By TARCÍSIO PERES*
The panorama offered by many podcasts today is far from encouraging self-reflection; they are programs that create domes in which empty speech finds echo and applause.
During the New Year celebrations, already intoxicated by the fireworks and impacted by the colors and brightness of the noisy champagne shots, one fact caught my attention. A certain young man – oblivious to real life and the excitement around him – was listening attentively through the dimensional portal (which we call a smartphone) to an influencer.
This man chanted the mantra that, although the arrival of 2025 calls for celebrations, it would nevertheless require reflection. And as the influencers need to stretch the audience's rope, this presented data extracted from some headlines, pointing out that Brazil is not doing well. The narrative focused on health, education, basic sanitation, etc. Conclusion: the blame lay with the PT, which was in power for at least 20 years.
So far, there is nothing new – the an influencer is not the first nor will it be the last to present this eureka. They simplify a complex historical panorama, endowed with countless internal and foreign policy factors, dynamic macro and microeconomic scenario, into a single descriptive variable (a political party). Add to this the uproar: “Brazil is not doing well”.
There is also nothing new in influencers recruit to their ranks (or, perhaps, trenches) the audience lost in full New Year's Eve. The innovation in this case lies in the fact that the interlocutor explicitly added that the six years of other governments should be excluded from the analysis of the aforementioned tragedy, after all “it is not fair to compare 20 years with 6” [sic]. He could have said that Beleléu took the excluded period, without losing the semantic load and without causing ambiguities or inaccuracies in the mind of the attentive listener.
Without realizing it, the an influencer makes the analysis itself and its proposed therapy unfeasible by suggesting that six years were useless or ineffective in reversing the catastrophic scenario of headlines presented, and therefore the change solution described by him would have no practical effect whatsoever.
Considering this deformation of logic, curiosity led me to the profile of the an influencer: He is an economist by training and, in principle, graduated from a good school. How is it possible then, at such a special moment as the turn of the year, to arrive at such a narrow reflection and transmit it in such a natural way?
2.
The expansion of formats Espaitec's, especially on digital platforms, seems to have denied the Greek ideal of doxa – the opinion forged by deep study and careful reflection. In classical antiquity, dialectics was structured on the confrontation of different doxas, so that, in mutual shock, the truth could be refined.
This practice, described by several Greek authors and summarized in the value given to critical thinking, contrasts sharply with the current model of discussion. Instead of a constructive debate and rigorous analysis, we observe what could be called a comfortable conversation, often between interlocutors without any preparation or desire to delve deeper into the proposed topic.
What should be a reasoning exercise becomes a performance empty, repeating weak opinions without any critical examination, so that ignorance, instead of inspiring humility, ends up inflating the ego and pushing away the search for truth.
Em Nicomachean ethics, Aristotle defines ignorance as a deprivation of knowledge. However, a deprivation can be remedied whenever there is an effort to study it and make up for this lack. In many podcast, there is no effort to overcome this limitation: there is no intention to resort to experts or verifiable sources, and the false sensation prevails that everything has already been resolved by one's own limited opinions.
Paradoxically, this state of “not knowing” is not viewed with openness to learning; on the contrary, it seems shielded by a pride that denies the very possibility of error. This pride, as analyzed by Saint Augustine in Confessions, is configured in the pride that distorts reality and prevents the individual from recognizing his true place in the face of knowledge.
The destructive intensity of this pride is revealed when the debate table is transformed into a space of mutual validation, in which any proposition contrary to the ideas of the interlocutors is seen as a personal offense, and not as an opportunity for deeper understanding. This pattern is disturbingly reminiscent of Friedrich Nietzsche's portrait of resentment in genealogy of morals: unable to rise to the heights of what he does not master, the resentful subject seeks to level everything to his own mediocrity. In a dialogue that should be dialectical, the resentful person evades, ridicules or simply silences dissenting voices, so as not to leave the comfort zone in which his opinions remain unquestioned.
Ortega y Gasset, in The Rebellion of the Masses, denounces the behavior of what he calls the mass man: the individual who, even though ignorant, believes he has the right to impose his vision on everyone. He does not seek the truth, he only demands that his points of view be acclaimed, and, when confronted, he reacts with indignation and not with due humility.
Incidentally, this stance is reflected in many episodes of Espaitec's, in which the presenter or guest holds shallow convictions and, upon noticing any difficulty in responding, tends to attack the questioner or change the subject. The most basic principle of dialectics, which would be the honest confrontation of ideas, is replaced by a performance in which the supposed authority of the an influencer speaks louder than the desire to understand the world in depth.
The disdain for intellectual rigor results in a kind of union of the resentful—an expression that fits this context in which self-affirmation prevails, without any discomfort or criticism. In this union, each participant acts as an indulgent mirror of the other, supporting each other in the same ignorance.
The union of the resentful tends to be more aggressive or violent than a conventional echo chamber because it is driven by a strong emotional component, that is, resentment, which manifests itself in the form of active hostility toward those who disagree or threaten to expose the group's ignorance. In the echo chamber, the focus is more on internally reinforcing existing opinions than on attacking the other.
In an echo chamber, the exclusion of dissenting voices occurs almost automatically or passively; the group simply does not care about opposing arguments and creates a filter to maintain internal cohesion. In this union, however, there is an element of indignation or envy that leads members to resort to confrontation – even if it is often rhetorical or symbolic, not necessarily physical. They not only ignore, but systematically disqualify or ridicule those who disagree, because any dissenting voice exposes the weaknesses they wish to hide.
In this context, Arthur Schopenhauer's eristics comes in handy. It is a set of argumentative strategies described in the essay entitled The art of being right. In the text, Arthur Schopenhauer identified 38 stratagems that can be used to defend a point of view or discredit an opponent, even if the arguments used are not intrinsically valid. These techniques include emotional manipulation, distortion of the opponent's speech, appeals to authority or common sense, and even the use of personal attacks (ad hominem). Although it is unlikely that the resentful celebrities have studied the eristics, they end up using, at random, two or three of them repeatedly in their appearances.
The illusion of security arises from the refusal to admit mistakes or limitations, something that Georges Gurdjieff, when emphasizing the importance of an honest confrontation with oneself, pointed out as fundamental to true human dignity. For Gurdjieff, it is precisely the recognition of one's own limitations that opens space for self-development and, by extension, for a higher intellectual and spiritual life.
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However, the panorama offered by many podcast Today's programs run counter to this ideal. Far from encouraging self-reflection, these programs create bubble-like spaces in which empty talk finds an echo and applause. Instead of seeking reliable sources, verifying data or bringing in experts with in-depth readings, several episodes incite a perpetual and unquestionable "I think." In the end, the public, which could benefit from a refined debate, ends up receiving a cacophony of opinions that sound definitive but lack foundation. What would arise from dialectics - the purification of ideas through the clash of doxas – becomes just a spectacle, in which form surpasses content and arrogance silences any more sincere inquiry.
When we say that ignorance is a deprivation, we remember that it is not something defined or perpetual: there is always the possibility of making up for the lack of knowledge. However, this possibility depends on a willingness to study, to debate honestly and to recognize that we can make mistakes.
Elements such as humility, serious research and attentive listening should be central virtues in podcast who aimed to raise the level of public discussion. However, the majority goes in the opposite direction, preferring to reinforce a stagnant “truth”, convenient only for the Narcissus who speaks without listening and considers himself infallible, even without any theoretical basis.
In this way, what was, in its potential, one of the most democratic and enriching tools in the current media scene – the possibility of debating freely on the internet, accessible to different audiences – ends up in a kind of poorly mediated bar conversation, in which everyone sets themselves up as an expert in everything, without having read or reflected sufficiently.
The greatest lesson of these classical and modern authors – from Aristotle to Gurdjieff, from Augustine to Nietzsche, and Ortega y Gasset – seems clear: the greatness of thought does not come from imposing itself without foundation, but from submitting itself to the test of opposing arguments, seeking to correct mistakes and advance in discernment. Without this disposition, podcasts are reduced to a ritual of exaltation of vanity, keeping the audience hostage to a union of the resentful that celebrates, without remorse, the enthronement of ignorance.
*Tarcísio Peres He is a science professor at the Technology Colleges of the State of São Paulo. Author, among other books, of Profiting from the Sharks: The Stock Market Traps and How to Use Them to Your Advantage (Novatec Publisher) [https://amzn.to/3TKlVwU]
References
Aristotle. Nicomachean ethics. Translated by Edson Bini. New York: Edipro, 2020.
GURDJIEFF, Georges Ivanovich. Encounters with Remarkable Men. Translated by Irineu Franco Perpetuo. New York: Goya, 2023.
NIETZSCHE, Friedrich. genealogy of morals. Translation by Paulo César de Souza. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1998.
ORTEGA Y GASSET, José. A rebellion of the masses. Translated by Felipe Denardi. New York: Routledge, 2016.
SAINT AUGUSTINE. Confessions. São Paulo: Paulus, 1984.
SCHOPENHAUER, Arthur. The art of being right: exposed in 38 stratagems. Translated by Milton Camargo Mota. New York: Vozes De Bolso, 2017.
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