The renowned Argentine writer, political scientist, and lecturer Agustín Laje spoke exclusively to Voz Media about his new book entitled Generación Idiota, in which he criticizes "adolescent egocentrism" and explains how this mentality represents a threat to society.
Laje began the conversation by explaining that, although many might consider the word "idiot" an insult, he uses it in the book with the same approach as the ancient Greeks, who referred to idiots as people who were so "self-absorbed that they did not have the capacity to realize how necessary it was for them to participate politically," he said.
The writer pointed out that social media is a factor of current idiotization and even mentioned research that shows how the use of cell phones can affect young people's academic performance.
"Culture in the West is anti-cultural because it doesn't cultivate anything," he said.
Gender identity
Within the new book, Laje talks about how nowadays facts and logic do not seem to be relevant evidentiary factors in issues such as gender identity. "By now society understands that self-perceiving myself as African-American does not make me African-American, that perceiving myself as a five-year-old does not make me a five-year-old, but today no one understands that self-perceiving myself as a woman does not make me a woman. In fact, to say this publicly today is outrageous," he said.
The famous Argentine writer went further and gave the example of cases of teenagers who weigh a certain amount but perceive themselves to be even heavier, which can sometimes lead them to suffer from serious eating problems. Laje pointed out that, in a case like this one, everyone would agree that the problem is the teenager's self-perception and that is what we should try to correct, so it should not be different with young people who identify with a different sex than the one they were born with.
Gender reassignment surgeries
The political scientist also took a few minutes to talk about how unnatural gender reassignment treatments are for teenagers who feel they were born with the wrong gender. He especially highlighted the surgeries that teenage girls are subjected to.
"They look like something out of Frankenstein's monster (...) they are removing the skin of the forearm, nerves, muscles, certain material from the forearm to create a thing they call neoprene that does not even have any sexual function and that is what is called sex reassignment surgeries," he said.
"We are under ideological dictatorships"
Agustín Laje believes that one of the biggest problems today is that most people have decided to "self-silence," which has allowed "ideological dictatorships" to gain traction and instead of helping a suffering community, "instrumentalize."
"We are under ideological dictatorships of minorities that are very well financed and have a lot of political backing," he said.
For the writer, the solution to idiotization lies in an education focused on mental development with subjects such as philosophy, history, and politics.
