# The Mexican Daze Author: Paynalton Canonical source: Language: en Original publication: The Mexican Daze

At one point, Christopher Tolkien wrote about the dilemma his father had while writing the Silmarillion. The main problem lay in the very grandeur of The Lord of the Rings.

According to its own creator, the success of this work was the feeling of depth. When reading this book, one finds oneself in an already ancient world, where many adventures have already taken place, and the events that occurred during the novel were the result of many other things that had happened before. When I first looked at the map of Middle-earth and saw that the journey of the hobbits barely covered a small part of the entire known world within the story, I wondered how many stories there might be in those remote places, what the reality of those stories would be that were only partially told when the characters spoke to each other. In short, that darkness in the history made me want to go deeper, to imagine, to dream, and to desire to be there to explore such a vast world.

That was Tolkien's dilemma. He thought that by writing all these complementary stories around Middle-earth, The Lord of the Rings would lose its appeal. He said that if he were going to write those stories, they themselves must have even greater depth so that there would always be mysteries to uncover, stories to tell, and a world to discover. He died without finishing this work, and it was his son, Christopher, who finally completed and published these stories.

J.R. Tolkien was an ingenious person, and in his fantasy world, he found the key to a problem that affects our world, specifically Mexico.

A long time ago, the world was explored and populated almost entirely, and the few regions that have not been seen by humans are those that, without the support of technology, are inaccessible. Science has revealed so many secrets that many have come to consider that knowledge has been completed.

There were once great adventurers who traveled the world with the desire to know, to explore, to see for themselves what had never been seen before. However, now those indomitable spirits lie dormant within a society that seeks its own perfection.

At one time, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote about the future of Germany at the end of the nineteenth century. He critically attacked the emerging democratic ideas that promised a world of peace, equality, tranquility. A world without dangers, in which we would all be happy.

Today we live in that world that the dreamers of those times promised, and although not everything was a reality, the warning Nietzsche gave has materialized.

In his opinion, human ingenuity, courage, and the desire to move forward come from danger itself. When an organism faces a dilemma, it struggles to survive and move forward. If a world without danger is created, then human society will gradually fall into a permanent stupor, life becomes dormant, and everything comes to a stop.

These words of Nietzsche bear resemblance to those of Tolkien. Although both refer to different worlds, the problem is the same.

For a long time, there has been a tendency to preserve peace and tranquility in our society. Mysteries are not scarce, but they no longer excite as they once did, and many no longer even care whether they exist. There is no place where one can step that hasn't had a hundred others before us, and the sky is no longer the limit of our aspirations, but one must have enough money to reach it.

Various factors support this state of tranquility. On one hand, we have the political class, which tends to keep the population's mood calm through speeches, repeating the same phrases over and over: "everything is fine," "we are still moving forward," "it's only temporary," "it doesn't affect us," etc. Some create complicated distractions to divert people's attention away from problems and thus avoid uncomfortable questions, excessive work, or the revelation of some truth that affects them directly or indirectly.

Thus, politicians are creating in the population an atmosphere of calmness and happiness, the closest thing to what their predecessors promised.

Another factor is religion. New religions, ancient beliefs that try to survive, all attract their followers by promising spiritual peace and a perfect world after death. Most of them, or the more popular ones, offer an extra ingredient: "absolute truth" contained in some sacred book or proclaimed by some priest, even revealed personally by some deity during divine encounters. Their message is the same: "Do not seek the truth, for the truth is here." Those who are drawn to these organizations then have a bigger problem. As they delve deeper into this religion, they create for themselves a complete cosmology without secrets or mysteries, where they no longer need to know anything beyond what is found in a single book. They stop seeking answers, and their natural curiosity becomes dormant.

The next factor I find is education itself, which is far behind current science. The consequence of this is that, although many problems and mysteries still exist, they are so far removed from the intellect of a Mexican-educated person that they become incomprehensible. In fact, many times people are unable to even see the problem itself. This causes professionals to gradually move away from problems they cannot understand or solve and to become more and more immersed in this world of stupor that we have inherited and that we will pass on to our children.

All of this creates the main problem of Mexico, which has a society that does not want to move forward, that does not desire to learn more about the world, and that wishes to immerse itself more and more in its own affairs without interest in what is happening around it. This is what keeps us trapped in the third world.

The adventurous spirits have not died, they are simply asleep because there are no adventures that can excite them. The great geniuses are occupied with solving their own and small problems, while the general population is excited by a football game, the end of a telenovela, or the next dance contest that will decide who receives the next transplant surgery.

If Mexico wants to move forward, it is necessary to shake off all that dust, start setting goals, talk about real problems, and create a favorable environment so that society can reactivate and work toward one or several common objectives.

The political class would be revered if it starts sharing its real problems with a society that would not refuse to help solve them, since doing so would mean a change in habits. If a world power pressures us, together we will find a solution. If a political faction is growing, together we will judge what is right. If the country has become untamable, we are the country, and if you can uplift our people and guide them out of the third world, we will follow you.

That religion which recognizes that it does not know everything, but works hard to find the truth will be rewarded with the acceptance of the scientific community. If science and faith unite, an unprecedented religion would be created that, instead of causing alarm in society and being a hindrance to its development, would walk alongside it and lead it along the correct paths, distancing it from its own mistakes and guiding it toward the truth.

There are problems big and small, Mexican science is far behind what we can find in the rest of the world. We must start by solving simple problems, improving our skills and preparing ourselves to face the big problems. Let us trust the emerging youth and give them all the knowledge we possess so that they can go further than we have gone, let them have fun with knowledge and criticize our mistakes, for it will be they who correct what we did wrong.

It is time to awaken the adventurers, time to call the geniuses and finish what was left unfinished. Create dreams and give everything to achieve them, organize ourselves and gradually lead this nation toward the first world.

It is time for every Mexican to embrace his own dream, no matter how irrational and impossible it may be, to find others who share the same dream and together fight to achieve it. It is time to awaken, to look at the horizon and ask ourselves, "What lies ahead?"... I want to know... I will know.

This is the beginning of the journey toward the first world.