There was a time, not so long ago, when understanding wasn’t just about finding an answer. Seeking was already an act in itself, a way of dwelling within a question, of letting it mature inside. It wasn’t always comfortable, but it was alive. You’d stray, return, get lost sometimes. And it was in that detour, in that slowness, that thought would take shape, in a movement that engaged the whole being.
Today, everything is here, right now. Answers arrive fast, neatly phrased, ready to use. We consult, we scroll, we approve. And we still believe we’ve searched, as if the mere proximity of content were enough to prove that we’ve thought.
But something has shifted. It’s not just that everything is faster, it’s that this speed prevents certain gestures of thought from even taking place. To dwell within an idea, to tame a doubt, to let an intuition ripen, all of that requires a rhythm we no longer inhabit. Thinking involves a certain kind of unease, a dissonance that is uncomfortable but fertile. One has to accept not knowing, at least for a while. But that gesture, we’ve gradually abandoned. Not out of laziness, but because acknowledging our ignorance makes us lose balance. And such imbalance has no place in a world that demands answers before the question is even born.
So we let ourselves drift toward whatever seems clear. We accept what’s given to us, as long as it spares us the effort of digging. And in that discreet comfort, another logic creeps in, gentler, more invisible: the logic of a drift where comfort no longer appears as a choice, but as self-evidence. It doesn’t clash with anything, it doesn’t constrain anyone. It quietly smothers, under the guise of care. It doesn’t strip us of freedom, it simply invites us to forget it.
This drift isn’t new. Other eras, other systems, have already orchestrated the dispossession of individual thought. The mediation between man and meaning has often been monopolized by guardian figures: priests, masters, dogmas. And every time we’ve stopped experiencing ideas for ourselves, every time we’ve borrowed instead of embodying, a part of our inner sovereignty faded away. The mechanism is always the same: the fatigue of being free, the weariness of having to judge. Freedom is not granted, it is wrestled from two persistent adversaries: ignorance and complacency. And some have always known how to turn this fertile duo into a fertile ground for a silent power. Once, kings reigned over bodies; today, some rule over minds, gently, under the guise of foresight and convenience.
The machine, for its part, never doubts. It suggests, anticipates, guesses. It quietly lifts from us the burden of thinking. And we, relieved, follow. Not out of weakness, but because everything is now designed to spare us from thinking for ourselves. Ambient, diffuse intelligence creeps into our most trivial and most decisive gestures, gradually colonizing our reasoning.
This protective world does not wish us harm. It wants what’s best for us, in our place. It keeps us in a soft stasis. A prolonged childhood, free from trials or silence.
But the point isn’t to blame the tool. The problem doesn’t lie in the technology itself, but in the drift it introduces between our will to understand and the constant availability of prefabricated content. It’s not AI we should fear, but our tendency to let go of the effort to think critically.
One day, perhaps, thinking will no longer be necessary. The systems will have anticipated everything, scripted everything, softened everything. All that will remain is enjoyment without awareness, tranquility without presence.
Gradually, what we once called freedom becomes mere validation. Knowledge, too, stops being a path and becomes a product. And we stop being its authors: we become users of a mind that is no longer our own. We were builders, we’ve become tenants of intelligence.
This displacement of the mind is not just a loss of authorship over our ideas, it’s a break in the link between what we do and what we understand. We act, but don’t always know why. That, essentially, is the proletarianization of the mind: the moment when we keep the appearance of the gesture—reading, choosing, deciding—without its substance. The proletarian here is not the one who lacks resources, but the one deprived of understanding what they do. They still act, but no longer think. They still choose, but no longer decide. They still speak, but it’s no longer their voice. And this can happen to anyone—even the well-educated, even the well-paid. As soon as our decisions are guided by systems whose logic we do not grasp, we become strangers to our own thought.
And because we no longer understand our own gestures, we accept ready-made content. We no longer seek. We consume what others have prepared for us. We inhabit knowledge that no longer comes from our own maturation, but from systems that anticipate what we’ll want to know. We think we’re choosing, but we’re validating. We believe we’re understanding, but we’re applying. We think we’re deciding, but we’re drifting.
We still believe we’re choosing. But what is a choice, when everything is pre-scripted to be approved without question? Can we still speak of freedom when we select our masters from a catalogue of predictions? We voted for our guides, clicked on our preferences, accepted our filters. And we still believe this choice is ours, as if electing our guardian guaranteed our liberty. Sometimes, this link is woven with such precision, such gentleness, it becomes invisible. Comfort does not oppress, it numbs. We are no longer links in a living chain, bearers of transmitted meaning. We are subscribers to a calibrated world, paced by notifications instead of signs.
Freedom retains its symbols, but has lost its motion. We still say the word, without feeling its tension. Each in our bubble, each on our feed. The other becomes a backdrop, sometimes even a threat. Speech no longer circulates, it ricochets. The collective fades into a mosaic of connected solitudes.
I don’t believe this drift is new. Perhaps we’ve always delegated parts of our thinking. To traditions, to masters, to books. But time still existed. The time for assimilation, for contradiction. Today, that time has disappeared. We reason in fractions of a second. And in this haste, we lose the depth of thought.
It’s not that answers are wrong, it’s that they arrive too fast. Often, they’re neither true nor false, just statistically plausible. The machine doesn’t know truth. It offers the most likely word. In its world, a well-phrased absurdity can resemble a sound idea. It’s up to us to tell the difference. But that effort—we don’t always know how to make it anymore.
And sometimes, we no longer even know where what we read comes from. The source fades, replaced by successive layers of reformulation. What was once rooted in experience, reasoning, a work, becomes a vague echo, severed from all origin. Can we still speak of truth when we can no longer trace its path? Are we sure what we’re reading isn’t a statistical mirage, a neatly phrased probability?
There are still voices. Fewer and fewer. Because thinking has become almost suspect. Too slow, too demanding. In a society that values reactivity more than reflection, silent thought is seen as an anachronistic resistance.
And yet, some persist. We persist. We doubt, even when everything seems clear. We know that freedom doesn’t lie in the speed of an answer, but in the right to not answer right away.
We are those who refuse to think by proxy. While some chase the echo in every open platform, we choose the path of active withdrawal. We choose not to give up what we believe is worth keeping: the pleasure of seeking without certainty, the patience of a fertile doubt, the silent demand to understand by ourselves.
And perhaps that’s what thinking truly means today: refusing to let the machine, or the noise, finish our sentences. Because free will doesn’t assert itself, it is experienced. In the discreet refusal of automation, in the slowness of a chosen decision, in the inner silence of a thought still unfinished. It is not a word, it is a posture.
And what if, by making life too easy, we’ve forgotten what it means to think for ourselves?
What if the silence of our own voice were the price of this convenience?
Are we still able to recognize our thoughts when they do not come from elsewhere? Are we willing to bear their trembling, their slowness, their discomfort? Are we still capable of discerning what is true from what only appears to be?
If every idea becomes an echo, a reformulation of a reformulation, what becomes of reality in this hall of mirrors? The thread blurs, the origin fades, and with it, perhaps, our ability to discern. A more intimate question then arises, quiet but persistent: have we already given up, gently, without even noticing?
It’s not enough to denounce the chains—we must remember that some of them are comfortable. Thinking is not rebelling. It is consenting to go through the turmoil, to be present to what in us resists obviousness. Free will is not proclaimed, it is reclaimed.
And it always begins with unease. A quiet voice that comes from nowhere else. And that asks: am I still the companion of my own thoughts?