Laxity and compulsority: a paradox

Abstract

Laxity and compulsority: a paradox refers to the answer that may be given by subjects facing the crushing demand of science. The article emphasizes the change that occurred in education when it went from being a desire and curiosity to be mandatory, and the consequences that it generated, since education became more of a market and production element. Now, the student’s wish is not what matters, but the social and family demand that leads to choosing what will make young adults independent in the following years. “Having was placed over being”, this inversion of values generates alienation to the external orders of the consuming society and science, and it obtrudes the subject, his/her desire, and with this he/she is ‘objectivized’.

To this crushing demand, the subject responds in multiple ways, such as: alienation to external commands, inhibition or rebelliousness. The symptoms that express this situation can be permanently observed in contemporary subjects: laziness, academic difficulties, anguish, depression, and loathing. These responses emitted by the subject, are answered by the consumption society with objects that pretend to give what he/she is missing in order to calm his/her anguish.

The position of the guardians of the law challenged by this invasion of demands lays in confrontation between laxity and imposition. The vertiginous change has generated loss of the authority and with this, the deterioration of the responses of the subjects to contemporary inventions causing the fall of the ideals. It is necessary to ask about the responsibility of adults and young ones towards external demands.