In the fumes of truth

Today's fight for the future of Western civilization no longer focuses (only) on which information is the fact and which intentionally or unconsciously disturbs it. It's about just knowing what fact is. Can he inactive realistically be what Kant, Mill and Habermas drew? Did she yet get stuck in Machiavelli, Nietzsche and Foucault’s prophecies and warnings? The power pendulum clearly tilts to the another side.

In Socrates, fact is the foundation of everything. Human virtue is based on achieving it, and morality is based on pursuing it. She's objective, and without her, everything is meaningless. Aristotle felt the same way, but he was already more realistic. He emphasized that ethical life is based on the ability to admit truth, and a society just on respect for it. This one. wording However, it was a sign of reconciliation with the inevitable co-existence of falsehood alongside fact in social life. Michel de Montaigne pointed to the consequences of this state of affairs in the form of not only inaccessibility of full fact in real life, but besides yet its subjective character. Truths have a plural number and they can collide. Uncertainty, misgivings and doubts are immanent human condition. Of course, Machiavelli went all the way and subjected the fact to political pragmatism, goals and interests of effective power. So he was an incomparably better prophet of the 21st century than Socrates.

Kant linked the fact to reason, as if being in agreement with it was the only rational behavior, which seems very categorical, but sheds light on irrationalism as—second, alongside bad will—the link of falling into falsehood. Mill made 1 of the cornerstones of his liberal construction of freedom of speech, public debate, technological investigation and, as a result, the media. He pointed out that fighting or concealing communities are hindering their own development, and that to this day remains a note of optimism, which our hope clings to. Nietzsche somewhat reversed the logic of Machiavelle, who justified the lies of the people of power, questioning the existence of fact in the Sopratian sense of the word and acknowledging that the alleged fact was an artificial product of the conventions of culture and a tool for manipulating people by power and various influential interests. It is from him that the word “narration” becomes another name of truth, which yet creates a bridge of fluid transition from fact to falsehood.

Ultimately, more contemporaryly, Habermas, following Mill in part, recognizes the fact as the consequence (product?) of free and open discussion and the foundation of justice in exercising power and the link of rational consensus in society (how utopian specified a consensus becomes!). On the another hand, Foucault – resounding Nietzsch – recognizes the fact as a product of the relation of power and social institutions, where power shapes and relativizes the foundations of truth, after which it uses it as a tool of control of individuals. Habermas expresses alternatively dreams, and Foucault brings us to the ground of hard realities.

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Today's fight for the future of Western civilization no longer focuses (only) on which information is the fact and which intentionally or unconsciously disturbs it. It's about just knowing what fact is. Can he inactive realistically be what Kant, Mill and Habermas drew? Did she yet get stuck in Machiavelli, Nietzsche and Foucault’s prophecies and warnings? The power pendulum clearly tilts to the another side. However, regardless of the result of the duel, Montaigne is bound to be the center of the competition "presenting the modern function of fact in the socio-political life of the lost West". We can't/ don't want to build a consensus against the objectivity of fact anymore. And if it can be subjective, then it's her legion. I have my truth, and you have yours. Mine is no little actual to me than yours is to you. What are you gonna do? What am I gonna do? I don't think so.

If everything could be mathematics, there would be little hatred in the planet (that there would be little many another phenomena, including affirmative ones that build the colour of humanity, is... <ehem> fact and a subject for another occasion). erstwhile liberals in an alliance with a fewer others, democratic in their cores, the views of social and political affairs came against dictatorships, murderisms, totalitarianisms, censorships, and propaganda, they did so, among another things, to guarantee that there was ideological pluralism, pluralism of values, pluralism of views, projects, demands, goals, dreams and ways of life. We had the right to look at the same objects of reality differently. This task was convinced that ideas, assessments, values, views and demands were separated from the facts by a certain qualitative and in fact impenetrable barrier. Pluralism of the erstwhile was to be built in the realities of unity of the latter. The fact of the facts seemed so solid that she was not exposed to erosion despite the deficiency of a top-down compulsion to pay tribute to her. Human rationalism was to be a critical link here. It failed, and it failed at a time erstwhile the darkness of ignorance, ignorance, or deficiency of access to the attainments of discipline were – it seemed – completely and irreparably dispersed.

So we live here in a planet where there is pluralism of truths. Worse still, each side of this increasingly corrupting dispute is marked by the stigma of the stamp of truth. This is by no means a collision between right-wing and conservative fantasyists with sober reasoning and ultra-rational progressives. Both sides accepted for their catechism mixes of truths, half-truths, perversions, myths, lies and nonsense. This may not be a mirror - mirrored mix, but false contamination affects both sides.

But there is simply a disparity. Although hypocrisy has become an inevitable phenomenon of dispute under specified framework conditions, its theatricalization nevertheless distinguishes the disputed contractors. Of course, no 1 wants to admit falsely, but it is not that both sides are equal to the expected fact into values. While Liberals, Left, Center and average Stream of Liberal Democracy (called frequently mainstream, although it will be shortly adequate ...), caught in preaching nonsense, admit mistakes, point to the imperfection of investigation tools, the technological process based on the rule of verification and sometimes forgeries, besides whether concepts and mostly let go to their "eye" erstwhile speaking of fact touches large quantifiers, so the utmost right and populist rather seriously demands designation of its claim to the position of the apostles of absolute truth. Their criterion for "setting" the foundations of nonsubjective fact is simple: the fact is what it—the right—says. Showing the false of 1 or another of it does not change anything here, due to the fact that then it simply modifies the form of absolute fact and utilizing the tools of various "narrations" incorporates this false into its knowing of truth, inactive insisting on its nonsubjective nature.

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So erstwhile liberals postulate the freedom of a human individual, the right-wing protest, claiming that freedom is not in line with the fact about the nature of man, with the "natural law" to which man is subject. Natural law is the primary pillar of right-wing fact and possibly the most crucial argument for its claim to objectivity. Thus, in the context of the Polish public debate, it is no longer amazing that the right in the highest moral lift opposes the right of women to choose or the right of LGBT people to enter into unions, arguing that the first order of fact is simply a crime of infanticide, and the second is incompatible with the fact about people as beings called into heterosexuality. However, even at the same time, the right hand rejects, for example, historical facts disturbing the image and identity of the Polish nation, as constantly in the past of the hero or victim, and never the perpetrator of the crime. Rationalism would require consequences in the approach to truth. If the fact is crucial here, then so is it. But political realities no longer make specified demands. The fact is erstwhile needed and invoked, and erstwhile troublesome and called false.

Historical policy in Poland is simply a thorn between the ribs of the right-wing desire to merge with the fact and condemn enemies to the name of false agents. Of course, in the applicable realities of global policy, the usage of historical policy, as a simplified, smoothed-out, frequently selective and emotional narrative, which here and there takes a actual discord, is simply a phenomenon known from a long time ago, which has been utilized almost universally and brings sometimes concrete, tangible results in the context of achieving goals and defending the vital interests of states. Machiavelli would have confirmed that only a fool would have shunned her erstwhile everyone was reaching for her. This is all the more hard to deny in the modern world, as increasingly absurd in their false theories about the past, as proclaimed by authoritarian state centres, begin to strengthen as legitimate positions in discussions about the most contemporary and future problems. In the wake of the dictator of Russia, the president of the United States no longer has any opposition to utilizing apparent lies as a weapon in global relations, and exposing incompatibility with the fact of people of specified a position appears to be a completely meaningless act.

False is so the basis for building a fresh geopolitical order. fewer inactive anticipate that the historical policy of the states will strive for the truth, as Socrates would like. The reality of dirty fighting is that everyone's gonna splash mud. However, the question of whether it is legitimate to form a lying, one-sided and biased historical communicative for interior purposes is rather different. Selling to the planet bullshitu The goal of fighting for fundamental interests is 1 thing. Selling it to your own society is simply a different arrangement of circumstances for moral assessment.

Whether goals specified as bringing the nation out of trauma of a violent and tragic past, building national pride (or possibly simply nationalism), shaping a heroic identity, highlighting its own harms in hiding another people's harms, motivation to act, activity and work, the word: transforming stories of national past into a circumstantial feel-good experience justifies and justifies (self) lying about her meanders? Is emphasizing and sweeping under the carpet little evil in this shot? It seems that it is possible to conduct an effective global historical policy while maintaining integrity in its investigation and learning about its own society through successive generations. Especially in the case of Poland, which has strong arguments without powdering. Fooling your own nation doesn't should be the price of efficiency in abroad policy. Especially since people so stupid, encourage besides pompous formulating and exposing their own based on partial false identities, lose their vigilance, get distant with caution, fall into the hazard of repeating mistakes from their own past – frequently the mistakes that the communicative of historical policy has chosen to stay silent about.

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Examples are not missing. Look at the alleged Targowice. For fear of the feeling and most likely the reaction of the right, whether school education or the level of subject in public media, there is inactive a deficiency of clear saying that the traitors of the First Republic were people of planet view dominated by values specified as attachment to tradition or deep Catholic faith. Apart from the communist era, of course (when Moscow bowed to the rulers of the Polish People's Republic – but they did not do so due to their sympathy towards Russian culture, and the common ideological inclinations, referring to the current of political thought, which the "old world" with traditions and ancient national cultures wanted to destruct originally), the "Russian party" is inactive reborn over the Vistula on the far right, surrounded by the same ideas and values of traditionalism, anti-occidentism, utmost conservatism, spiritual fanaticism and supposed, but poorly experienced patriotism. From 2026 to 27 we will be forced to face her fresh incarnation. Her and highly probable prospects for her taking over part or all of the power in Warsaw, just at the minute of the renaissance of Russian imperialism.

Let's look at the detonation of anti-Ukrainian sentiments. possibly if the dominant historical communicative in Poland did not diminish the scale of the illiterate behaviour of our compatriots towards the judaic nation, which was harmed in our part of the planet in 1939-45 (and besides the scale of anti-Semitism in the Second Polish Republic), if Roman Dmowski's views on judaic fellow citizens were openly discussed (instead of persistently taking him to the pedestal), if, at least half as frequently as the Volynian crime was said about the treatment of Ukrainian residents of the Republic of Ukraine for respective 100 years of coexistence with us in 1 country, then possibly then average decency would not let him to turn his back on them and snore them just erstwhile their country is in mortal danger?

Let's look at the process of replicating the planet War II trauma to subsequent generations, which causes even a generation of great-grandsons of actual victims of the German Nazi Beastism to want to see an enemy and a torturer in the western neighbourhood, alternatively than a possible partner in defending Central Europe through the modern east Beastship. At the borders of Poland there is the aggression of Moscow to Ukraine, but with all subsequent month, along with the upcoming success of Russia in this clash, the awareness of the threat from the east falls, and the destiny of the alleged threat from the west is growing. The "Russian Party" turns vectors easy and deprives us of our endurance instincts due to the fact that the historical communicative has fooled us?

Finally, let us look at all-Polish reactions to the Gdańsk exhibition about young Pomeranians incorporated into the Wehrmacht before 1945, usually forced, in individual cases – no. We have not learned any lesson from the semblance of the early Polish People's Republic, from the times of the stigma of Kashubians or Mazurians. Voices from various Łódź, Łomż, Lublin or Rzeszów communicate outrage that in Gdańsk past researchers want to survey their local history, another than those there. possibly there would not be specified hysteria if our historical communicative allowed any position on regional and local history, alternatively of pushing into the heads of students across Poland only the past written from the position of Warsaw and Krakow? In the planet of pluralism of truths this collision was inevitable, and there will be many more in Poland.

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Poland is trapped in double. Not only are we torn apart by the discord about the objectivity of the facts that are going on throughout the West. Additionally, in our case this disagreement includes reading our own history, and this 1 occupies, most likely unnaturally, a very early place in the catalogue of our filters to look at the planet and ourselves. alternatively of the future, we focus on the past, on history. Treating Germans in 2026 as perpetrators of crimes, occupiers, harmdoers and monsters alternatively of co-creators of the future European order and allies in the hybrid war against the Russian imagination of the planet as a field of power influence is the most spectacular misunderstanding that follows. But there's more. For example, Polish search for a circumstantial founding story for the III Rzeczpospolita yet did not focus on the obvious, i.e. on events of 1980-81 and then 1989-90. Instead, in society, as an axis leading to regaining sovereignty, the Warsaw Uprising is resonated and the figure of "soldiers cursed". These unquestionable (and in the case of the latter, in any cases besides dubious) heroes appear to many Poles present as actual acousticists of the independent Polish uprising in 1989. They, not Wałęsa, Borusewicz, Kuron, Mazowiecki, Bujak or Frasyniuk...

The coming years, or even months, will show whether Polish "persistence in history" will besides set an intellectual trap for us in the context of the upcoming, deep geopolitical shuffle related to changes in US politics. Our historical communicative makes us consider ourselves the ultimate ally of the United States in the region, a country permanently bound by strong ties to Washington. May this attachment not be blind adequate to miss the minute of the American-Russian alliance against Europe, including us. If this omission had occurred, the historical communicative would have made the Polish elites of power foolish adequate to talk in a sense of "Polish Nord Stream".

Finally, last year's presidential election. Poles elected Karol Nawrocki as head of state. A man who was inactive a fewer months earlier unknown to the public outside Gdańsk. Of course, this success would not have been without the support of the PiS, 1 of the 2 most powerful political parties. However, there is besides a proposition that this success could besides not be without specified a strong association of professional career and the achievements of a publicist-scientific candidate with the subject of Polish history, without his engagement in cooperation with the movements of patriotic commemoration of history, fascinations with historical reconstructions and, of course, working in the Museum of the Second planet War in Gdańsk and in the IPN, where he was committed to experiencing and popularizing both Polish martyrdom and Polish heroism. The candidate so intensely and in all respect connected with building national identity based on a concrete form of historical narrative, tracking down cases of “antipolonism” around the world, proved to be the perfect candidate for president of the Republic of Poland. That besides speaks for itself.

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Thus, there are real modern risks for the future of Polish democracy, national security, social identity and a place in the geopolitical puzzles of the 21st century. It besides carries intellectual danger. As Timothy Snyder noted, stubbornly stuck in history, the conviction of its eternity, its cyclical repetition, the invariance of logic and series of events, the erstwhile and for all roles of friends and enemies, is the essence of the Russian view of the world. The West treats past completely differently, linearly, as a series of events following itself accidentally or linked in a causal sense. specified mentality brings with it the possible of reform, growth, prosperity, improvement of fate, makes the future dependent on work and the efforts of circumstantial people. 1 who thinks that way learns from history, but focuses on the future and works for it. In the Russian sense of past as a movement on the wheel, hopelessness, inadequacy, determinism, the inevitability of disasters, the inability to forgive and reconcile prevail.

Is the Polish obsession with past a sign that our national soul is only partially Western? Will the age of pluralism of fact push us where we do not want to go?