Football (soccer) remains one of the last true sanctuaries of meritocracy.

There, no narrative can save you. It does not matter whether the best team wins or loses, because if you are poor… you do not play. If you are unfit for purpose… you watch from the sidelines.

No solemnity can conceal a mistake, no title can excuse mediocrity. The body speaks. And it speaks plainly.

The same applies to other sports, regardless of the size or shape of the ball, but football is the king.

What happens in political power is altogether different. And not only there.

Society accepts authorities even when merit is absent, because power—once accumulated—ceases to be a tool and becomes an object of worship. It no longer matters whether actions are good, bad, or indifferent. Power itself becomes unquestionable.

Family. Work. Government.

The setting is irrelevant: it is always easier to adapt to harmful, unjust, or downright deranged rules than to pause and challenge them.

I am still struck— by that peculiar solemnity imposed in certain circles with a single purpose: to invalidate any question or to disguise the absence of merit.

That shameful excess of reverence. Almost choreographed. Particularly visible in some academic hierarchies and in certain religious groups that no longer venerate ideas, but themselves. A reverence bordering on the militarised.

Sixty-six years ago, in his brief and razor-sharp text “Borges and I,” Jorge Luis Borges quoted Spinoza: “Everything desires to persist in its own being; the stone eternally wishes to be stone, and the tiger, a tiger.”

Thus, the tepid become superficial. The self-interested, accommodating. And the cowardly, devoid of dignity.

That perfect cocktail creates the ideal climate for despots, ignoramuses, and manipulators to ascend to the status of authority.

My analogy today crosses cultures. Japan and Spain.

There is a condescension towards the other that wounds. It wounds as much as those Japanese or Spanish series in which a voice-over explains the plot as though the viewer were incapable of understanding it unaided.

That same condescension seeps into everyday life. When that character appears—black suit, round bowler hat— an anime-born stereotype demanding our attention and instructing us what to think and when to applaud.

But not all of us require a voice-over. Some of us still trust our ability to understand, to doubt, and—above all— not to adapt docilely to that which does not deserve respect.

And that is precisely what this manual is about.

You have just listened to the first episode of the third season of The Lucid Misfits Handbook by Pablo Mera— Pablo E. M. G. to the English-speaking world, and simply “Trompo” to those of us who knew him long before the name travelled.

Today, he introduces one of his newest analogies— almost delirious at first glance, yet ultimately revealing itself not to be so.

His podcasts travel the world and are available on all major platforms.

The author offers more than 13,000 posts drawn from his personal history on his blog, freely accessible at http://pablomera.blogspot.com

And he invites listeners to write to him at tromp@hotmail.com.]

How simple it would be, would it not, to remain blissfully unaware of things.

To carry on regardless. To flee into the safe havens of traditional escapisms. Yet alas, such a path is not mine to tread. I lack the capacity to turn a blind eye to what unfolds before me.

Neither do I claim to possess the ultimate truth in all that I think or say. But I am keenly aware of this: we are living through a bellicose moment in history, a time when two major wars rage simultaneously, alongside several lesser conflicts across Africa—wars scarcely mentioned, eclipsed by those deemed greater, louder, and more geopolitically “significant.”

For in both traditions, as taught in their more orthodox forms, pleasure and delight were not to be sought for their own sake. Sacrifice was the path. Pleasure was treated with suspicion. From this sprang the stoic culture that many today proudly embrace, declaring with a certain grim satisfaction: “I am stoic, I can withstand anything.” Yet sooner or later, the mind cracks.And yet, another way of approaching life does exist. I do not speak of naïve notions that “peace and love” are sufficient to mend all wounds.

Rather, I speak of a path distinct from stoicism and perpetual sacrifice. For to limp forward in constant self-pity, never pausing to savour one’s moments of freedom, is profoundly unhealthy. Epicureanism, by contrast, proposed quite the opposite: to seek refined pleasures, serenity of soul, the absence of pain, the exchange of ideas through peaceful dialogue.

A vision wholly opposed to our present, where life seems but an endless battle to be right, to proclaim one’s truth as absolute.…This relentless spirit finds expression in the rigidity of our daily reasoning. Matters must be settled swiftly, in the manner of a social media post—quick, shallow, digestible—because, it is said, there is “no time” to read anything longer.

And in reducing everything thus, one loses the very flavour of life itself. I see a culture that applauds simplism, while sneering at deep analysis. To pause, to think, is no longer in fashion.Here I must mention Fabián C. Barrio, a contemporary Spanish philosopher and writer whose videos on YouTube I find quite excellent.

He suggests that facile praise is often the weapon of the untrustworthy, a means to win our confidence, to manipulate, and ultimately to dispossess us of our own judgement.Of course, we are not all the same, no matter how insistently some argue for a “natural equality.”

We are not. As Dr. HC Ruth Rosental, the distinguished Argentine psychomotor therapist and director of C.E.I.A.C., reminds us in her award-winning book Bullying: “We are not all the same. We are all different.” Each individual is endowed with unique traits. There is no universal formula for sameness.

And finally, I cannot help but recall the so-called Dunning–Kruger effect: those who know least are most convinced that they know the most. That, I daresay, says everything. At such times one is tempted to invoke divine intervention. That well-worn Latin phrase—Deus ex machina—suddenly takes on real meaning. For if all is left in the hands of humankind, nothing, I fear, shall ever change.

☆The author is Pablo Mera, or Pablo E.M.G. to the English-speaking world—though a few old friends still call him “Trompo.” He adores Metallica and Oasis, he is still a rugger at heart, blood type A+, and his podcasts can be found across every platform.

Pablo published over 12,950 posts upon his blog: http://pablomera.blogspot.com.You may write to him at mailto:tromp@hotmail.com

I remember quite vividly attending the premiere of Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope back in 1977.It was screened in one of those grand old cinemas, the kind that seated two thousand souls, majestic halls that scarcely exist today. The queue stretched endlessly, with unfortunate stragglers left outside. One had to arrive early, line up with patience, and wait one’s turn to enter.So much has been lost, for nowadays the cinema has migrated into our very homes. Films and series are consumed at will—on demand, streaming, summoned at the mere press of a button. It was not so then. And truthfully, it was not so very long ago, merely a recent yesterday in the span of history.I recall Star Wars itself with crystalline clarity. The saga endures to this day, scattered across countless platforms, with younger generations convinced it is a creation of their own era. Yet it was a sophisticated mind indeed, back in ’77, that glimpsed the contours of the future, of technology, and dared to shape it upon the screen. A mind, perhaps like mine, still resonating with the profound shock of the 1969 Moon landing—when my generation bore witness to humanity’s first step upon that distant sphere. It was deeply moving for us all. And, not long after, equally moving was the premiere of Star Wars—as electrifying, in its own way, as the unveiling of Jaws, now re-released for a new audience.Returning to Star Wars: the companions of the humans were two peculiar figures. One, a golden humanoid named C-3PO, who spoke in a clipped, mechanical manner. The other, small and squat, like a bedside cabinet upon wheels—R2-D2, whose name to my ear rang rather like “Arthur.”Their speech was strange, indecipherable. Were they imagined in today’s terms, of course, they would converse flawlessly, for artificial intelligence would already dwell within their circuits. The creators of Star Wars could scarcely have foreseen the velocity at which our world would accelerate.And 1977 was, in truth, an astronomical year. In that very September, two probes were launched: Voyager 2 and, a mere fortnight later, Voyager 1. To my astonishment—and that of the scientific community—those probes remain active still, transmitting signals from realms so distant they defy description: one hundred and sixty-six times the span between Earth and the Sun. Imagine that distance, multiplied again and again—there you find them, in the interstellar dark.They travel at a staggering speed. If I were to sit at a football match beneath the night sky, and by some miracle they orbited the Earth, I should see them streak overhead twice during the ninety minutes, such is their swiftness. Sixty-one thousand kilometres an hour—while the Earth’s circumference is but forty thousand. A revolution and a half each hour!What astonishes me most is that this is technology of 1977—conceived in ’69, perhaps born in the fertile imagination of the ’60s. Technology that belongs to my generation.The author is Pablo Mera, or Pablo E.M.G. to the English-speaking world—though a few old friends still call him “Trompo.” He adores Metallica and Oasis, he is still a rugger at heart, blood type A+, and his podcasts can be found across every platform. Pablo published over 12,950 posts upon his blog: http://pablomera.blogspot.com.You may write to him at mailto:tromp@hotmail.com