We have more and more elements to be able to see the benefits and dangers of the digital age in which we live. You will hardly see a person on the streets who is somehow not aware of their mobile phone, one of the most widespread – and most necessary? – technology that we know about so far. So-called smartphones are, of course, often excellent for everyday life, because they help us get to places we didn’t know about, allow us to instantly resolve doubts about some information, reassure us when we receive certain messages from our relatives.

But there are scientists, such as the Italian doctor Lambert Maffei, who, faced with the alienation of people who do not separate themselves from their mobile phones, warn of the risks of neglecting the use of words, in response to which they proposed the defense of the word language. Maffei, who is engaged in research in the field of neurophysiology, believes that the neurons of thought lose strength in relation to the strength of neurons of movement. In the not-so-distant future, will it cost us more to think than to move a thumb on a screen? Can’t we see that it’s harder to hold a reasonable conversation now?

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Verbal communication – our language of speech, unique among animals – was crucial to our survival as a species because it allowed rational thought to occupy a central place in our evolution: “language is a chain of words connected by reason”, affirms Maffei, because only speech leads us to reason, and this is exactly the opposite of what we see in the campaigns and messages of professional and improvised politicians, in which chatter and blablabla spread to humiliating situations. The sieve of reason is losing ground.

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We all have to change in order to sustain life and we are betting on changes that are slow because they are cultural…

We all have to change in order to sustain life and we bet on changes that are slow because they are cultural: in the language of words, in the brain and reasoning, the possibilities of transformation and improvement are located. That is why we have to lead the conversation into rational channels in order to successfully face the challenges of the present: “The school of words is the school of the cerebral hemisphere of language, that of rationality, that is the school of reflection, that is the school of thinking. a slow thinker, I would say, one who teaches that you have to think before you make a decision and that you have to think before you believe,” says Maffei.

We must strive to ensure that the practice of conversation, exchange of ideas, debate and reasoned disagreement is not lost in the family, at school or at work, or in public life, because only a conversation held in reasoning can help us imagine a future that is more shared and shared on a personal and social level. Lamberto Maffei in Elogio de la palabra (Madrid: Alianza, 2020) invites us to persevere in this task: “Words taught me to see. The vida department store is made of words. I came to the conclusion that whoever has more words, sees more”. (OR)