The Gaseous Society

By: Alberto Royo

192 pages

When there is no room left for what is solid, all that remains is the superficial, ephemeral, the gaseous. The immediacy, the search for profitability, the lack of demands and self-demand, the disdain for tradition, innovative obsession, consumerism, placebo education, the cornering of the humanities and philosophy, self-help, accepted mediocrity, and satisfied ignorance cause what we thought was more conscious to falter. Everything arises, propagates, is sold, bought and used just as soon as it evaporates. More than in a liquid society –as explained by the great thinker Zygmunt Bauman– we live now in a gaseous society. With the hope that we can still change things, this essay proposes a lucid and possibly uncomfortable reflection on the varied and subtle ways in which what should have more substance –education, relationships, culture, knowledge– becomes gaseous.

About Alberto Royo

Alberto Royo was born in Zaragoza in 1973 and has lived in Pamplona since 2002. He is married and has children. He holds a superior degree in classical guitar from the Superior Conservatory of Music, located in the city of his birth. Having received a scholarship from the Government of Aragon and the Province of Zaragoza, he continued his education at the Luthier School of Musical Arts in Barcelona.

Previously he earned a degree in History and Science of Music from the University of La Rioja. He has completed doctoral studies at the Public University of Navarra and wrote his doctoral thesis at the Complutense University of Madrid. As a guitarist he received the 2nd prize at the international tournament of Music (Rome) and was a finalist in the Permanent Contest of Young Musicians (Granada) and has performed in Spain, Italy, The Netherlands, The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ivory Coast. He has recorded an album of contemporary music called Mistúra which received the seal Record Delights. In 2004 he was accepted to the Corps of Secondary School Education Teachers.