The clichezist order

What would it be of the clichezists if all the philosophy and psychology books of the world were burned? Who's would they copy soundbites?

Lately it hasn't been easy to have a conversation with anyone not closer besides the formalities. Not necessarily because they are empty and aliened and manipulable, but mainly because of the foreseeability of the answers plus an arrogant and inflexible behavior. Recently, the phenomenon of the clichezism has becoming more perceptible, specially on the internet, but it doesn't mean that outside it things are very different.

We can start talking about bullying. What's bullying? Some years ago this English word was unknown in Brazil for several people, even though anyone who had already seen an American film or TV series once in a lifetime, had seen a scene of a kid or teen physically stronger and surrounded by thugs to hit and ridicule another weaker and reclusive one. It was physical aggression and public humiliation: only this. But we were wrong because bullying is anything that displeases or offends and that may raise difficulties in the social relations of the victim but... is it life, specially the adult life, full of people concerned in not hurting people's feelings?

The clichezist order is also strongly present in politics. Talking about politics in Brazil still disgusts many people, but the fewer who talk about it, many of them hardly can't do it without hanging to unrestrained passions and cliches. There's a true war between the right-wing and left-wing militants. Corruption denunciations are common and done to blacken the political rival and give demagogy speeches. As it seems to be impossible to exist a serious and impartial press in Brazil, boycotts and criticisms to TV shows and tendentious soap-operas are suggested, besides that the numbers 13 and 45 are as terrible as the Nazi swastica.

The politically correct is one of the marks of the clichezist order. Words that were used for decades were replaced by others with more complex and fancy names. It was bullying. Historically repressed groups as women, black people, and homosexuals have been – finally – achieving some respect in the last years, but it seems that this respect is imposed by quotas and the psychology of the fault. If a homosexual says he is proud of being homosexual, claps to him, he overcame the prejudice. If a straight man says the is proud of being straight, throw stones against this homophobic evangelist. If a black man dresses a “100% black” t-shirt, claps to him, he overcame the prejudice. If a white man says he is proud of his color or his European ancestry, throw stones against this Nazi racist.

There's a tendency, a subtle dictatorship that promotes the homogenization of the philosophies and ideologies. We all know that perfection doesn't exist, but the human mistake it isn't very well accepted. The free thinking and the own opinion are stimulated... Teorically, because in real life, if you raise a opinion contrary to the clichezist order, they reply with aggression. The more impolite say offensive words. The higher educated one, specially the “intellectuals”, delight in ridiculing with sarcasm. Language experts corrects your orthography and punctuation according to the standard language rules. Adverbs may agree with researches and studies. The clichezists of the Geography and Statistic Institute want numbers: “majority, minority, many, few: who they are? I want numbers!”

Review your values, the argumentative clichezists anti-religious want to ridicule your faith and repudiate anything that has a religious background: “why is promiscuity bad, why is raping bad, why having sex in public squares is bad, why being a hypocrite is bad? Don't you know the answers? Where's your God now?”

And the clichezism on Facebook not only recycles classical cliches, as well as it reaffirms the obvious and sells utopias of a world where everybody is immaculate, perfect, wise and full of causes for us to worry about. Obviously every Facebook's perfect human being respects the elderly, the women, the gays, the black people, the children, the nature, the animals, God and all the religions. “It's an absurd that a soccer player receives millions of euros to kick a ball and what about the corruption, what about the violence, what about starvation in Africa, what about education, what about the hospitals? I want chu, I want cha, I want to complain about the success of popular music while the world is dying. What the world will think about Brazil, oh my God, Valesca has a song that says 'take my pussy and suck it', oh my God, wake up to corruption, Brazil, that's why this country doesn't go ahead, everybody's concerned in watching Big Brother”...

Thanks to the clichezist order, people feel the necessity of converting, of being part of this movement for them to feel included in a group that they hate so much. You can't be an ambulant metamorphosis, your opinions must be equal to the clichezist's because theirs are right and absolute. Have a opinion about everything, everything! And as it is impossible, adopt the clichezism. Have a learned by heart saying for any situation in life, like an intelligent humor page on Facebook. Read two hours of synopsis on the bookstore website and have argues won by the rest of the month. Clichezists get satisfied with superficial arguments and ideas because their knowledge is also superficial. It isn't necessary catching the essence of the books, the less reading them because soundbites and the writers thought and expressed themselves by you. With clichezism, you can disguise you necessity of self-affirmation through phrases with chewed philosophies. You don't need to think. Just take part of it.