A complaint that captures a society with no direction

Fed up with a society that rewards the lowly and ridicules the excellent

Why does it seem that nobody stands for anything anymore? The complaint that opens the discussion is blunt: a society described as unbearable, without honour, without courage, without risk, without a future, without direction and without dignity. The diagnosis on offer is not about economic crisis or a passing downturn, but about a void of shared purpose. What used to be called character is now read as posturing, victimhood and a flattened mass without personality. The thesis is uncomfortable: anyone who refuses to bow to that dynamic gets a thousand limits imposed in return.

The bar as a social thermometer

The scene being recounted takes place in a good old-fashioned bar, the kind where grandfathers play dominoes. There, a person dressed in a way that breaks with the traditional norm was speaking matter-of-factly about open relationships, about having slept with several people, and about their partner taking part. For the person telling the story, the problem is not the specific anecdote, but that it is presented as the most normal thing in the world. From there comes the blunt question: how did we get to this supposed madness.

The answer given at the start is a cultural accusation: a feminized society where the lowest is celebrated and the highest is ridiculed. It is an opinion, not a fact, and should be treated as such. But it describes a real malaise that reappears in many diagnoses of our era: the feeling that effort, risk and the hierarchy of merit have lost prestige to the spectacle of identity and grievance.

The rural refuge and escaping the noise

The conversation soon drifts towards the space where that malaise becomes bearable. One participant declares that this is what going to bars is for, and another clarifies that you only go to the bar in an emergency, to talk to the usual person and socialize a little. In a rural area, he adds, otherwise you end up only talking to the pigs and the horses. The irony is bitter: isolation as the only dignified way out.

Another message takes it to the extreme: "I only talk to the sheep now." The reply is revealing: seeing what surrounds us, that's for the best. It is not an isolated joke, it is a symptom. When social life is perceived as hostile or empty, taking refuge in animals and in the countryside stops being eccentricity and becomes a strategy of emotional survival.

From the bar to the forum: digital escapism

Alongside the physical escape, there is the digital one. Someone confesses that they go to the bar to post on forums, because you post better from the bar. The reply is a laugh and a "well done, mate." It is the perfect paradox: they criticize an infantilized, feminized society, but the refuge is a screen, a forum and Paco's bar. Community is rebuilt in miniature, with the same old rituals but on a different medium.

The end of the exchange returns to the animals, this time the rams, described as bigger bastards, especially when it comes to reasoning: they go for what they want, push, push and push. The livestock metaphor serves to talk about the unthinking mass that only shoves. And underneath it all remains the unresolved question: if nobody takes risks, if nobody believes in anything, who is going to build anything?

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In the end, the most repeated complaint is not economic, it is existential. And that, in an era that measures everything in GDP, is the hardest thing to admit.