The Balkans Outside the Balkanalian Violence of Uni-nationality

It is an awkward fact that Milošević in the Hague cannot be accused of crimes he had committed before the signing of the Dayton Agreement, because this would drag into the whirlwind of court procedure and persecution all other signatories of this agreement (e.g., the USA, which since Baker’s visit to Belgrade, on the eve of the outbreak of war in Slovenia, played a still unclear role). This speaks of the terrible fact that the perpetrated crimes are a joint act of all players who endorsed the state of affairs with the Dayton Agreement (or imposed conditions on it even before, during the Geneva talks). Dayton, in its very essence, turns the trial in Hague upside down. Will someone also prosecute Sharon for obvious crimes (of state terrorism), which he is committing in the occupied territories under the guise of battling Palestinian terrorists? Can we write down that we doubt the ethically questionable military operations in the occupied territories? We have no intention of becoming entangled in the interpretative loops that skilful doctors of facts (demagogues) and their incompetent local babblers and apologists try to tighten around our neck. The post-modern paradigm of the equivalence of interpretations, in the absence of any kind of truth, can go to the devil for what we care. It is, indeed, perfectly clear that not everything is a matter of interpretation. Behind this planted academic argument, the constraint by force is at work. History, even though it may be in conformity with the present minute elaboration of time into hundredths of seconds and graphs, which present these relations in false magnifications, i.e., the history of the last three seconds or days; the history after “the end of history”, is written by those who have the possibility to publish, inform, supervise, in other words, those who have access to the media. But this cannot be the reason for a sensible man, using his own head, to give up rational thinking and rational conduct, which is not merely selfish and hasty. Do you remember the time when the world of German-speaking “civilised” Westerns was dominated by the ideological discourse of a lad from the Stubaj mountain range named Adolf Siegelgruber. Was it wise at that time to use one’s own head? Is it enough, in the broader sense, if a person is converted when political circumstances change, and repents because the false image he identified with and exploited has shattered together with the institutions of power with which he collaborated? Different people give different answers to this question. The strength, of course, lies in the ethical attitude, which differs from the prevailing expectations of the environment, to seek the remains of problematic humanism. And to seek in it, with precise and malicious analysis, the origins of evil which are supposedly crouching in the core of fervent libertinism which refused to join in the balkanalian orgies of the majority.
Is this indeed the case? What is that fundamental experience that enables an individual to eschew the claws of the basic phantasm of the good West and its uninterrupted, two and a half centuries-long democratic tradition, without falling into the embrace of an even worse terror, as for example Ezra Pound, who, out of repulsion of the hypocrisy of his own environment, thoughtlessly and tragically subscribed to the fascist ideals? Is it still possible to seek the answer in Jesus Christ and in the presence of God’s will in man here and now? The question is being asked at the level of personal experience and not at the level of some hollow or erroneous identification with the phantasm that assumes the place of the subject of our thought. It is question which, in the final analysis, calls attention to that fundamental “theological” difference between two of the four religions, present in the Balkans, concerning Jesus Christ as the son of God or as a man who was visited by the Holy Spirit (the other two religions consider him only as a prophet). Let us leave aside the rational explanations and, for a moment, dwell on the kingdom of incognisable experience, which can be labelled religious inspiration. Let us pay homage to our adversary and acknowledge his truth. Let us reach where it is impossible to reach; let us renounce our ignorance and open up to the currents outside. Is it possible to answer in this way the question about a human being, as a social creature, as someone who fairly and properly reshapes his planet? Is it possible to leave out from the circle of creatures the cows, lions, grasses, trees, rivers, clouds and the entire planet as such? What kind of step backward would mean the mentioned inclusion? What is then, in all of this, the place for man who is not satisfied with rowdiness in the football stadium or an unbridled drinking session in the narrow streets of the old part of town? And now the key question: What are the alternatives where the principle of intervention in the course of events may already constitute an act of violence? Can the Balkans represent a world that cast off all the particular basic images of the One, the world outside the One Image and shaped in the interplay of human relations in the field of recognising the other as oneself, that is, in the acknowledgement of someone different from oneself and his equal possibilities, freedom and in the expectation of the same gravity of joining. Therefore, not at the expense of the other but counting on him. Is this enough?
Let us leave aside, for the time being, the apparent idealism of the above thoughts and concentrate on what is coming toward us. Where can therefore an individual retreat, if he wants to return with his gifts, with those that come from him and are not something vicarious, something foreign which he has appropriated and is now handing over? Because the environment – and at this point we are thinking in practical terms – is not the result of and ideal, consummate history in Hegel’s sense (as was proposed by the shameless demagogue of ruthless capitalism. Fukuyama), but rather, a tattered series of retardations and orchestrations of games and arrogance of evil power, which creates the unproductive medium for the events of “istina” (Ancient Greek: aletheia, non-concealment). What does it mean to be alone? Let us descend to the bottom and start with ourselves. Can solitude be a social quality: solitude as a positive experience, reflexively, a kind of social imperative and corrective? The above ideas must be considered outside metaphysics, outside the principles that act, on the whole, as a universal pressure of a unified field, that is, outside the submission to idols and ideologies. Is there anything that would provide a common denominator to the mentioned four religious of the Balkans? For example, something outside religion, a kind of profound atheism outside language, in direct relation with the divine image of here and now (in the language of religion). After all, religions are the domain of man not of God. Everything we call divine, spiritual and so on, can only he a specific personal state of a given individual. Outside an individual’s first-hand experience there is nothing. I believe that here we may find a specific point of reference. Not in the sense of o lama, lama sabaktami – Oh God, why did you forsake me – but rather, why should man exclaim and lament at all? To keep silent and further deepen one’s silence, because he who remains silent is a specific individual. But this is not the silence about unjust or contemptible matters, about conformism or even conservatism, about submission to false images and supposititious idols. This is a creative silence that gives rise to constructive results.