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Another major obstacle to development lies in a drift that has become pervasive: the cult of shortcuts, immediacy, and superficiality.

Today, everything is expected here and now.
The ability to project into the medium and long term is steadily eroding.
We live under the reign of instant gratification, emotional reactions, and permanent buzz.

Within this framework, patience appears outdated.
Rigor feels tedious.
Depth is perceived as a waste of time.

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When Appearance Replaces Reality

This obsession with immediacy is accompanied by a troubling shift: appearance increasingly prevails over reality.

The image of the country matters more than the reality of its problems.
Exposing dysfunctions is treated as betrayal.
Revealing structural failures is considered more dangerous than correcting them.

Thus, burning a flag is deemed more serious than killing innocent people.
Violating the constitution is relativized, while symbolic gestures are condemned without nuance.
Insulting the president shocks more than the impunity surrounding the embezzlement of public funds.

This inversion of priorities reveals a society more concerned with the stage set than with the foundations.

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The Triumph of Spectacle Over Substance

In this logic, public debate turns into performance.

Clashes, shouting matches, and scandal-driven outrage are preferred to calm, informed, and sustained discussions about the structural roots of social problems.
Spectacular indignation replaces rigorous analysis.
Noise displaces meaning.

Emotions flare quickly, but reflection is short-lived.
Outrage is intense, but construction is rare.

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Entertainment Over Learning

This superficiality also shapes attitudes toward knowledge and work.

Entertainment is favored over learning.
Constant distraction undermines continuous education and skill-building.
Intellectual effort is sacrificed for rapid consumption of content.

In the professional sphere, many merely pretend to work, as the appearance of activity becomes more important than the quality of output. Counterfeiting, fraud, and smuggling thrive in an environment where immediate results outweigh durability and standards.

Shortcuts become the norm.
Cheating becomes a method.
Superficiality becomes a system.

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Avoiding Real Problems

All these behaviors share a common denominator: the refusal to confront real problems.

Addressing root causes requires clarity.
Clarity demands difficult choices.
Difficult choices require courage, time, and sacrifice.

The cult of shortcuts offers an escape.
It provides cosmetic responses to structural challenges.
It sustains the illusion of movement without genuine transformation.

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A Structural Obstacle to Development

No serious development can emerge from a culture of permanent immediacy.

Development requires long-term thinking, coherence, continuous learning, and the ability to delay gratification. It depends on demanding public debate, strong institutions, and a culture of effort — intellectual, civic, and professional.

A society that sacralizes shortcuts condemns itself to stagnation and instability. It consumes symbols instead of building solutions. It prefers spectacle to the patient work of transformation.

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Recovering a Sense of Depth

Rejecting superficiality does not mean rejecting modern communication or visibility.
It means reconciling visibility with truth, image with reality, emotion with reason.

Lasting change begins when a society accepts a simple but uncomfortable truth:
there is no deep transformation without sustained effort, serious debate, and collective discipline.

Development is not a shortcut.
It is a path.

And as long as speed is preferred to depth, that path will remain out of reach.

Franck Essi

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