Meteorite
Europe, the respectable elderly lady that she is, has been behaving totally inertly toward some of her limbs this past decade. Her power is lame to the point of almost having no meaning left. She uses only the rational half of her mind in self protection, covering in old-age tiredness her eyes and ears from the bitter truth of her nature, the nature that succumbs to its own calculated self interest. In this, she is boringly predictable and, afraid of this boredom, she pushes and goes on by her own narcissistic, spectacular image and also the images of her contradictions… ideological self-corrections. The west has turned a blind eye and quietly believed in the myth, even though realistic assessments were possible and welcome, even necessary for the protection and benefit of the entire corpus, which has nothing to do with the politically prevalent model of euro centrism. This serves only the interests of particular limbs as they have subjugated the model. One gets confused: not to wait – each moment everything is different. However beckoning may be the colours in which freedom is offered, most times it dissolves into a consumer – restricted despotic dictatorship of corporative libertarianism, offering itself as the universal model, the base matrix of the post industrialist globally capitalistic world. We cannot wait for what is about to happen, because when it happens it will be too late. Nobody involved gets out alive. Luckily, this linearity is severed sooner or later and the dissonances of life ring out.
If the predictability of a solid and calm westerner represents the one side, the other is the unpredictability of the »wild« man from the Balkans, faithfully complementing the first to form a whole picture. If we agree to this set-up, we could say that the world of rationalism, the world of necessity is reflected in its own contradiction, the world of freedom, irrationalism. Rewinding this film, we also plant onto this world a demonism, thereby revealing a hidden moral note from the West, an empty and superficial ring of obsolete renaissance »paroles« about freedom and puffed-up phrases about the right to he different, the consciousness of its self-assurance. Yet it is just the Balkan experience that tells us there is no such thing as self-assurance. What today the West-East relationship represents on a horizontal scale, the North-South relationship represents on a vertical one. The global situation of an age is reflected in this, a particular equilibrium of horror. But what is being informed well or not well, and – does it mean anything? The only reporting here is sincere narration, or else it is not reporting and the dignity and precedence of mankind comes under question. Especially when it comes to the rage of the masses and thereby to the »natural idiotization of human nature«, where all criteria of good or evil are lost. The pressure of the masses is always inhuman. A rationalization that offers a normative answer to crime cannot fit with a horrible atmosphere, full of blood and murder. Man as a free being is responsible for evil. The impersonal force of the masses cannot be held responsible for evil (the true reason is in the personal, in the internal depth of affection that is part of the personal culture). Violence breeds violence: coming to terms with evil always means death, even though some might add sarcastically that it means death only of the person within (while the Western TV screen keeps feeding us pictures of any murder or violence). Bad news reflects the typical demagogy of today’s resentiment – the bipolar reflection of reality, knowing only ours and theirs, good and evil, nice and mean. In reality, life is about a multitude of fragmental ways that cannot bear bipolar labels or demonisations. To put it simply – we must not allow such simplifications. Never. And we do not even have to mechanically deconstruct Underground by Kusturica. After all, we were all in the Bunker. Some in this, some in other ways – one must not create new stereotypes! Once we’ve gone too far, there is no turning back. And yet Europe, whose ideals have so many times inverted into their own opposites, has another option in recognizing the differences of being and the wealth of particularities.