The independent rhetoric of our parties annoys me. Not due to the fact that I ignore independence, but due to the fact that this rhetoric sounds false. The independency proclamations do not grow out of knowing things, they are shallow, and they are not accompanied by the awareness of what it is essential to do under the present historical conditions to preserve independency and have tangible benefits from it.
Bronisław Łagowski
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Jan Sadkiewicz: Problem with independence
"No intervention, ma'am – said Talleyrand – is simply a concept in the field of politics and metaphysics, which means about the same as intervention". akin – yes! – even greater confusion is accompanied by the Polish knowing of the word “independence”.
And this is the concept in the political dictionary of Poles, most likely the most important. independency is most celebrated, not only on 11 November, due to the fact that on 3 May, 1 and 15 August, 22 January and 29 November, or yet on 1 September, the fight for independence, defence of independency or manifestation of the will of independency are celebrated. According to independence, historical figures and contemporary leaders are assessed. Politicians talk about independence, publicists and analysts write, and if individual wants his opponent to be completely in the eyes of opinion, ultima ratio in specified situations, there is an accusation of deficiency of independence, betrayal of independence, disputing – in agreement, of course, with abroad – on our independence.
Perhaps there is nothing amazing about it. Since in the early days of the formation of modern nationalisms we lost our own state – the most perfect 1 (at least then and long after, possibly until today) the tool for defending the common good and spiritual and material development, since over the Polish identity for more than 2 100 years we have been pregnant with the belief that Poland is, but it may not be, that it can "die", it is hard to wonder that the thought of independency dominated the political imagination of Poles. However, he must not worry that this intense experience of independency (or deficiency of independence) is not accompanied by even a surviving reflection on what this independency is actually, what conditions it is subject to, what its place in the hierarchy of national objectives (it is accepted without discussion that it is the highest goal), what it should service and what it should sacrifice for it.
“Prayer is the father of thought” explained the origin of the Anglo-Saxon theorists of relations between nations, stating the goal as the first and essential phase of analysis and reasoning to enable it to be achieved. However, we cannot say this about an interesting case here. In Poland, the slogan of independency – although it cannot be denied the power to stimulate patriotism and the propensity for sacrifices – has stimulated a few, much more frequently has been a origin that takes the clarity of reasoning and paralyses rational action, and pushes to reckless and destructive acts.
As early as the 19th century, it became a tool of “set-up blackmail”, a shield for wicked acts, specified as the activities of the alleged daggers during the January Uprising, or yet a guile for impunity for the resulting disasters.
He who took the word of independency as a banner received in his own eyes, and – worse – besides in the eyes of a large part of the countrymen, modern and posterity, the right to self-direct the destiny of the nation and the release of work for its disasters.
Independence – and this is more symbolic than real – began to cast into the shadows all another national goals, including those that actually decided and decided on positions in the global environment. The “non-subsidiary” activity frequently provided the largest services not to Poland, but to its opponents. Failures did not provoke reflection and rationalization of action, on the contrary – independency became something more and more detached from reality, which logic and causality do not concern.
In turn, erstwhile in the 20th century Poles first unexpectedly regained an independent state and then were severely deprived of it, all these shortcomings of political reason deepened and expanded, and any attempts at intellectual consequence were pushed off the margin. It started with an illusion born after 1918, brutally dispelled 21 years later, that Poland owes independency to its own strength, alternatively than the extraordinary political configuration created by the First planet War. In the first years of the Second Republic, the public debate on independency took on, as Dmowski mentioned, the form of the bidding, who first and who spoke louder about it. independency was fundamentally linked solely to rebellion and armed struggle, disinvoking almost entirely different, possibly more important, fields of conflict between nations. independency in the eyes of Poles has become a function of moral mobilization, something independent of external conditions and its material bases, without calculating profits and losses.
There were and found a multitude of supporters of theories – on nothing unsupported, but contrary to logic and past – binding independence, and this with the lost uprisings, and this with the independency of the ULB states, and this with the preservation of American hegemony over the world.
Independence began to be regarded as something that belongs to Poland, not something that must be constantly built with its own effort, not only and not primarily armed.
The degree of intellectual confusion may be evidenced by the fact that the work for Polish independency has been borne by others – French, English, American, mostly Western – inundating them with reproaches and accusations of treason, whenever they neglect to fulfil this expected obligation. In the face of their own people, they began to enforce, through various forms of collective pressure, the order of unanimity in the reasoning of independence, denying the right of the people to disagree in the interpretations of national interests.
The love of independence, under the appearance of nobility, has become a mask of dangerous and utmost attitudes: pseudopatriotic conformism, moral megalomania, the failure of civilized respect for the enemy among the nations and the inability to free oneself from erstwhile hostility. “Everything Poles do is done under the breath of hidden hatred, which paralyzes their hands and distorts ideas...” noted a abroad observer about a century ago. “And they regulation just as the slave rules, getting to power.” This hate-built patriotism “is an highly dangerous danger – a Polish observer wrote earlier – due to the fact that it is simply a simple way to national suicide (...) looks only for enemies of his enemies to service them.”
Indeed, it is hard to talk about advancement erstwhile inactive in the 19th or early 20th century realism in reasoning of independency could represent people coming to the positions of power, specified as Wielopolski, or leaders of a crucial part of society like Dmowski, and in the mediate of the 20th century at most niche journalists like Aleksander Bocheński or Stanisław Stomma. Another fewer decades later, small was left even of this passionate devotion to a substance which could not be denied to the erstwhile generations of independence, and which gave way to idle excitement and drunkenness of independency discourse, transformed almost entirely into confusion of metaphors, and it is not known what crucial phrases are, increasingly annoying with its separation from the real problems and challenges facing the nation in the 3rd decade of the 21st century.
And yet – and possibly the most painful constancy in the erstwhile speech – Poles were able to consider this issue in a factual, deep, applicable way. Even before the outbreak of the November Uprising (Antoni Trębicki) and later after the January defeat (Stanisław Tarnowski), it was noted that independency intentions must not release work for the consequences of the actions taken. Self-reliance in thinking, mediocrity and patience in action (Fryderyk Skarbek); celebration patriotism was branded on the 1 hand, on the another hand independency fanaticism (Paweł Popiel) was demanded to take work for its own destiny (Michael Bobrzyński). First of all, Stanisław Kozmian laid the foundation for modern and almost technological political thinking, teaching in Things About the Year 1863 with 2 fundamental truths: that independency is comparative and that it is gradual.
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Independence cannot be absolutized, due to the fact that there is something more crucial next to it: national existence, that is, the population and its material resources, which are the foundations of political power.
And without adequate material means, at most formal sovereignty can be enjoyed, actual independency must be based on the strength that can defy the pressures of another global policy players. Therefore, supposedly independent efforts, explained Kozmian, which resulted in the demolition of the material foundations of national existence and the shift of the relations of forces to the detriment of Poland, are unreasonable and destructive, lead to a goal precisely other of the intended one.
Secondly, independency is not a zero-one value. independency cannot be treated – wrote Adolf Bocheński – as a thing that is abruptly recovered and abruptly lost. Reasonably, we can only talk of little or greater independence, little or greater anticipation of independency of the will of another nations and of imposing our will upon them. Formal sovereignty is only 1 of the levels that can be occupied in the global hierarchy, and there are many levels—from the planet power to the complete physical destruction—and the rivalry of nations for the best place in this hierarchy never ceases.
And here, perhaps, we come to the core of the Polish independency problem, due to the fact that it seems that the dream of Poles is to stop. For erstwhile the independency won to be forever, so that we should no longer gotta fight these constant struggles, to which Poles seem to have neither head nor character. It was no accident that 1918, as well as 1989, gave birth to a desire in Poland to frost global relations, so that it would always be as it is, and not from what else comes the longing for the end of history. Our perfect is to mock Dmowski, so that the boundaries between nations should be sanctified erstwhile and for all and that everyone can sleep on their own.
If the Polish political realism wants to find 1 thread connecting those who started this tradition in the 19th century, by those who took on and developed their achievements in the 20th century, after those who, like Bronisław Łagowski, inactive enrich it in the 21st century and do not let it to die, it is in my opinion an ongoing appeal for political maturity. The rejection of youthful vanity, of egotism, of arrogance, of the end of the foolishness, which is to attribute to 1 the qualities which 1 does not possess, the strength which 1 only dreams of. knowing the principles of global policy and rejecting the boastful belief that we can change these mechanisms, bend to our will. To educate the right age of man qualities which Poland most lacks: perseverance, consequences, mastery, prudence, courage – but not courage to face the enemy physically, only courage to look at each another in the right proportions, to reconcile with the conditioned real possible of the function that we can perform, and to realize the amount of work that needs to be done to match our aspirations.
To realize that the nation at any minute in its past is taking the test of its strength and fitness, and no real or thought historical merit from this test slows down.
"Poland must yet grow" – the title of an interview given by 1 politician in autumn 2009[1] – this is the harsh message that the native school of realism is against, according to which Poland belongs, here and now, partnership with the powers and the law of failure to account for the strength and interests of another countries, and it is the planet that is stupid and despicable, not us, if we do not receive it immediately.
"Many imagine that independency is an event like a conflict won," writes Łagowski, while "in reality it is gradually reached in stages." Whether the nation is moving up or down the global hierarchy depends partially on the quality of the political organization it is able to create, partially on changing external conditions, on us independent. The main threads of Łagowski's publications throughout the full period of the 3rd Polish Republic were, first, to point out those external phenomena to which our influence is limited or none, of which we request to be aware, secondly, of formulating the conditions to be fulfilled in order to fulfil this level of independence, which is the share of our generation, fill in the best content and possibly make the basis for raising it.
A light column form cannot obscure the fact that we are dealing with a profoundly thought-out doctrine of the state, based on the achievements of the best representatives of Western political thought (there is no place to mention all theorists and practitioners of politics from which the Łagowski's achievements freely derive). Each text – not of the more than a 100 that consist of this choice, but of the more than a 1000 that formed the basis of it – is just an excuse to express any timeless thought, any universal rule, any insightful reflection of the surrounding reality. And since in our highly complex world, 1 can never foretell everything, political wisdom, teaches Łagowski, is to follow the right principles.
Whoever digs into this writing will learn the basic truths about the state and social life, the political community and the power over them, the hierarchy of values and the definition of national interest. Łagowski recalls the importance of order – legal and material – in interior relations, strength in global politics, honesty in thinking. It teaches how to draw teachings from past and enrich national tradition. sensitizes the deception of politicians and media manipulation. It shows how powerful an instrument of knowing the planet can be an independent head armed with the centuries-old achievements of political thinkers native and alien, and how crucial it is to destruct irrationality from political and social life.
Finally, he realises that “Can Poland afford independence?” is not a rhetorical grasp, a call to fight or a shout at a rally, but a real problem over which the elite of the nation should constantly bow.
The answer to this question is not a function of our desires, but of what we can actually accomplish. It is impossible to give it, as by a reliable analysis of interior and external conditions, own and abroad forces, dynamics of changes in global relations.
A weak nation in anarchical global environment cannot stand – as Ksavery Pruszyński taught during the last war – for the luxury of not thinking. The publication of Łagowski surely does not let specified luxury.
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It is not known how relations between the Donald Trump administration and the Kremlin will work, but Vladimir Putin already has reason to feel relieved. The stocks of mud that Western (and Polish) media had for the president of Russia will be half destined for Trump, president of the United States. It's always the 2 of us.
The erstwhile issue of "Review" rightly states that "the triumph of Trump and the Republican organization is simply a major defeat of the American mainstream media". They almost unanimously acted against Donald Trump, which is not yet a disgrace, but grossly exaggerated the slanders and almost unanimously mistakenly forecasted the result of the election. They were imitated by Polish media, adding the nonsense of agitating people in Poland to participate in the American elections utilizing thumbs-holding, as if in the belief that Polish thumbs would be added to the result. Polish journalists love to judge; objectivity in describing facts makes them sad due to the fact that they do not feel demiurge of events. They feel them erstwhile they judge, teach, discipline, ridicule. The existent point, according to their belief, is in judgment, not in an nonsubjective state of affairs.
Has anyone heard of the priest Joseph Maria Bochenski, the spiritual name Innocenta? He was a very learned and life-experienced Dominican, professor, and at 1 time besides the Rector of the University of Freiburg, Switzerland. He taught doctrine and logic, wrote against Marxism and so had a position among the sovetologists. I erstwhile attended his university lecture on aesthetic phenomena in real life. 1 of the examples he cited was taken from the 1920 war, in which he participated as most likely a owlan. I will not mention this example so as not to make the small ones worse, especially the old small ones, due to the fact that the young, it seems, are no worse. Since I will usage the argument from his authority, I will add that he owned his own plane, which he flew to his late age, and was the brother of 2 another known Bochens, Alexander and Adolf. Well, this father Innocent Bocheński wrote, among another things, a tiny but very rich work entitled The Handbook of the Wisdom of the World.
At first it is reserved that, as a Christian priest, he cannot urge everything that consists of the wisdom of this world, for, as St. Paul (I Cor. 1.20) said, “Christ made her foolish,” without denying that Christianity is foolish in the eyes of unbelievers.
Of this The manual... 1 can separate the apparent of this world, and these even a priest must acknowledge. I will skip the issues here, so to speak, wise and limit myself to 1 apparent truth, very much in the Polish deficit media. Bochenski calls it the rule of competence: “Take care of things that depend on you, not those that do not depend on you. Indeed, taking care of things that don't depend on us is very stupid. 1 of the strangest phenomena in nature is that so many people think, care, talk about things that are not affected.” However, it is essential to separate between matters that are not affected and those that are affected by a insignificant influence. In society an individual may think that it has no effect on anything, erstwhile in reality its tiny, almost insensitive influence combined with specified almost insensitive influences of another individuals can lead to effects of large importance. But what to think of a Pole, specified as a writer who seems to think that holding his thumb behind Clinton or Trump affects the result of the fresh York elections? He doesn't think so, but he's going through the situation like he's thinking. Bochenski fundamentally states: “Do not value unnecessarily. This rule prohibits not only actions in matters that we have no influence on, but besides judging specified matters. Its justification lies in the fact that valuation usually leads to the taking of, prohibited by the next commandment: Don't worry about what you can't control. Taking care of things independent of me, getting angry at them is evidently stupid due to the fact that it's pointless and unpleasant. If any oppressors execution innocent people, that is most likely sad, but if I cannot aid put an end to these murders, why should I care about them?" Of course, we request to consider whether or not I can truly help.
We don't have this difficulty erstwhile it comes to the past. What's done is done, and to historical events you gotta deal with a peculiar restraint that can't be done by stupid people.
"Think and feel independently of others," calls priest Bocheński. The regulation present is more timely than ever. The perfect media goes deep into the psyche of individuals, takes the authenticity of thinking, weakens the sense of reality, along with common sense; “most people do not regulation themselves, are driven by others, apply their feelings, moods, thoughts to what others do and think. This spiritual slavery of the crowd is supported by mass media that care all day for everyone to know what they should think and feel.”
All Polish mainstream media followed the American message and preach the same: Donald Trump is an unpredictable ignorant, misogynist (a woman's antipathic) and at the same time an intrusive seducer, narcissist, sexist, liar (a Canadian writer who did not step aside from him, counted 25 lies a day), vulgar rude and inactive remaining dictionary of abusive words. It is not known how Poles respond to specified a press and tv effort of intellectual violence, we know how Americans reacted.
"Review", November 21, 2016
Footnotes:
[1] See page 296 of this book.
