The idiotization of the Western society
The word “idiot” has a fascinating etymology: it comes from the Greek διώτης (idiōtēs), meaning an individual or private citizen, as opposed to someone holding a public office.
From there, the word evolved through Latin to refer to somebody with no education or lacking in professional skills, and on into French as stupid, and then, following the Normand conquest, was used in English to mean somebody who was mentally deficient. By the mid-twentieth century, a television was being referred to as the idiot box.
In the third decade of the 21st century, a Chinese company has designed an application based on an algorithm that has addicted millions of young people in the West, who spend several hours a day scrolling through short videos. But in China itself, it is used very differently, and instead hosts educational content; what’s more, children and adolescents are restricted to using it for just 40 minutes a day. That should give us pause for thought, especially if we are talking about a country that considers itself historically wronged by the West for a specific episode, the so-called Opium Wars, which occurred during what they call the “century of humiliation”, and in which China was forced to accept imports of opium that idiotized millions of people, turning them into addicts.
