Once upon a time the people became a repository of culture. Over time, the restrictive measures taken by the world authorities against any form of cultural expression were extinguishing the flame, creativity and imagination of peoples, as a candle gradually. However, a small but brave country took refuge underground and, paradoxically, darkness was an incentive to maintain light and culture.

While the authorities on the Earth ' s surface were constantly taking action against culture and knowledge, the inhabitants of the earth were loosening, becoming insensitive and fragile to cultural alienation. Unless the light could penetrate a grim and hard environment, in that rebellious society the windows could be found everywhere for anyone to present different cultural manifestations. Every afternoon, in the warm hogueras, many of them had the habit of creating reading groups of different ages, and it was almost mandatory for reading corners for children to be on all corners of the underground streets. Indeed, free citizens could hardly understand life without the freedom to dream, to reflect, to feel and to create, was this not the reason or the destiny of all men of a time?

While in the subsoil there was a thirst for culture, on the surface, in the shortest time, a civilization was imposed that almost nullified the suit of culture. Male societies had erased or discolored their memories, and the new generations found no sense in the path sown until then by their ancestors. For example, books, which at some point became a bridge between the past and the future, became sealed files in warehouses or soulless digital files. Philosophical thought and literary reflections, artistic movements that fought for social justice and freedom, how or somehow they disappeared from collective thought.

Finally, those who fought against resistance in the underground footsteps created, fortunately, theatre schools for artistic expression to serve as a window to human reality, for the works of Plauto and Ovidio not to be mere simulations or for the public to be free to criticize or reflect on human nature. With the raw materials offered by Earth, they created musical instruments, in what way or in what way, and paintings became the most useful instruments to connect with emotions and feelings. On the other hand, creative workshops became a compulsory subject in schools for the minds of young people to stay alive, as the underground people wanted to maintain freedom of expression. But the most curious thing about all the curiosities was, perhaps, the visibility of museums created by citizens without a country; stolen from the surface inhabitants, or with objects and goods collected from time to time, they created small museums in their homes to store memories, photographs, knowledge in their hearts.

On the surface, universities were annihilated or, at least, only science studies were preferred, in the hope that studies or manifestations related to the arts and general culture would rise to the slow population. Thus, in the denatured “higher society”, the algorithms marked people’s lives and human behaviors, promising what to consume, how to act and what to think. Doubt, criticism, introspection, imagination… have long been erased from the thoughts of the most effective and faithful human beings.

Thus, a few decided to extricate themselves – that is, to bury them – and to devote themselves to culture, to working on collective memory, to reconnecting with human nature and to tackling its roots. What books were for those who read in the heat of candles? Gold. And the story itself? Older and wiser citizens taught younger people every week, as if they were stories, one of the most valuable lessons to help them keep their collective memory. In short, subterranean people were trying to grab DNA and avoid alienation, ignorance and coldness. In a short time, men and women on the surface and children, without a cultural refuge, without a narrative that would allow them to understand emotions, contradictions and desires, were nothing but empty, functional machines without empathy.

This possible society, although it was extreme, and today we think of the fictitious, is not unthinkable. Yes, it can happen to us too. If we continue to despise the importance of culture on human values and the value of culture, and we only value technology, we risk losing our humanity. In the end, what would human beings be without the ability to dream, to create, to question? A society without culture may be the most terrible dystopia: perhaps we would give up everything that made us human.

Well, let's rebel against nightmares and possible terrible realities. Let us not lose the privilege of dreaming, because we would lose the ability to create a different future. Without the thrust of culture, without the variety that it offers us, we would limit ourselves to a merely functional life: an infinite loop of alienations. If culture is the voice that connects us, connects us, connects with our deepest humanity, to disappear means to lose our identity. Let us show that in a machine we are much more than mere gears! A society that ceases to believe in culture and creativity also ceases to feed the soul and is doomed to wander through a desert without light. So let us be culture lovers, dreamers and stop walking in the evening.

Carlos Aretxabaleta