Today marks another anniversary of the death of Piotr Szczęsny – the Grey Man. I dedicate my memory to this text. We woke up a fewer years besides late.
Yesterday Robert Krzyszton, the wise and delicate man I have been talking to and working with for years, most likely in consequence to besides frequent, frequently rude comments and besides simple assessments in social media alleged hard-core PiS electorate reminded the entry from May 2019 of prof. Małgorzata Omilanowska, our former, distinguished Minister of Culture. I'm going to quote it in its entirety due to the fact that it's truly worth it, and in this substance nothing has changed to this day:
"I read, read various entries on fbs and eyes I do not believe. So let me remind you:
There's no worse man:
1.who goes to church from an atheist,
2. who, due to poorness in which he lives, values 500+ more than highways
3. who did not inherit: a. property, b. ambition (and opportunities) to gain education, c. the ability to enjoy reading, or participate in a "high" culture, etc.
4. which has no tools to verify TVP propaganda (check TVN24 coverage)
5. Who rolls in a field or in a pigsty and a henhouse from morning to evening and falls on his face in the evening giving up chitchat on Facebook with a large city electorate.
My grandpa decided that the eldest boy inherits the land, the another children go to town to study. present I am a prof. of humanities, due to the fact that I received support from my educated parents at the start and during, and 1 of my uncle sisters (a widow) with primary education works with the aid of a boy large farm. We don't vote for the same parties, I perceive to Bach, and she most likely listens to Martyniuk, but she's not worse than me, she just has different lives and different priorities. They request to be understood and created for her and her akin program offer, alternatively than writing stupidity on Facebook in the sense of superiority of her diplomas, interests, experience of trips around the planet and cognition of fashionable writers. Thieves, criminals, murderers, immoral harmdoers, but not people with different political views deserve disrespect! Their life experience tells them to make specified choices and that's it. There is nothing to live on, just a. effort to scope them with a message to them, b. fight to equalize the chances of starting people from tiny and large towns, rich and mediocre families, ambitious and unambiguable environments (but it is an investment in future generations). And delight don't compose to me about “the item under the beer stand” which drinks pincets due to the fact that I will banish.”
I commented on this message by Małgorzata Omilanowska, due to the fact that I think the substance is very important, and now, after winning the 15.10.2023 elections, it is peculiarly important, due to the fact that we realize that 1 of the fundamental tasks facing us is the restoration of social ties, "reconciliation" – as Donald Tusk calls it, burying ditches, cooperation but besides settling and drawing conclusions for the future.
I wrote: “This is all true. Beautifully and simply written, but in my opinion it does not explain everything – good and evil remain, the ability to choose, besides we should not justify everything and not have each other's requirements. On these grounds, respect is built among people.
To put it plainly (awarely in this context possibly besides strong) the Holocaust cannot be "justified" in any way, even though so many people have done so to date. I will remind you of the Green Border – evil is happening now. In another words – to realize this – to justify – no. Evil and consent to evil frequently exist.
Of course, insulting, collective responsibility, contempt, disgusting language, regardless of the views and motives above all, attest to those who usage these forms... we should not justify this either, although we justify ourselves, above all, erstwhile emotions carry us...”
The form of a Facebook comment required abbreviation and it kept me quiet so I decided to grow my short statement.
We have/we have faced in Poland Kaczyński with nationalist populism in power, a law subordinate to the political will of the rulers, spreading hatred with hostile propaganda on a large scale. The subject of their actions was all of us. any accepted this for theirs, others rejected it, and others pretended not to concern them, and due to their indifference they allowed the increasingly brown, fascist, violent regulation of the right hand of Kaczyński to be applied among people.
People can be angry, cruel, hurt others, and that makes them happy. It's not imaginary. past and the present teaches that we are dealing with this in private, everyday, professional and unfortunately besides in collective behaviour, in which policies and ambitions of any lead to disasters and real evil on a large scale. Kaczyński's intention and practice of power is simply a clear example of this. And in any and others we participate on any side – nobody is innocent, we always have a choice.
We know them, we know very well that many people, frequently of the alleged low cultural capital, mediocre education, more frequently unprofitable than wealthy, Catholic or not, have shown large nobility, sometimes heroism and many "educated", a lover of Bach or Mahler, vice versa, turned out to be mean, prone to large or petty but always wicked. On the anniversary of the heroic and tragic act of the protest by Piotr Szczęsny – the Grey Man, as he presented himself, specified a reminder and discrimination is peculiarly important. Social status, material, cultural and environmental determinants have their important, frequently deciding importance, but always the choice is made by a peculiar person, and if this choice affects others, it is subject to evaluation and, in my opinion, it should be subject to specified assessment. On the another hand, the opinion that individual due to circumstances may be released from this work for his election is treated differently in a way that is actually his/her humiliation, defrauding from subjectivity, insulting. specified an opinion is most likely against the intention of expressing pride and a sense of superiority.
If we take ourselves seriously – let's talk about it.
The first time I realize that many people may not have heard, understood, accepted many warnings, warned against the anticipated consequences of PiS taking power, more, could trust and lend them assurance and vote for them in the 2015 election. But in the following, in 2019, 20 and now, erstwhile openly, with the discovered helmet Kaczyński with his people has consistently introduced force into the Polish realities of collective life? First a symbolic, verbal, then legal, economic, political and sometimes physical usage of the force of the organization of the state. If individual voted for them, the usage of force by the authorities at least accepts and I think that many people simply like it and anticipate it from the authorities and feel good in an authoritarian country.
This gives them a kind of sinister satisfaction motivated by sentiments, complexes, envy, and frequently unrestrained desire to retaliate. Authoritarian power and, unfortunately, frequently rather a wide scope of "understanding", "translation" and thus "justification" of authoritarianism are fueling specified sentiments by calling them "the empowerment of the excluded" or "the dignity" erstwhile the motives and intentions of power are clear – it is about gaining and perpetuating power by indicating the susceptible external and interior enemies.
This must be discussed and specified individual and collective behaviours described, diagnosed and assessed. To realize but not to justify. Let us not treat people like a flock of rams that they "did not know," "did not see," "did not understand," they knew, they saw, and they wanted. Yes, they were mainly older people, from villages and tiny towns, going to church all Sunday, but not only... about 7.5 million Poles and Poles.
Everyone has the right to make mistakes, explanations, repairs and changes. We should be able to understand, to forgive, to judge, to punish erstwhile the law is broken and, above all, not to forget, due to the fact that the sanctioning, the silence and justification of evil, the permissions for evil, and sometimes the sharing of good will not teach us and will have consequences.
Therefore, in my brief commentary under the post of Mrs. Małgorzata Omilanowska I recalled Polish unaccounted for and unworked anti-Semitism and participation in the Holocaust. Everything has its consequences, exists in individual and collective memory, affects and determines our behavior. Among another things, Kaczyński consistently and effectively appealed to these resentimists in his propaganda or narrative, as anyone would like.
I don't know what Tusk means by the word "conciliation" but I see it so that white is white and black is black and there are besides shades of grey. It is essential to call things by name; envy, the desire to retaliate, and the spread of hatred towards others should be stigmatized with empathy, the desire to aid and work for the common good to reward. The field on which this reconciliation can take place must be outlined. The death of Peter the Happy demands of us.
