In a society where noise replaces knowledge, talk shows command reason, and the opinions of know-it-alls replace thought, reality becomes a daily farce.
Fadil Sahiti
In small countries like Kosovo or Albania, where there are more speakers than listeners, public discourse is no longer a mirror of reality. It has become the main nerve of a body that reacts but does not think. In this system, impulses do not come from clear thinking, but from noise. Commands are not issued from the center of reason, but from talk show studios and portal commanders. They are not simply producers of shows. They have become architects of perception. They shape public debate the way a stage is shaped, with light, grimaces and improvisation. They decide who has the right to speak, what is the topic, who is declared an “expert” and who must remain silent forever.
On our noisy portals and especially on our screens illuminated with false peace, the same recycled faces parade daily. Former prime ministers who were the designers of a state that today can barely stand on its feet because they themselves ruined it by stealing its wealth and future. Former ministers who left behind only roadblocks and empty sentences. Former mayors who don't even remember where they buried the promises they once announced with fanfare.
Then the all-knowing analysts speak. One night they give prescriptions for justice reform, the next they analyze virus mutations, the third they predict lunar cycles. Always with the tone of someone who has never doubted anything nor learned from anything.
Then come the academics. Those who supposedly work in European universities with vague names, but you can't find them anywhere. Not on any page where the world of the mind seeks knowledge, not in any published line, not in any quote that leaves a trace. There are also local academics who don't even know what they are. One day professors, one day advisors to governments, one day advisors to presidents of the state and the assembly. The next day back in the studio, as independent voices. And an even more sophisticated category: academics of courts and public boards. Presidents and members of judicial bodies who decide the fate of people, but who before being judges, are people of the camera. All of them appear with scientific titles that no one has verified, they speak as authorities of knowledge, but without leaving a trace anywhere, except in the television archives. All of them, without exception, appear in front of the cameras as oracles, articulating with Olympic confidence their trained emptiness.
Meanwhile, people of knowledge are missing. Not because they have nothing to say. But because they don't shout. They deal with facts, work in silence, analyze with dedication. They speak where not everyone goes – in the books that are read and in the works that are cited. They can really help in understanding crises, perhaps even in overcoming them. But you don't see them anywhere. Because the television studio and the noise of the networks is not their place. They don't compete for shouts. They don't seek fanfare. They are not hungry for fame, but for understanding. And that is precisely why they are excluded. Because here the one who speaks the most triumphs, not the one who thinks the deepest.
And this is our deepest problem. Not that people of knowledge are lacking, but that our society does not seek them. They have been excluded from a symbolic order where there is no longer a scale of values. Because the value system has been flattened. In this swamp of discourse, everyone has the same weight. The professor and the propagandist. The researcher and the speculator. The scientist and the slanderer. It is not knowledge that weighs, but noise. It is not the argument, but the 'gesture'. It is not critical thinking, but emotional manipulation.
If a colleague of mine who lives in Kosovo, among the 5% most cited in the world for his scientific work, is not invited to speak about the crisis we are experiencing, that says nothing about him. It says everything about us. About what we call value. About what we have chosen to forget. In the end, in this republic of talk shows, fools become wise and the wise remain silent. But this is not the silence of helplessness. It is a form of survival in a society that has chosen noise over knowledge, spectacle over content, and farce over reality.
edition
t7 live
