Ekaterina Netchitailova

In philosophy there is a group of scholars, called Frankfurt School. It comprised such eminent scholars, as Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse.

They were Jewish academics who managed to escape Germany under the fascism and live in the United States of America. After several years of living there, they reached quite a sad conclusion: America wasn’t as they had envisioned, a free world, without oppression. In their books they discuss how the ideology of over-consumption makes everyone docile,  satisfied purely at a materialistic level, and without critical thought. The American society is based in false needs, they argued. Who does really need so many choices in products and endless entertainment via TV?

I faced a similar problem when I moved to the West. It lured me with its freedom, its protection of free speech, and the ability to be oneself, without the fear of being ‘cancelled’ in case you are a bit of out-of-the-box human.

It was after 9/11 that I noticed a shift of consciousness in the Western world, famous for its democracy, protection of human rights, and desire to make peace in this world.

Nothing can justify the monstrosity of what happened on that day, but I saw it while being a financial analyst of banks in Amsterdam. It was surreal. The stock market almost crushed, and all savvy investors bought the stocks at the lowest price possible to then resell it at much higher price later. Every conflict on earth can bring money, you can’t imagine what people are capable of doing for the sake of it.

But I was more astonished by what happened next. Somehow many countries became our enemies, which had either to be destroyed or adjust to Western values, sometimes by force.

I was watching with even bigger astonishment how leaders of some countries were publicly executed, as in some sort of reality TV, reminiscent of Roman Empire, with watching public on board. Was it justified that a ‘monster’’ had to be killed that way? Or was it in order to give a warning to the rest of the world?

And so I started to ask the following questions:

What is freedom when you can end up being killed so easily?

What is freedom when you can ‘cancel’ a person so easily as we call it today? What is freedom when you are pushed into listening to only one narrative, and be declared as a dangerous person if you say something else? Assange’s of our world aren’t alone, they all walk among us, being afraid to say something different.

Where is free speech when for a simple disagreement with the status quo, you risk loosing your job, your savings and your life?

Where is freedom? Where is it? Does someone know?

Why are we creating monsters just so that the system keeps on running, with the money going into pockets of those who stopped caring about God, and just want to become rich.

And yet, it is home, where I pray for the original values to return: freedom of speech, respect for others, inclusion of diversity, respect for religious choices, and the ability of some critical thought.

It is sad to live in a world that puts money as the most important value to have.