intellectual and mental well-being (his age was never mentioned, but he was clearly old enough to venture into thinking for himself). Like any other protective mother, this mother wanted to spare her son from the difficulties of encountering new ideas.

It all began with a brief message I posted on a well-known social media platform. I assumed it was something generic and of little importance. I also assumed that, as happens with most of my other posts, no one would read it, much less respond or react. But apparently, saying “philosophy” generates all kinds of reactions.

Briefly and with sincere respect, I thanked this mother for her message, emphasizing her clear love for her son. At the same time, I mentioned that “philosophy” has many meanings and can be understood in different ways, not all of them negative. I then added that my message was based on my academic studies in philosophy.

An unexpected reply followed. The mother, also in a respectful tone, “reminded” me that, according to the Christian scriptures (Colossians 2), philosophy is deception, vanity, a useless tradition. Therefore, it is not only something that cannot be discussed, but it should also not even be mentioned.

I thanked this lady once again for her words, and that was the end of our exchange. My gratitude was sincere for two obvious reasons. First, I was able to understand the perspective from which this mother was speaking. Second, it led me to reflect that, many times, what we consider “thinking” is, in fact, a sophisticated form of self-deception.

I do not know, of course, what kind of philosophy or which philosophers this woman’s son was reading. Perhaps he was reading The Concept of Anxiety by Kierkegaard, Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche, or Being and Nothingness by Sartre. That juxtaposition of existentialism and nihilism can be difficult to handle without proper preparation.

Or perhaps he was reading self-help books disguised as philosophy—like the many books that present superficial versions of ancient Stoicism, reducing Stoic thought to mere “slogans” and Stoic practices to stress-relief techniques. Be that as it may, the young man was reading and thinking enough to alarm his mother.

Therefore, I ask, should philosophers fall silent because someone begins to think for themselves? Is not the cultivation of critical thinking a necessary condition for maturity and autonomy? Is it really so easy to label as “deceptive” and “useless” everything we disagree with?

 Posted in General

The disappearance of the Other trapped us inside an impregnable existential bubble

Last week, two people (a young man and an older woman) told me separately that they had lived for a long time inside “a bubble.” Life circumstances (an unexpected and positive trip for the young man, a tragic loss for the woman) led them to leave that “bubble.” Many others, however, never do.

The situation is certainly not new. Plato already warned us some 2,400 years ago in his Allegory of the Cave that we might be living inside a cave without even knowing it. But in that case, the “cave” or “bubble” was shared. Now, however, the “bubble” has become not only an individual world but, in numerous instances, the whole world.

Moreover, whereas in Plato’s cave there was at least the possibility (however remote) of escaping that confinement—and of someone entering the cave to free those held within—the techno-“bubbles” of our postmodern age function as filters of reality. For that reason, the chances of “escape” are even slimmer than in the allegorical cave.

Slimmer, but not impossible. The man told me that his first trip outside his home country made him aware that, until then, he had been so enclosed within his bubble that he believed the entire world lived, spoke, and acted like the “world” he knew. Realizing that this was not the case led him to leave his bubble.

The woman, for her part, suffered a loss in her life that was impossible to recover—something she never imagined would happen. Yet it was not the tragedy itself, but rather the reaction of those around her (family members, friends, coworkers) to that tragedy that led her to rethink her own beliefs and priorities and, ultimately, to step out of her bubble.

Unfortunately, my experience suggests that these two cases (entirely real, I emphasize) are exceptional. I believe that many people—perhaps even the majority—have set aside encounters with others and with real life to withdraw into bubbles shaped by digital platforms and algorithms.

The South Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han describes these “bubbles” as “digital prisons” or “transparent cages,” whose main feature is to function as “echo chambers” that repeat self-confirming messages over and over again, without those messages ever being interrupted by challenges (intellectual or practical) or by different viewpoints.

Within today’s techno-bubbles there is no friction, no delay, no surprise. In other words, there is no Other. As Han explains, the Other has disappeared and has been replaced by sameness and by a pseudo-communication that seeks nothing more than “likes.” Any difference with the Other is eliminated or blurred.

We must therefore ask ourselves what kind of world we are creating when we expel the Other from our lives—knowing that without distance, resistance (friction), and the alterity of the Other, a healthy human life (individual or collective) cannot exist.

 Posted in General

A lost childhood can lead to dangerous actions with unimaginable consequences

 

The news is alarming not only at a global level, but even locally, as shown by recent incidents occurring over the past few weeks in the city where I live, all of them involving children and teenagers.

In one case, a 16-year-old teenager was arrested by police for driving at over 100 mph on a narrow road with lanes closed due to construction. In addition, the minor did not have a driver’s license, and the vehicle lacked proper insurance. Even worse, the teenager’s brother, a 12-year-old child, was riding in the front seat without a seatbelt.

In another case, a 13-year-old boy was also taken into custody after, without his parents’ permission, he decided to take the family’s pickup truck for a drive around his neighborhood. Tragically, the outing ended when the truck crashed at high speed into a house, causing serious injuries to a woman.

But the most disturbing case was that of an 11-year-old boy, now in the custody of authorities, formally charged in local court with having killed his 5-year-old brother. For obvious reasons, the details of the case remain unknown, although it is understood that at some point on that fateful day there was some kind of fight or confrontation between the siblings.

Some might ask where the parents were when all of this was happening. (In fact, all the parents involved in these stories are or were under investigation and, in the case of the 16-year-old, are facing charges.) But perhaps the question now is a different one: what kind of society have we built for this to be happening?

Put differently, how are all of us—not just the parents—educating our children so that, at such an early age in life, when energy and imagination far exceed common sense and restraint, they act as they do (as shown by even more serious national and international cases we will not mention here)?

The Spanish philosopher and educator Gregorio Luri offers one answer: we are raising children without a childhood—that is, children who no longer enjoy a free childhood. More specifically, “today’s children have been left without spaces where they can live their adventures” (lecture “AprendemosJuntos BBVA,” September 4, 2025).

There are no longer spaces for adventure because (I would add) childhood has been transformed into a series of scheduled, controlled, and supervised activities, including interactions with other children. Playgrounds no longer scrape knees or tear pants. And the rapid transitions from dance class to the soccer field before heading to English lessons are common—and endless.

According to Luri, we are raising generations of “narcissistic beings afraid of failure,” perhaps reflecting adults’ own fear (also narcissistic) of confronting reality. And so (I would suggest), the childhood adventures of the past have now become dangerous activities with lifelong consequences.

 Posted in General

What Is Lost When Wonder Disappears?

Undoubtedly, one of the great technological achievements of our time is the resumption of travel to the Moon—whether to observe it up close or, eventually, to visit it in person. In that context, one of the most astonishing images is seeing Earth from space, an image not seen since 1972. But unlike that earlier image, this new one no longer inspires wonder.

Immediately after it was released, (pseudo-)experts of every kind began to “analyze” the image, dissecting each element to determine whether it was real—that is, whether it truly showed Earth or was just another AI-generated image. Yet there was no sense of wonder, not even in the face of such an astonishing perspective.

Many “commentators” saw shapes and colors, but they did not see the planet. They did not see the billions of people captured in that image. They did not notice the absence of borders or “countries,” each in a different color as on a map. They did not see the Earth because they did not see themselves. And they did not see themselves because they did not experience wonder.

The situation reminded me of a brief anecdote told by Anthony de Mello in The Song of the Bird. According to the story, when the Buddha asked his disciples to explain what a flower is, one offered a botanical analysis, another focused on its colors, and others gave different interpretations. One disciple simply looked at the flower and smiled. Only he, said the Buddha, truly understood the flower.

There are moments when reality cannot be reduced to—or understood through—measurement, quantification, or even algorithms. In those moments, reality can only be understood by living it, by participating in the experience, by rediscovering oneself as part of that reality. In other words, by experiencing wonder.

So, what is lost when we stop being amazed? And worse still, what is lost when we cease to feel wonder because we delegate our interaction with reality to AI? Socrates offers a clue when he says that philosophy begins nowhere else but in wonder—a notion later echoed by Plato and Aristotle. Without wonder, we lose the capacity to think.

Seeing Earth from space is not merely viewing an image; it is a cognitive experience that brings us face to face with the fragility of human existence and the extreme smallness—and absurdity—of the conflicts we ourselves create. Unfortunately, we live in an age without wonder, and therefore, in an age of diminished thought.

We delegate questions, answers, and decisions—not because we are incapable of thinking, but because we do it less and less. Artificial intelligence has intensified our natural ignorance by leading us to abandon the effort to understand. In fact, “to study” comes from the Latin studiare, meaning “to apply physical or mental effort to a task.”

Without wonder, there is no depth. We cannot inhabit complexity, and we lose the ability to ask transformative questions.

 Posted in General

We are so asleep that we no longer distinguish reality from perception

When I was still in elementary school, philosophy crossed my path in the form of a history of philosophy book and a copy of Meditations on First Philosophy by René Descartes. Five decades later, that calling still calls me each day to find my best ideas in the minds and books of great thinkers, whether famous or not.

In that context, one of the philosophers who has always inspired me (and many others) is Heraclitus, who was born, lived, and died in Ephesus—modern-day Turkey—about 2,500 years ago. Known as “the Obscure,” Heraclitus has exerted such influence on our thinking that major scientists like Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and Niels Bohr quote him in their work.

Heraclitus wrote a book of which, unfortunately, only about 129 fragments remain, the first being the longest and most complete. The most well-known is Fragment 12, on the impossibility of stepping into the same river twice. My favorite fragments are 50 (listening to the logos rather than to people) and 119 (what it means to be truly human).

For that reason, when I recently came across a piece in the Spanish publication Semana whose title began with “Heraclitus, philosopher,” I decided to read it immediately. After all, one encounters Heraclitus every day while browsing the Internet. But the anticipation quickly turned into deep disappointment.

The explanation is simple: the article centers on a quote that, although presented as belonging to Heraclitus, he never actually said. I will not repeat the quote. It is enough to note that the influential Greek philosopher we are dealing with here is closer to quantum physics than to motivational self-help—and he never spoke about “envy” or “uncomfortable emotions.”

A simple and quick online search (probably two clicks) would have revealed that the quote in question was not from Heraclitus, but rather invented and published by a website devoted to attributing quotes to famous figures without ever providing the exact source.

When I used to teach philosophy at the university level, I would always tell my students: “As President Abraham Lincoln famously said, do not believe everything you read on the Internet.” (At times, I replaced Lincoln with other nineteenth-century figures.) It took the students a moment to process that “warning,” and then most of them would smile.

Now, a decade after those classes, it is clear that the digital ecosystem moves at such speed that we are compelled to prioritize shaping our perception of “reality” over verifying truth—thus accelerating the spread of false information and misleading narratives.

From digital clones to synthetic influencers, everything points toward blurring the boundaries of what was once considered “real” or “authentic,” eroding trust in others and undermining communication altogether.

Heraclitus affirmed (Fragment 1) that human beings do not know what they are doing because they live asleep. How right he was.

 Posted in General

We have forgotten the future and remain stuck in the past

Years, centuries, and millennia pass, and it becomes clear that humanity has neither learned the lessons of the past nor grasped the opportunities of the future. Instead, we insist on returning to —or remaining in— an irrecoverable past, while narrowing the horizon of the future by forgetting (intentionally or not) the futures that are possible.

Over the past two decades, I have often repeated that the future has changed and that, for that very reason, the new future (or emerging future) can only be known from the future. But this does not mean detaching ourselves from the past or attempting to live solely in the infinitesimal and elusive present moment, even though that seems to be the prevailing attitude of our time.

Two recent publications suggest that over the past 2,000 years we have neither advanced, nor evolved, nor progressed as much as we believe we have—and that we are not as intelligent as we assume ourselves to be.

According to a new study (February 2026), published by experts from several Italian universities in the specialized journal Heritage, the northern walls of Pompeii (the city destroyed by Vesuvius in the year 79) reveal that markings on those walls were likely caused by a predecessor of the modern machine gun, known as the polybolos.

Another recent account—a video essay published by Ecos de los Clásicos—explores the work Pro Archia Poeta (In Defense of the Poet Archias), written by Cicero in the first century BCE, in which the famous Roman orator defends Aulus Licinius Archias (his tutor), who was brought to trial after being accused of violating the immigration and citizenship laws of that time.

More than two millennia have passed since the polybolos attack on Pompeii and since Cicero’s intervention before the Roman Senate, and we still use highly destructive automatic weapons and put on trial people who are suddenly considered undocumented due to the passage of new laws.

Becoming aware of this situation, one can no longer say that the emerging future can be known only from the future, because such a task becomes impossible if we remain stuck in the past and if we refuse to see the new future both in the past and in the future.

In the case of the polybolos, researchers used laser scanning and photogrammetry to create three-dimensional models that helped determine the use of a repetitive mechanism capable of launching multiple darts continuously during the siege of Pompeii led by General Lucius Cornelius Sulla in 89 BCE.

Changes in immigration laws in 65 BCE led to the deportation of foreign residents in Rome who could not present proper documentation, as happened to Archias. Cicero described the trial against his tutor as “ridiculous” and “contradictory,” arguing that the accused was already a citizen before arriving in Rome. (The outcome of the trial is unknown.)

Today we face very similar circumstances—though without walls to stop the projectiles and without a Cicero to defend us eloquently. Only by remembering the future will we be able to rethink and re-recognize the past.

 Posted in General

Now we live in what remains of the world

It has been said that soccer is the most important of the least important things in life. For that reason, soccer can sometimes teach us lessons about life. That happened to me recently when, after a match that Boca Juniors should have won but did not, a well-known sports journalist wrote, “This is not Boca, but what remains of Boca.”

Reading that sentence in the context of our planet today, a different version of that statement came to mind: “This is not the world, but what remains of the world.” Perhaps we do not live among the ruins of the world, but rather in a world that has been diminished—where little or nothing remains of what humanity once hoped to become.

Throughout history there have been many crises, some so catastrophic that they nearly led to the extinction of our species. The most recent catastrophe, the Bronze Age Collapse 3,200 years ago, was so devastating that (I believe) we have still not fully recovered from that severe blow.

Yet it seems we have not learned the lessons of the past, even though we should have. This is not the first time the world—understood in a sociocultural sense—has collapsed around us. For that reason, it is difficult to find reasons or excuses for failing to see that we may be living in what remains of the world.

I once read that polar bears prefer, when searching for food, to approach seal pups because the young seals do not move away or hide when they see the bear approaching. Apparently, the seals’ lack of experience with polar bears prevents them from recognizing the danger they are in—with unpleasant consequences for them.

But we humans have experienced numerous global transformations in the past—often unexpected, always irreversible, and rarely chosen. For that reason, there is no excuse for failing to see or understand the moment of profound transition we now face.

That situation reminded me of a documentary I once watched that analyzed the behavior of moose walking along railroad tracks in the northern regions of North America. Unfortunately for those animals, many of them never learned to step aside in time when a train was coming down the tracks. Why? Because moose do not “think” about trains.

Something similar certainly happens to us in everyday life: we walk the same path again and again, in such a way that we fail to react when danger approaches—even when that danger is real, undeniable, and moving toward us at full speed.

There is yet another factor that blinds us to the present reality: fear—but not fear of the future. Rather, fear of the monsters of the abyss.

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, §146 (1886)

 Posted in General

Two Unavoidable Questions: Where We Are and Where We Are Going

 

 

Recently I came across the following question, “Quo vadis, humanitas?” (“Where are you going, humanity?”), which appeared as the title of an article inviting readers to rethink the future of humanity from a philosophical, theological, and anthropological perspective—without delegating the decision about our future either to machines or to laboratories.

My first thought, naturally, was “Domine, quo vadis?” (“Lord, where are you going?”, Acts of Peter, 35), where, according to that text, Peter questions Jesus about the path He is following, only to discover that he himself—despite his good intentions—was heading in the wrong direction.

Connecting these two questions led me to wonder whether humanity might be moving in the wrong direction precisely because we are seeking, in what is ultimately intranscendent (algorithms, artificial intelligence), the answer to the question of our future and our transcendence. It was then that I came across the following statement by the Spanish philosopher Simón Cano Le Tiec:

“The boundaries between the machine and the human have become very blurred” (or, if one prefers, blurred, weakened, or diluted). According to Cano Le Tiec, this situation prevents us from thinking clearly about the relationship between humanity, nature, and technology, and leads instead to a “climate of cynicism” and a “generalized irresponsibility.”

We are searching outside ourselves for the meaning, the purpose, and the direction that we have lost within ourselves. For that reason, we will never be able to answer appropriately the question “Where are you going, humanity?”—an existential question—if we do not even know who we are or what we are becoming.

The issue is no longer about looking for answers, but about asking the right questions from a level of consciousness that is irreducible to algorithms and irreplaceable by artificial intelligence. This led me to think of another question—indeed, the very first question that appears in the most widely known translations of the Hebrew Scriptures:

“Where are you, human?” (Genesis 3:9 )

This is a relational and existential question that does not seek information but confronts us with the need to examine our own humanity, our condition and our place in life. It can also mean “How are you?” and “What have you become?” In a sense, we spend our entire lives responding to these questions, which also carry the implicit demand: “Present yourself and take responsibility.”

Thanks to new technologies, the possibilities of radically altering the biological limits of human beings—and even surpassing those limits—are increasing. At the same time, artificial intelligence is transforming human agency, establishing new decision-making processes and reshaping social structures.

This situation calls for ethical reflection that goes beyond the pressures of the market or the imperatives of technology. It also calls for collective wisdom capable of discerning the future direction of humanity.

In the face of these ontological, teleological, anthropological, existential, and civilizational questions, we must respond by becoming present and responsible from the highest level of our emerging consciousness. Consciousness cannot be removed from the description of reality.

What we need now is a dialogue about the new future.

 Posted in General

Cognitive transition or poor adaptation to the new future?

 

 

Recent experiences have led me to ask how it is possible that the more connected we are, the less connected we are with others in real life, and the more superficial and irrelevant our conversations become. Clearly, we are in a stage of cognitive transition in which the old forms of socialization no longer serve us.

At the beginning of human evolution, social groups were small, and communication was limited to tone of voice, eye contact, physical proximity, and facial expressions. That situation has been described as a “scarcity of social signals.” But in the last few decades, the situation has reversed, and there is now a superabundance of signals—calls, notifications, alerts.

We evolved as part of a system of socially meaningful and intermittent communications, only to live now in an environment of irrelevant and continuous communications, almost without rules, that condition our actions and thoughts. As Hunt, Marx, Lipson, and Young (2018) demonstrated in an article published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, we pay a psychological cost for living constantly on social media.

For her part, Sherry Turkle’s ethnographic work in Alone Together (2011) suggests that we increasingly expect more from technology and less from human beings. Put differently, the greater the technological connection, the weaker the human conversation. In fact, for many people, the social presence of others has become intolerable.

We are constantly bombarded with stimuli, yet we are never satisfied. Relationships have been transformed into “availability.” Infinite scrolling on a screen is not an accidental behavior; it is the outcome.

Obviously, one could argue that the situation described reveals a moment of transition among humans similar to what occurred when writing extended memory, clocks enabled temporal coordination, and maps expanded cognitive space. From that perspective, perhaps we are preparing ourselves for a distributed and interconnected intelligence.

But while this is happening to us as humans, we simultaneously encounter AI systems that always respond, never tire or grow drowsy, and do not suffer from the limitations inherent to human beings. On the one hand, AI receives all our requests and assists us. On the other hand, these instant, frictionless responses inevitably invite comparisons with humans.

Under certain circumstances, we even begin to think that we, as humans, are a failure for not always being available and responding instantly. “Others” expect us to reply with the speed and quality of AI, and we expect the same from “others.” AI recalibrates our expectations of availability.

Martin Heidegger warned in The Question Concerning Technology that technology is a way of revealing. In that context, human presence becomes “functionality.” And in The Burnout Society, Byung-Chul Han observes that we are expected to be perpetually “within reach.”

So, is this an evolutionary maladaptation or an adaptive transition? It is currently unstable. Without conscious design and new cultural norms, it behaves like a maladaptation: overstimulation, attentional fragmentation, loneliness, anxiety. With reflective integration, it could become an adaptive extension of human cognitive capacity.

Let’s remember that evolution never guarantees wisdom.

 Posted in General

“Your lifetime subscription is about to expire.”

 

I must confess that the beginning of the message left me confused: “Your lifetime subscription is about to expire.” If I activated a subscription (with a certain company) trusting that it truly was “for life,” how is it possible that, without prior notice or any alternative offer, the company can so brazenly cancel it?

Clearly, we live in an era in which words no longer mean anything—or almost nothing. They have been reduced to mere and superficial tools of emotional manipulation (not even intellectual manipulation, because we no longer think), with no reference whatsoever to any presumed past, present, or future reality. Today’s words, far from illuminating reality, conceal it.

Far away—perhaps centuries or millennia behind us—seem to be those times when the word was creative, from the famous “God said…” to “In the beginning was the deed,” as Goethe suggested translating “word” in the well-known opening of the book attributed to John. But this is not merely about biblical references. Consider, for example, the Greek concept of logos.

Someone might object, and rightly so, that a nostalgic, pseudo-theological-philosophical approach does little or nothing to address the challenge of determining whether any meaning remains in our words (and, consequently, in our lives) or whether, on the contrary, the crisis of meaning has already swept away the few hopes that remained for genuine dialogue.

For that reason, I hasten to acknowledge the limits of what I share here. And I am not referring to the 500-word limit to which we have confined these columns for more than 20 years, but to the very limits of my knowledge and thinking even to begin to approach the subject. But be that as it may, at least for the moment, we are still here in this world.

At the same time—though not to excuse my limitations—I cannot fail to mention that suffocating technoscience and a dehumanizing global system make any dialogue about dialogue and any thinking about thinking increasingly difficult tasks, not only because of the inherent challenges of such undertakings (as Socrates exemplifies), but because of the lack of interlocutors.

I do not intend to seek out a dark, cold, forgotten corner in some remote cave to shut myself away and isolate myself from the world. After all, wherever I may be, there will be my world. Nor do I propose returning to the past or trying to recreate it in the present. But when the horizon of the future narrows, I cannot help but feel concerned—existentially speaking.

It is clear that we are living not merely in a time of change or transformation, but above all in a time of collapse, comparable only (in my view, after having studied the subject) to the collapse of the Bronze Age 3,200 years ago. In fact, perhaps we ourselves are the true collapse of the Bronze Age, three millennia later.

In short, what once was “for life” now comes with a near expiration date.

 Posted in General

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