The following paper was delivered on the international conference held by the Center of European Studies of Szombathely. At that time I was also asked for publishing it in Czech and Slovak. In Hungary the paper was put in Magyar Hírlap, in the issue of 20th October 1993, which, supposedly, could only pass into the hands of few people in Transylvania. I am very pleased about the honourable willingness of Korunk for undertaking the exceptional decision for republishing it. The matter and the theme – even if within a modest and short frame of explication – probably not in vain, try to clarify some principles and concepts important for all of us. (M.M.)

The two main tension centres of this century are national and international. We live in the euphoria of national feeling, of the rights due even to the smallest ethnic group – and from another aspect, the organization process of the multinational blocks also creates rationalized mutilating forms for this national feeling – how here and how there. The range is wide. And the number of the malcontents, the "historical disabled" are also multiplied according to this – again, how here and how there. For these people, everything what is national struggles with confusion – as they feel that they do not have their spiritually-emotionally balanced and legally secured "frame" for that. However, on the other hand, what is international does not serve as an adequate therapy considering the ideology and the quality of freedom it can provide. It manifests itself thus, especially, in the light of the experience that – fundamentally – any normative ideology can only be an external regulator of the trend of history. However, in a given case, it is hardly capable (or more precisely incapable) of proving itself to be stronger than the national-psychological motivations. This is confirmed by both the history of religion and that of politics. In this respect, the valid to date instrumental collection of politics is prepared only for surgical intervention, it is familiar with psychology merely in its rhetoric. This is the key of the Situation. Such a key which despite the innumerable attempts is unable to lock or unlock properly – can only assure the chain-reaction of tragedies. Nevertheless, to put a new key in the lock – especially, as an initiator – it is archaically inconsistent with the mutual obsession of the so-called national-historical responsibility and pride. About which it is always easier to perceive subsequently that most often they suffer the self-destructive carcinomatosis of some sort of human sense of justice. They can be the recurrent prognostic symptom of a region, but can also foreshadow a more universal agony. Namely, if we wish to have a profound insight psychologically, we can realize that, as a matter of fact, we do not desire the truth in itself, but the successful truth or the one, the success of which can be established – and that always prefers the promotion of myth, or mythicization. Thomas Mann writes that "the essence of myth is hidden in its reoccurence, timelessness and ever-presence." This most amazing intellectual and emotional creative ability of ours can become a nightmarish driving force, if it appears on the horizon of politics. In such a case, nostalgia, the interest of exclusion, or the faith of justness while swamping everything, can loose their connections with the historical rationality of the settlements creating new realities. In such a situation, what is the generally traceable psychical phenomenon? There is no appreciable difference among the variants. Although in several ways, we mythically start to believe in inevitable rights, interests and advantages – and afterwards, we immediately begin to build politics, pride and self-confidence on the top. And thus, we are getting further and further away from the recognition of a more universal reason. To look at it from a historical perspective: we begin to accommodate ourselves in something virtual and we celebrate this as if it were the proven realism of our own truth. That is to say, we behave exactly in the same manner as a child does while playing – yet, the consequences of what the child faces with healthy double consciousness. We, instead of this, prudently live to see it as a timeless state and situation, for which we give our lives and sacrifice the lives of others. Namely, for this historical parlour game. Adapting to this, we formulate the ideological platform of the philosophical and other theories of the struggle for existence, for the nation, etc. That is afterwards backed up by our religions with sublime demands, separately each of them with its own faith-absoluteness. This mechanism is the most tormenting problem of human existence; simply because it forces us every single day to realize the fact that at heart – with different motivations – we are all potential fundamentalists; or at least we could be. Who or where – more or less; without the guarantee of excluding the unexpected explosions. This does not need more actualization. To put it more literary: even our temporary harmonies are born from dishonour; one should always cry, in order for me, or for us to be happy.

However, one should add to this trivial chain of thoughts the conclusion which, after all, can serve as a starting point, if we contemplate upon the optimal promotion of human situation on the verge of the third millennium: this rule of operation can only be minimized, but not filtered out. The question is, whether there is, or there is not a chance for a long-range strategy of minimization. Under such circumstances, each theory production – and there is a superfluous multitude of them – turns towards the unavoidable question of the reinterpretation of politics and politician.

Clemenceau once declared the following: "...the active mankind is quite often attached to the present only through the historical fragments of old-fashioned sentiments." Marc Bloch, who quotes this sentence, elsewhere states: "The failures of the past do not mean any obstacle on the way to the success of the present. However, on the condition that the present is not burdened with those essential facts which caused the fiasco of the past."

These are two, frighteningly simple statements; but at the same time, it is also a frighteningly correct diagnosis of the situation in which we live at present – quite close, and geographically quite far.

I suppose I do not move away from the theme of the conference, if – let if be forgiven to me – I put the emphasis on the European and Central-European aspects of culture.

Central-Europe? – A recess of Europe. Europe is even a smaller recess of the globe. The approaching new century will surely measure the proportions and the importance differently from the foregoing practice. The stake of tomorrow, presumably, will not be the same as we declare it today.

What is Europe? Scpeticism can formulate this question like that: whether it is not the spectacular depository of a dynamic alexandrism – where the remnant senators of the agora and the Latium are grumbling arrogantly, without truly understanding the essence of what the surrounding, more and more multi-faced world is talking about? To the literature of the Finish, the poem of Kavafisz, entitled 'Waiting for the Barbarians' is a thought-provoking contribution – in which the leaders of the city dressed in all their adornments peer into the distance to see whether the barbarians are coming. And the remark of the harassing fear is made: what happens, if they are not coming indeed?

So, how the European tale began? The evolution of the modern times has a symbolically significant episode: when Saint Joan of Arc during her last inquisition expressed her opinion in the following words: "The French in France, the English in England: that is peace: "I believe that the ideological significance of this subdued sentence must not be underestimated, if we meditate on the character and consequences of those nation-states of European type. This nation-state model established the conditions for a triumphant and great success-promising new era. First of all, it legalized the framework of the protectedly and codifiedly isolated languages, cultures, literature, etc. – on the other hand, it laid the foundation of politics and of the instrumental collection of the political practice used and valid up to the present. That is to say, it made an attempt, for the first time, at trying to have – in stead of the amorphous and archaic-familiar blocks of peoples – the organism of autonomous nation-molecules as a determined organization cooperated.

It is hardly possible to separate the problem of the actual crisis-symptoms from this new development. The infamy is built in human action. And the most shocking experience is always the break-down of successfulness. The European nation-state model and ideology struggle with dramatic disorder. The striving for homogeneity got into tragic contradiction with the individual and universal norms of human rights, which are incomparably more obvious, and morally more mandatory for us than in the past. A schizophrenic situation: we follow such things, the ideological injustice of what we still do not find worth of us to be declared, with more vehement and ardent good conscience of the nation-state. The awakening to self-consciousness of the minorities came into a seemingly inextricable conflict with the possibilites provided by the instrumental collection of power and politics. So simple and mechanical the drama of the end of the millennium is, almost exclusively on the whole globe. Although the story is old – in possession of the instruments of the present and the future, it can not be compared with anything from the past.

What can overpass us: is the mestizo by blood and spirit. Who – whatever we do against it – will be authenticated, without mercy, by history. The man, whose moral, imagination, philosophy and literature are mestizo. And his beauty as well. Nevertheless, his homeland remains. I would like to repeat it: his homeland, language, culture and spirit still remain. For there is no contradiction in this. Merely, our present state of mind and our reflexes make us think that this is the scenario of historical self-denial.

Central-Europe?

Let us approach differently: Europe is a common work of art, a mutual enterprise from the very beginning. One can deny it, but the marks one has left on it can not be cut out by anybody. Europe is not a vitrine, the key to which is guarded, or may be guarded by certain people. The claim to this key cannot be asserted with messianism, or arms. Europe is an insatiable cesspool: its alarm-belled hydrolysis and digestive enzymes aggrandized it. What sprouted here in the past and will be able to sprout in the future, is at least a special case of germination.

I am aware of the risk, but still I try to improvise some – probably not completely incorrect – aperçu. Remaining purely in the restricted regions of Central-Europe.

Where else could have been germinated the extremely important and pioneer contribution of the Polish literature to the modern absurd, the ontologization of absurdity... –

the unique suggestive achievement of the Czech literature in the formation of the metaphysics of everyday life and spontaneity... –

the rural sensitivity of the Slovak literature, seemingly disappearing from Europe, that can be a warning sign of a future green attitude to life... –

the constitutional bridge-role of the Croatian-Dalmatian-Slovenian literature in the European evolution of the Mediterranean Balkan... –

the sensitivity of the Serbian literature towards heroic historical existence and its sophisticated and merciless melancholy, poesy and abundant life... –

the Latinistically disciplined, breathingly mould avant-garde Byzantinism and taste for story-telling of the Romanian literature... –

the hidden masochism and existentialism of the Hungarian literature, and in that the anecdotically suicidal self-irony of loneliness... –

or the contiuously stimulating irritation of the Russian literature on the unconscious and subconscious of the European literature–?

These are strongly simplified aperçu. However, they are probably good for shifting the emphasis over to the lesson to be learnt. That is to say, we have to make use of each other, and we also have to know what we can get from whom. We, only such a way, might be Europeans and cosmopolitans – having homeland as well. Every other nostalgia flirts with selfish provincialism: and sooner or later it prepares the ground for the various fundamentalism – politico-psychologically.

This, I believe to be the key word, that can only help to minimize in effect the infamy built in human action. The politics-polity is one of the most promising area of the psychological transillumination, and probably that is the reason why it rejects so superciliously the fact, how revealingly it is at the mercy of the operativeness of this discipline. In most of the cases, only in its rhetoric, it seeks after giving the impression as if it follows the logic of compelling facts in its decisions and compromise. Practically, this prevention is entirely natural – simply it is another matter, if it already functions as an unconscious mechanism, or there is still a chance for conscious-moral-human self-control. This difference is well-known from the chapter of the "psychology of everyday life." The precondition of all sorts of substantial therapy is the confrontation – and by no means the little tactics of reliance, or the deliberate self-deception. The "psychology of everyday life" and the "politico-psychology" clarify two qualities of responsability as well: the stake cannot be compared. And this is where politics fails. It tenaciously repeats its faults over and over again, it cannot manage, from its classical instrumental collection, to introduce a new offer. However much, the lesson might be provoking for the professional theory-elaborators of the so-called real alternatives and methods – only the absurd seems to be a solution: that is to say, politics should resign itself to such an action that, up till now, used to be labelled as an "idealistic" conception. Whereas, even the modification of the instrumental collection of power cannot promise the coming of a golden age, for it will still concern human action, and not any angelic one. We would only make the new perspective of suffering more worthy of us, and qualitatively more productive. This scepticism incomparably more perspectively helps us to minimize the political infamies than the several pragmatic plan-messianism about how one might be able – after all – to spoon the soup with a knife.

Let us throw a glance at the present symptom-focuses of our closer region. What is the psychical phenomenon of this variant of fiasco?

Let us phrase it with conceptual objectivity. All over the region the countries are after the so-called democratic elections. These elections always reformulate the independence of speech of the citizens, and on the other hand, the character of the service of politics automatically accepted by the election. In the question of "how to continue" this is the cardinal point. However, the danger exists, even in the democracies with great past, that politics tries to look at its role not as a commission, but by misunderstanding the commissioned power, quasi it makes an attempt to put the society in charge of serving politics itself. This is how the misleadingly "parliamentary" sophistries and administrational mechanism of the dictatorial-monarchial intentions and reflexes are created. Such a danger is even greater if we try to sail across from ideologized-theologized dictatorship to democracy. On the one hand, towards the previously time-honoured techniques – thus, with the "real-political" justification of other goals, they are henceforward considered to be natural. On the other hand, such a dictatorship does not only make the citizens hate a universally false dotrine (it has happened) – but it also dangerously intensifies the conviction that after all, instead of the experienced one, there should be an indeed guaranteed, universally true doctrine. Nevertheless, such a doctrine with emotional background of tradition is offered only by the various religions. With few exceptions, they are all apt to have – according to the extent of the maturity of the civil society – a determinative political authority and influence. Therefore, accepting the consequences and practice conflicting their dogmas and ideas, Levi Strauss, with not baseless scpeticism remarks that "each universal doctrine inevitably develops towards the one-party system, and towards solutions related to it, respectively, or towards such a destructive and abortive freedom in which the abandoned ideas are fighting against each other as long as they completely loose their essence."

It can be seen that such pathological findings and a situation report of this kind have little concern with the rational logic of the facts and the aimed processes; but all the more with the inharmonized vindication of psychological stimuli. In this sense, I feel the classically interpreted instrumental collection of politics to be tragically depsychologized, suicidally obsolete. Only the headway of the therapeutic political thinking can yield a result in the minimization of the fiascos. There is no other chance, just the escalation of fault-repetition. It has to be admitted that Marx was a genius in elaborating such an escalation; and on the other hand, indirectly, one can learn from his examination result. In our decisions we should automatically count with the fact, that the value and influential power of the psychological elements are not a bit less than those of money, arms, raw material and of similar other things. And the therapeutic tactics of political psychology should be quested by the most pragmatical way possible. Eventually, admitting that history also plays a psycho-drama; and not a fate independent of us.