MAN IS A DISGRACE Who are you with?

There are times when silence is no longer prudence, but fatigue. We have reached such a moment. You can't really talk about politics without being immediately assigned to a camp. Everyone knows everything about money, especially those who lack it. You can't talk about culture, because it doesn't interest them. And about football... football lies fainting somewhere next to honor.

Political topics are dangerous. Not because it is forbidden to have an opinion, but because, in our country, an opinion has come to function as a declaration of belonging. You say something about a party and someone immediately asks you who you are with. You criticize a decision and you are asked who you support. It no longer matters whether you are right. What matters is who sent you, who pays you, who influenced you and, possibly, what your interest is. The argument has become suspect.

Opinion must necessarily have a patron. And if it doesn't, we invent it. However, the politician has a great quality: he never remains without an answer. You can ask him about anything and he will explain something else to you. You can ask him about a concrete problem and he will talk to you about a problem from ten years ago. You can ask him where the money is and he will tell you that we need to be patient. And if you insist, there is always a saving formula: "the legacy of the previous government". It is probably one of the most enduring institutions of the Romanian state.

There is no point in talking about money anymore. The same man who trembles when he sees a hundred euros in his hand verbally considers almost any amount as nothing. A million? A trifle. Ten million? Not even worth discussing. A billion? It depends. If it is public money, it is as if it is no longer money. It is a theory, a figure in a table, an opportunity, an "allocation", a "project", a "strategic investment". If it's your money, however, things change. Then 100 lei matters. The bill matters. The price of food matters. Rent matters. An unforeseen repair matters. A salary that doesn't last until the end of the month matters. But we mostly discuss all of this in private. In public, we are a country of moral billionaires. We look at billions like coins dropped on the sidewalk and are only surprised when someone picks them up in front of us.

Culture has lost the battle with the algorithm. Nobody is interested in it anymore. Poetry is not breaking news. It doesn't generate enough outrage to keep people glued to their phones. A verse can't compete with a filmed argument. A book can't compete with a 20-second video clip. An idea can't compete with an algorithm that knows exactly what to show us in order to keep us from leaving. Thus, culture has been slowly pushed to the sidelines. It hasn't died. But it's no longer invited to the table. It sits somewhere in the library, between the dust on the shelf and the memory of a world that still believed that a man could be changed by a book.

Football is dead, what can we say about it? It didn't die in a single day. It was managed until it disappeared. It was divided into interests, televisions, contracts, commissions, statements and explanations. We are left with the matches, of course... and nostalgia. But nostalgia is one of the cheapest forms of consumption. We remember footballers who entered the field because they wanted to win. We remember people who respected their word. We remember the competition. Today we remember especially what we lost.

Silence is our new economy. So I'm thinking of keeping quiet. I admit it. I've imposed a kind of silence on myself outside of work. I still talk to a few relatives. Otherwise, I'm saving my energy. Not because I have nothing left to say. On the contrary. Maybe I have too much.

But I discovered that there is a greater waste than the waste of money: the waste of words. Explaining something to a person who does not want to understand is a waste. Arguing in a discussion where the verdict has been established before the beginning is a waste. Trying to convince someone who is listening to you only to prepare their reply is a waste. Speaking in a society where everyone has already come with their truth in their pocket is, sometimes, just tiring.

So I save. Words. Time. Nerves. Energy. This is one of the saddest victories of the present: we no longer need anyone to censor us. We censor ourselves. Not because we are necessarily afraid. But because we are tired. We have become accustomed to not being listened to. When a person is silent, it does not always mean that he agrees. Sometimes it means that he no longer sees the point. There is a huge difference.

Silence, which we were once told was golden, is starting to look more and more like poverty. Poverty of words. Poverty of trust. Poverty of hope.