Matic Munc today (rightly!) criticized charlatanism in esotericism, spirituality, pop psychology, self-knowledge, self-help on FB... He referred to the book program of the Kiara publishing house, where the editorial staff uncritically released works by authors who, in his opinion, do not deserve to be published.

We need such criticism, but in order for it to have real weight, it requires a broader critical targeting of the entire chest of drawers, especially those largest drawers that are normalized and even protected from criticism and ridicule: religions, economics, politics, etc. Let’s stay with religion, which is nevertheless most rooted in the unverifiable and therefore rules all other spheres.

Exorcism, for example, is still considered a legitimate “psychological” treatment in serious spiritual institutions for those who have been possessed by the “devil” or some other “demons”. Talking to imaginary “spiritual” entities is quite common in churches and temples in practically all religions of the world. The priest stands before the congregation like a radio, decoding God’s waves into “intelligible” messages. Through a series of rituals, prayers, and meditations, he ensures that the flock is obedient to the spiritual shepherd.

According to the standards of empiricism, rationalism, or even common sense, there is no religion without charlatans, without being a cult. We do not have to attend a Satanic mass or listen to glossolalia in some charismatic church; even in the Orthodox churches we find collective nonsense in abundance. The largest religions have gigantic institutions that provide apologia and rationalize nonsense, which is why they are even more dangerous than the smaller ones. This is precisely what the tale The Emperor’s New Clothes warns about: supreme authority + charismatic charlatans + blind following among the masses = cultural normalization of ritualized nonsense (some of it horrific, such as genital mutilation).

If a belief, system of ideas, behaviors, rituals, etc. (in short, an ideology or religion) gains a large number of followers, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that it is a legitimate practice. If it lasts for centuries or even millennia, it is even more difficult to challenge its authenticity. Who are we, petty individuals, to deny millennial traditions, upheld by wise thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas, Aurobindo, Rumi, the Dalai Lama, etc.?

Religions combine a whole series of erroneous arguments into one giant package:

- argumentum ad populum
- argumentum ad antiquitam
- argumentum ad auchoritate
- argumentum ad baculum

I could go on...

The relationship between a priest and a commoner is so ancient that it is imprinted in our collective consciousness as an archetypal bond.

What happens when the greatest religious institutions find themselves under scrutiny for various abuses? When philosophers and scientists expose their centuries-old manipulative techniques? When, as in The Wizard of Oz, the curtain is lifted and it turns out that the great wizard is actually a con artist?

Watch the last scene from the Wizard of Oz.

“Don’t look at the man behind the curtain!” says the voice of the great “wizard”. And when he is exposed, he admits that there is no great wizard at all.

Dorothy says to him: “You’re a very bad man!”

He replies: “No, my dear, I’m a very good man. I’m just a very bad wizard.”

And then he completes his magnificent trick by awarding the Scarecrow a diploma, the lion a medal, and the tin man a testimonial in consideration of his kindness, honest, and affection. He hammers the nail into the coffin with the words: “Remember, my sentimental friend, that the heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others.”

Many a sermon and psychotherapy session, as well as a men’s or women’s circle, could end with the same words. The wizard ended his deception, which lasted the entire movie, with a flourish, and everyone was delighted! The best charlatan knows how to trick you so gentlemanly that you thank him in the end.

Since we’ve been exposed to such role models since childhood, we should not be surprised at our meekness when “bad wizards” who were until recently haughty and arrogant (even if they are “good people”) make a U-turn and overwhelm you with sweetness. You bow your head in confusion, trust them, and doubt yourself.

As long as this is the norm in all kinds of institutions — and even in families! — it is logical that you fall for the same tricks when they are set up by various sycophants. It is enough for them to appear before you with radiant charisma, point their fingers at various dignitaries, and preach to you something like this: “Ah, just look at these scoundrels! They stole the original message and twisted it for their own benefit! Listen to me, I have read the Qumran manuscripts in the original and seen the Shroud of Turin live!”

With the right aura and a sufficient audience to applaud them, they can sell horrific idiocies as the highest truths for obscene sums of money. They are doing great and will continue to do so as long as they can find shelter under the wings of Biblical, Koranic, Kabbalistic, and Vedic angels. What’s worse, their followers will praise and encourage them, so they will take themselves even more seriously and act with even more self-confidence than before.

About 15 years ago, filmmaker Vikram Gandhi decided to enter the American New Age scene as a guru. He called himself Kumare and invented weird meditations, exercises, mantras, and even a witty doctrine to top it all off. He describes his journey in a documentary that follows him from the moment he gets his first disciple to the final revelation. I can’t reveal it to you because it would spoil the story for you. I highly recommend the film!

I listened to several interviews with Vikram about the film he made. Among the insights that stuck in my memory is that fake gurus, such as himself, have much less trouble with temptation compared to real gurus when there are pretty girls around. Another insight is that Kumare was Vikram’s alter ego all along; in other words, he never fully identified with that character, while in the case of “real” gurus, the alter ego prevails and replaces the original. Thus, the guru becomes a slave of his role amidst general expectations and norms.

Kumare proves to be a fantastic spiritual master, because he can put on one mask, take it off, and put on another without being a slave to any of them. He constantly tells his disciples that they are their own gurus. The act of taking off the mask is unbearable for those who are slaves to their masks, and they cannot react to this any other way than by running away and condemning the “charlatan”. But that’s exactly how they expose themselves as charlatans. This was one of the key insights of the film for me.

Milgram’s experiment convincingly showed how quickly most people obey authority; and there are many similar studies. Since I wrote the book Human: Instructions for Use, I have read thousands of pages about all kinds of ways we delude ourselves and abide by dumb habits only because everyone else does -- and because the entire society is designed in such a way as to make such behaviors seem absolutely normal. But they are not!

We are simply programmed, when entering a certain group, wherein certain behaviors are taken for granted, to simply accept them and not interfere. And even if we do interfere, the mass will explain to us that’s what they’ve been doing for generations and how it’s part of their identity.

I live outside most of the general social rituals, I understand the arbitrariness of almost all standardized and prescribed behaviors: how we’re supposed to brush our teeth, shower, wash our hair, shave, pee and poo, the type of clothes and shoes we are expected to wear, the furniture we fill our apartments with, the way we exercise, work, go on vacation, educate ourselves, spend our free time, how and when we lie down to rest, who we can have sex with and in what position, etc. etc.

We think that we will be left without a basis for spiritual and material anchoring in the world if we thoroughly question everything. And so we protect the field of cultural identity from doubt and (too harsh, or offensive) sarcasm. Whoever probes too deep, risks excommunication. Basically, we all wear blinders. We do not allow ourselves to see much of what is arbitrary and often harmful; we keep it in the field of the sacred or culturally determined and therefore untouchable.

Therefore, we should not be surprised when all kinds of tricksters exploit our universal vulnerability and lead too many onto thin ice. I’d say, we are already on the ice, all of us, but we cannot see it because everyone else with whom we share our lives is on the same ice. The charlatan’s ice is red, ours is blue — does that really make us any better? If we cannot take off some masks and put on some others and play out certain “roles” on a stage outside standard rules, then we are no different than the “actors” that flock around the charlatan.

Kumare were the inspiration for my book Love 22, Plagiarised, in which I rail against everything that can be railed against, and try to unnerve anyone who is unable to take off a mask and put on another, who is unable to question the one and only collective truth.

This also applies to my writing style and challenging literary standards. One editor wanted to throw out the very parts of the book that I added exactly to irritate highly cultured readers. In doing so, she confirmed to me that I had pressed the right button. The only problem is that no serious literary critic will read the book — until the end — and then (maybe?) understand what these passages satirize and how. I am probing into a myriad of stereotypes: cultural, nutritional, sexual, and especially literary.

So I wasn’t surprised that I got a critical reply from Kiara Publishing when I sent them a somewhat crude manuscript of my novel for preview: “Why so much anger?” Apparently I pressed the “right” button (again)? I know that Love 22 won’t be a hit, but I’m still happy to see many readers understanding what I wanted to achieve and responding to what I “encoded” into the book, what I hid sometimes in dreams and sometimes in absurdities.

With metamodernism (or ubermodernism), very interesting new forms of Dadaism are coming to light, let me mention just two popular manifestations: Angine de Poitrine and the recent Chinese animated film Niu Lai:

It’s literally a middle finger to AI slop and bombastic Hollywood films like Odyssey.

I watched Niu Lai as soon as I found out about it. It’s a fantastic coincidence that it’s in cinemas at the same time as Odyssey! And that the Chinese are giving it so much attention! As if they were saying to overblown hundred-million-dollar movie projects: “Now, this is getting truly exaggerated!”

I’ve come to terms with the fact that we are swindled, we will be swindled, and it’s alright… Everyone puts together their own swindling cocktail and then drinks what they’ve mixed. Some stay loyal to their one cocktail for the rest of their life; some notice that it’s doing them harm and swap it for another cocktail. Very few drink a little bit of one cocktail, a little bit of another, and in between stay far enough from the world to drink their own concoction — swindling themselves, and that’s okay too.

To survive in this world, we have to be charlatans at least for ourselves, if there’s no one else around to tease us to thin ice. The archetype of the priest is too strong. There will always be some who make use of it, while others will bow down in front of it. If we wanted to cleanse and heal this archetype, we would have to expose and ground the highest religious dignitaries, and then all others else would fall like dominoes.

In place of all these charlatans, a character like Kumare could then step in, with his alter ego whispering to everyone that they are their own gurus — with an irresistible, disarming, childlike frankness.

Matic Munc je danes na FB (upravičeno!) pokritiziral šarlatanstvo v ezoteriki, duhovnosti, pop-psihologiji, samospoznavanju, samopomoči ... Navezal se je na knjižni program založbe Kiara, kamor je uredništvo nekritično spustilo dela avtorjev, ki si po njegovem mnenju ne zaslužijo izdaje.

Kritika je na mestu, ampak da bi imela pravo težo, zahteva širšo kritiško analizo celotnega predalnika, zlasti tistih največjih predalov, ki so normalizirani in celo zaščiteni pred kritiko in posmehom: vseh religij, ekonomije, politike itd. Ostanimo pri religiji, ki je vendarle najbolj zakoreninjena v nepreverljivem in zato vlada vsem ostalim področjem.

Eksorcizem, denimo, še danes velja v resnih duhovnih institucijah za legitimno “psihološko” obravnavo za take, ki jih je obsedel “hudič” ali kakšni drugi “demoni”. Pogovarjanje z namišljenimi “duhovnimi” entitetami je v cerkvah in templjih povsem običajno v praktično vseh religijah sveta. Svečenik stoji pred kongregacijo kot radio, ki odkodira Božje valove v “razumljiva” sporočila. Z nizom obredov, molitev in meditacij skrbi, da je čreda pokorna duhovnemu pastirju.

Po merilih empirizma, racionalizma ali celo po zdravi kmečki pameti je ni religije, ki ne bi bila šarlatanska, ki ne bi bila kult. Ni se nam treba udeležiti satanistične maše ali poslušati glosolalij v kakšni karizmatični cerkvi, tudi v ortodoksnih cerkvah najdemo v kolektivnih neumnosti v izobilju. Največje religije imajo velikanske institucije, ki skrbijo za apologijo in racionalizirajo nesmisle, zato so še bolj nevarne od manjših. Prav na to opozarja pravljica Cesarjeva nova oblačila: vrhovna avtoriteta + karizmatični šarlatani + slepo sledenje med maso ljudi = kulturna normalizacija v obred zavitih neumnosti (včasih tudi grozljivih, denimo obrezovanja genitalij).

Če neko prepričanje, sistem idej, vedenj, obredov itd. (skratka ideologija oz. religija) pridobi veliko število privržencev, se nam je težko upreti zaključku, da gre za legitimno prakso. Če zdrži stoletja ali celo tisočletja, je še toliko težje izzvati njeno avtentičnost. Kdo pa smo mi, mali ljudje, da bi demantirali tisočletne tradicije, ki so jim botrovali modri misleci, kot so Tomaž Akvinski, Aurobindo, Rumi, Dalaj Lama itd.?

Religije v en velikanski paket združijo celo vrsto zmotnih argumentov:

- argumentum ad populum
- argumentum ad antiquitam
- argumentum ad auchoritate
- argumentum ad baculum

Pa še bi lahko našteval.

Toda odnos med svečenikom in navadnim smrtnikom je tako starodaven, da je odtisnjen v našo kolektivno zavest kot arhetipska vez.

Kaj se zgodi, ko se največje verske institucije znajdejo pod drobnogledom zaradi takih in drugačnih zlorab? Ko filozofi in znanstveniki razkrinkajo njihove stoletne manipulativne tehnike? Ko kot v Čarovniku iz Oza odgrnejo zaveso in se izkaže, da je veliki čarovnik v resnici petični prefrigani prevarant?

Le oglejte si zadnji prizor iz omenjenega filma.

“Ne ozirajte se na moškega za zaveso!” pravi glas velikega “čarovnika”. In ko ga razkrinkajo, prizna, da velikega čarovnika sploh ni.

Dorothy mu reče: “Vi ste zelo slab človek!”

On odvrne: “Ne, draga moja, jaz sem zelo dober človek. Samo zelo slab čarovnik sem.”

In potem dokonča svoj veličastni trik tako, da Strašilu podeli diplomo, levu medaljo, pločevinastemu človeku pa uradno pričevanje o njegovi prijaznosti, iskrenosti in privrženosti. Žebelj v krsto zabije z besedami: “Pomni, moj sentimentalni prijatelj, da se srce ne meri po tem, koliko ti ljubiš, ampak po tem, koliko drugi ljubijo tebe.”

Z istimi besedami bi se lahko zaključila marsikatera pridiga in psihoterapevtska seansa, kakor tudi moški ali ženski krog. Čarovnik je prevaro, ki je trajala ves film, zaključil z leporečjem in vsi so bili navdušeni! Najboljši šarlatan zna človeka tako prefinjeno nategniti, da se mu nazadnje še zahvali.

Če smo že od otroštva deležni takih zgledov, potem se ne smemo čuditi naši pohlevnosti, ko pred kratkim oholi in ošabni “slabi čarovniki” (ampak bojda “dobri ljudje”) zamenjajo ploščo in jih je sama sladkoba. Zmedeni sklonimo glavo, zaupamo njim in dvomimo vase.

Dokler je to norma v vsakovrstnih institucijah — in celo v družinah! — je logično, da se ujamemo na enake limance, ko nam jih nastavijo mazači. Dovolj je, da nastopijo pred nami s sijočo karizmo, s prstom pokažejo na razne veljake in nam odpridigajo nekako takole: “Aha, poglej samo te izprijence! Ukradli so izvorno sporočilo in ga speljali sebi na mlin! Prisluhnite meni, prebral sem Kumranske rokopise v izvirniku in videl Torinski prt v živo!”

S pravo avro in ob zadostni publiki, ki jim ploska, lahko grozljive idiotizme prodajajo kot najvišje resnice za nesramne vsote denarja. Odlično jim gre in jim bo še naprej šlo, dokler si lahko najdejo zavetje pod krili bibličnih, koranskih, kabalističnih in vedskih angelov. Kar je še hujše, sledilci jih hvalijo in bodrijo, zato še bolj verjamejo sami sebi in nastopajo še bolj samozavestno kot prej.

Filmar Vikram Gandhi se je pred kakšnimi 15 leti odločil vstopiti na ameriško New Age sceno kot guru. Poimenoval se je Kumare in si izmislil čudaške meditacije, vaje, mantre in še zabavno doktrino za povrh. Svojo pot opiše v dokumentarnem filmu, ki ga spremlja od trenutka, ko pridobi prvega učenca, pa vse do končnega razodetja. Ne smem vam ga razkriti, ker bi za vas pokvaril film. Toplo priporočam ogled!

Prisluhnil sem kar nekaj intervjujem z Vikramom o filmu, ki ga je posnel. Med spoznanji, ki so se mi vtisnila v spomin, je denimo, da imajo lažni guruji, kakršen je bil sam, veliko manj težav s skušnjavo, kot pravi guruji, ko so naokrog luštna dekleta. Drugo spoznanje je, da je bil Kumare ves čas Vikramov alter-ego, skratka nikoli se ni povsem poistovetil z njim, medtem ko pri “pravih” gurujih alter-ego prevlada in izpodrine izvornega. Tako učitelj postane suženj svoje vloge sredi splošnih pričakovanj in norm.

Kumare se izkaže za fantastičnega duhovnega mojstra, ker si zmore natakniti eno masko, jo sneti, in si nadeti drugo ne da bi bil suženj katere koli od njih. Ves čas učencem govori, da so sami svoji mojstri. Akt snetja maske je za vse, ki so sužnji svojih mask, neznosen in se nanj ne zmorejo odzvati drugače kot z begom in obsodbo “prevaranta”. Ampak prav pokažejo, da so šarlatani. To je zame poglavitni nauk filma.

Milgramov eksperiment je prepričljivo pokazal, kako hitro se večina ljudi pokori avtoriteti, pa še mnogo je podobnih raziskav. Odkar sem napisal knjigo Človek: navodila za uporabo, sem prebral na tisoče strani o vsakovrstnih zablodah, ki se jih držimo samo zato, ker se jih držijo vsi drugi -- in ker je družba oblikovana tako, da se zdijo takšna vedenja edina normalna. Pa niso!

Le sprogramirani smo, da ob vstopu v skupino, kjer je neko vedenje posplošeno, to pač sprejemamo in se vanje ne vtikamo. Pa tudi če se vtaknemo, nam bo množica pojasnila, da oni to počno že mnoge generacije in da je to del njihove identitete.

Živim izven večine splošnega družbenega obredja, zato razumem arbitrarnost skoraj vseh normiranih in predpisanih vedenj: kako naj bi si umivali zobe, se oprhali, si oprali lase, se obrili, polulali in pokakali, tip obleke in čevljev, ki naj bi ga nosili, pohištva, s katerim naj bi napolnili stanovanja, način vadbe, dela, dopusta, izobraževanja, preživljanja prostega časa, kako in kdaj ležemo k počitku, s kom lahko seksamo in kako itd. itd.

Mislimo, da bomo ostali brez podlage za duhovno in materialno zasidranost v svet, če popolnoma vse preizprašamo in prevetrimo. Polje kulturne identitete ščitimo pred dvomom in (preveč pikrim oz. žaljivim) sarkazmom. Kdor špikne pregloboko, tvega izobčenje. V bistvu nosimo plašnice. Ne dopuščamo si videti ogromno tega, kar je arbitrarno in marsikdaj škodljivo, ampak je pač v polju svetega ali kulturno determiniranega in zato nedotakljivega.

Potemtakem se ne smemo čuditi, da razni prodajalci megle izkoriščajo to univerzalno ranljivost in speljujejo premnoge na tanek led. Saj smo vendar sami že na ledu, a tega ne zmoremo videti, ker so na ledu vsi drugi s katerimi si delimo življenje. Šarlatanov led je rdeč, naš je moder — smo mi zato res toliko boljši? Če ne zmoremo sneti enih mask in si nadeti drugih ter odigrati neke “vloge” na odru brez standardnih pravil, potem smo na istem kot igralci okrog šarlatana.

Kumare je bil navdih za mojo knjigo Ljubezen 22, plagiat, v kateri se obregnem ob vse, ob kar se obregniti da, in se trudim iti na živce vsakomur, ki ni sposoben sneti ene maske in si nadeti drugo, ki ne zmore podvomiti v kolektivni prav.

To se nanaša tudi na slog pisanja in literarne standarde. Ena urednica je hotela zmetati iz knjige prav tiste dele, ki so nalašč dodani, da bi šli razgledanemu bralcu na živce. S tem mi je potrdila, da sem pritisnil na pravi gumb. Edini problem je, da noben resen literarni kritik zato knjige ne bo prebral — do konca — in nazadnje (morda?) razumel, kaj ti odlomki satirizirajo in kako. Vtikam se v vsesplošno ukalupljenost: kulturno, prehransko, seksualno in zlasti literarno.

Zato me ni čudilo, da sem od založbe Kiara dobil približno tak odgovor, ko sem jim poslal v predogled še nekoliko surov rokopis romana: “Zakaj toliko jeze?” Očitno sem (spet) pritisnil na “pravi” gumb? Vem, da Ljubezen 22 ne bo nobena huda uspešnica, a vseeno sem vesel, da je v romanu že veliko bralcev prepoznalo vsaj del tistega, kar sem vanj “zakodiral” in kar sem skril v sanje in absurd.

Z metamodernizmom (oz. ubermodernizmom) na dan prihajajo zelo zanimive nove oblike dadaizma, naj tu omenim le dva popularna fenomena: Angine de Poitrine in nedavni kitajski animirani film Niu Lai:

To je dobesedno sredinec UI slopu in bombastičnim holliwoodskim spektaklom, kakršen je Odisej. Malce spominja na kratek sijoči moment Fredija Milerja.

Animirani film Niu Lai sem si ogledal takoj, ko sem izvedel zanj. Fantastično naključje je, da je v kinematografih ravno zdaj, ko je na sporedu Odisej! In da mu Kitajci nalašč dajejo toliko pozornosti! Kot da bi prenapihnjenim stomilijonskim projektom sporočali: “Dovolj imamo tega nategovanja!”

Sprijaznil sem se, da nategovani smo, nategovani bomo, klinc nas gleda … Vsak si sam namučka nategovalski koktajl in potem pije, kar si je namešal. Nekateri ostanejo zvesti svojemu koktajlu do konca življenja, nekateri opazijo, da jim škodi, in ga zamenjajo za kak drug koktajl. Zelo redki pijejo malo en, malo drugi koktajl in so vmes dovolj daleč od sveta, da pijejo nekajo povsem svojega — nategujejo sami sebe in tudi to je ok.

Da preživimo v tem svetu moramo biti vsaj sami zase šarlatani, če že ni nikogar drugega ob nas, da bi nas vodil na tanek led. Arhetip svečenika je premočan, da se ga ne bi eni posluževali, drugi pa se mu priklanjali. Če bi radi očistili in pozdravitli ta arhetip, bi morali razgaliti in prizemljiti najvišje religijske dostojantvenike in potem bi kot domine popadali vsi ostali.

Na mesto vseh teh šarlatanov bi potem lahko stopil lik, kakršen je Kumare, z alter-egom, ki vsem sporoča, da so sami svoji mojstri — z razorožujočo otroško iskrenostjo, ki se ji ni mogoče upreti.

A long time ago, we replaced foraging with shopping. The instinct is still the same: go and find provisions! The relationship of care, however, is broken.

On my way to pick hazelnuts, I noticed a plum tree by a stream, ravaged by some scumbags. Not even a bear or a hurricane would leave behind such a horrific sight: dozens of broken branches, both thick and thin, hanging in the crown and scattered on the ground.

The petty shortsightedness of these people struck me as emblematic of our entire civilization. We don’t care about tomorrow; we only care about this moment. That’s exactly the moment, which we’re flushing, oh, so often, down some stupid attention sinkholes.

I’ve seen these vandals kill a cherry tree. Whenever I could, I rushed to pick every single fruit from that tree to protect her from them, but one year I was too late. My heart broke when I saw the tree from afar, brutally tortured, practically ra*ed. Next year she was half dry; the year after that she died.

Hazelnuts are a different story because they’re not as easy to pick and take time to dry and fully ripen. When they’re deserted, they go unnoticed. Still, I keep the path to six hazels in a nearby valley overgrown to make access harder. That makes collecting the nuts quite a hussle, but at least they’re safe. Also, at the very end, behind a wall of brambles, there’s a majestic cherry tree. I’m her guardian!

For me, foraging is not just a matter of choice; it’s part of my being. It defines how I map the world and navigate within it. When I notice the first dogwood blossom at the end of February, lights go off on my inner map of the nearby locations where I had picked dogwood cherries in the past. Then come cherries and mulberries, loquats, peaches, pears, figs, hazelnuts, walnuts, apples, grapes, olives, chestnuts, medlars, etc.

It’s the same with wild greens and herbs. I have them mapped, and the map binds me viscerally to the place that I call home. It’s not my home because of my address, my job, my circle of friends and family, my dialect, and dietary preferences. It’s my home because of my embeddedness among all these plants. I’m planted here because they are.

I know I don’t depend on them for survival; I depend more on the supermarket. Or at least on farmers. I admit that. I also know that I draw the matrix of essentials for my overall sanity, with hundreds of foraging spots filling key entries. When I come to collect a harvest, I also come with care.

In principle, foraging tribes must take care of their environment. Vandalism is out of the question. It’s only in domineering, heartless societies that brutalizing nature is seen as acceptable or even desirable.

Before we had the luxury of supermarkets, caring for foraging sites was a collective obligation. The wild harvest was respected, and even worshiped in rituals.

That’s how I feel about this year’s hazelnut harvest. I feel like worshiping it in a ritual. To collect this much, I’d usually have to visit a couple of locations. This year I got 12 kg in one spot. And it’s the year of extreme drought. Did they grow so well because of it, or despite it? I’ll ask them next year.

A broader set of questions around my hazelnut harvest has to do with who we are as humans, why we even matter, what benefit we bring to the world, and whether joy matters.

I think joy does matter. It comes directly from hazelnuts, actually! Joy bubbles up when life meets life. Joy is married to care. There’s no way around this. A shopping mall is bereft of life, care, and joy. It’s full of provisions, but its matrix is only 2 by 2, while the matrix of foraging is at least 22 by 22.

Luckily, life is analogue and impossible to quantify, as much as we try. Yes, I picked 12 kg of hazelnuts in ca. 6 hours; I can even put a price tag on both my work and my harvest. That way, however, I shrink the matrix to 2 by 2. I’d rather have it at 22 by 22, or if I dare mirror the first 2, have the matrix of <3 by <3.

I still buy hazelnuts in the supermarket. But the ones that I picked on my own are not just ingredients. Their spirit is married to mine. That’s why they will feed my spirit and not only my muscles. I’ll be eating them in the winter and reminding my body of what I went through to collect them, dry them, shell them, toast them, liquefy them. I wrote about liquefied hazelnuts last year.

The shift of consciousness is painful. You have to go from everything everywhere all at once (the supermarket mentality) to each fruit somewhere specific at a very particular time (the foraging mentality).

We are better adapted to the latter mentality. Most of us, that is. When we can get whatever we want at any moment, that spoils us, makes us vain. Vandalism is untamable when people downgrade their matrices to 2 by 2. It’s like trapping an eagle in a small cage. The eagle is meant to soar and hunt, not to shrink and peck. Hunting isn’t easy, but that’s what defines the eagle. What he does and how he does it is much more important than what he looks like.

As much as the human spirit needs a vocabulary to express itself in words, it needs tastes, textures, smells, surroundings, vibrations, and vibes to make sense of itself. That’s what I get from harvesting, not just the fruit. That’s what I mean when I describe this matrix as 22 by 22. I can buy hazelnuts in a shop, but I can’t buy what foraging forces me to notice, pay attention to, care for, even love. What makes me human is what I do and how I do it, much more than just how I look.

Foraging is so essential to our mental health and spiritual integrity that I consider it irreplaceable if we ever wish to cure humanity of its basest pathologies. The culture of foraging should be in all schools as part of naturalization, which should precede and be the foundation of socialization.

What I’m saying is: You want peace on Earth? Learn how to forage! And then teach everyone you know about it.

I felt and even got sick when I was forced to have a meal in some overly hospitable home, whether I wanted to or not. When I had eaten the last bite, I was not even asked, the plate was refilled before I could even raise my hand in protest.

Over-serving was a cultural imperative, and consequently I had to leave my plate half full if I wanted to avoid another serving. A plate cleaned with bread would be interpreted by my hosts as their disrespect for the guest because they had served him too little.

Out of politeness, I had to eat more than I would have otherwise and let at least a few spoonfuls of sumptuous food end up in the trash. I felt better where they had animals or compost, but in some places I had to accept that the left-overs ended up in the mixed waste.

I felt the worst in truly poor homes. I knew they would be tightening their belts all week, because they couldn’t let their guest be “hungry”. The biggest absurdity of it all is that in the name of absurd cultural norms, we both deprive ourselves of just the right amount of satiety for everyone.

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The global economic system is governed by different imperatives, but even there satiety is forbidden. Here too, the prohibition works in both directions: If you have too much you’re obliged to put more on your plate; and if you have too little you must sacrifice what little you have for others. One gets sick from overabundance, the other from lack, and leveling it all up is out of the question! It is demonized as a socialist conspiracy or even – God forbid – a communist one!

We invented this “rule” ourselves and are passing it on to the next generations like a collective soul virus, without even a shred of empirical sense to it. Its consequences are truly catastrophic.

When a company reaches a saturation point on a local, national or global level, it cannot relax in triumph and find internal satisfaction in improving the services and products that it provides. No, it must continue to grow! If it does not grow, the market interprets this as stagnation, the value of shares begins to fall and the investors start taking their funds elsewhere. The company has two options: growth or bankruptcy.

What can megacorporations like Meta, Amazon, Apple and Alphabet do, when they reach 90% market saturation, and the market still keeps demanding growth from them? Bankruptcy is out of the question for such giants. Their only option is to invent fictitious financial mechanisms that push their “growth” beyond the saturation point. They condemn themselves to the path of the so-called enshitification.

At their home, their investors’ plates must be pilled up and together they overeat; the way they, as a company, cut their costs is by increasingly squeezing their own workers and slashing their salaries. Neither one nor the other are ever allowed to be satiated. Burning hunger drives the gigantic machinery that can never stop.

Financial mechanisms are increasingly perverse. Workers are pressed under the foot of their employer, the state, the bank and the saleseman. The employer extends the working hours, the state increases taxes, the bank boosts the managers’ bonuses, the merchant tramples on their dignity by treating them as total fools.

Economic “growth” is reflected in the ever increasing costs of bare existence. We all suffer, but at the same time no one wants to be the first to say “I’m satiated!” and show their middle finger to the compulsion of hunger. Can we really be so dubm that we keep swallowing the “inevitable” costs of “development” as if they were self-evident?

When you buy a vehicle manufactured by the reputable company Tesla, you don’t know that changing a turn signal costs two thousand euros. You only find out when the light bulb dies. Pardon me, it’s not a bulb anymore, it’s a composite of LED lights that can’t be replaced except as a whole.

The headlight on my old Xsara cost €29; €33 with all the bulbs.

In order for shareholders to be able to “overeat”, cars need to have overly complex lights. If we wanted to bring back the old bulbs, we would need a global uprising that would put an end to the economic crap we live in.

A friend of mine told me years ago how he repaired a broken electric window mechanism at home. A small plastic cross had broken, but the service center told him that it couldn’t be purchased separately, the only option was to replace the electric motor and the entire mechanism, which costs hundreds of euros. Luckily, his friend knew how to mold that cross out of plastic. He replaced it and the repair only cost a few euros.

Perversions in electronics, especially computers and smartphones, are amazingly shamed by Louis Rossmann, a fighter for the right to repair. His fight is sublimely noble, especially because it is completely utopian in the context of the modern economy and precisely because of that, critically lucid. Watch his videos of him repairing crappy computers, designed to break. When a customer asks an authorized repair shop for a repair, the answer is that it is cheaper to buy a new computer. Louis opens the same computer, replaces a deliberately fragile chip, and the computer works again.

The biggest perversion is that he is forced to obtain a spare chip through illegal means. Thank God he is bold enough to say all this out loud on the Internet.

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We are idiots because we are taking food from our own mouths so that foreign investors can feast while we starve because we think there is no other way. We live in a terrible world if we are convinced that we have no other choice. We are both sick, one from too much, the other from not enough. The ecological transformation will have to admit that it needs to be rooted in the economic transformation. It will have to be a transformation that puts holistic satiation at the center.

That’s when a car will be made to work for years and years. When the market reaches its saturation, the company will produce parts and only as many quality cars as are needed, and cheap parts for repairs. The goal will be satiety, not starvation.

The same applies to mobile phones, computers, houses, roads, hospitals, closets, ski resorts, spas, farms, concerts, oil rigs, and wind farms. The state won’t have to raise taxes, banks will easily relax in providing banking services, merchants will sell their goods, workers will perform their tasks because it makes them happy.

The greatest scourge for today’s market is a satisfied, satiated man who does not crave for more. The catastrophe for the market are big, satisfied communities, where there is a lot of homemade music, sex, chubby children, self-sufficiency, freedom and views of a bright future, where all plates are cleaned with bread. I would like that! What about you?

Bilo mi je slabo in celo zbolel sem, kadar so me v kakšnem pregostoljubnem domu hočeš, nočeš silili s hrano. Ko sem pojedel zadnji grižljaj, me niti vprašali niso, krožnik se je znova napolnil, še preden sem zmogel v protestu nadenj postaviti roko.

Preobilna postrežba je bila kulturni imperativ in posledično sem moral pustiti krožnik napol poln, če sem se hotel izogniti še eni porciji. S kruhom pomazan krožnik bi moji gostitelji brali kot nespoštovanje gosta, ker so mu postregli premalo.

Iz vljudnosti sem moral pojesti več, kot bi sicer, in pustiti vsaj nekaj žlicam razkošnih jedi prosto pot v smeti. Bolje sem se počutil, kjer so imeli živali ali kompost, ponekod pa sem se moral sprijazniti s tem, da so pomije končale kar v mešanih odpadkih.

Najhuje sem se počutil v resnično revnih domovih. Vedel sem, da bodo sebi ves teden trgali od ust, ker gosta pač ne smejo pustiti »lačnega«. Največji absurd pri vsem skupaj je to, da smo se v imenu trčenih kulturnih norm oboji prikrajšali za zadovoljstvo v ravno pravšnji sitosti za vse.

—

Globalni ekonomski sistem uravnavajo drugačni imperativi, je pa tudi v njem sitost prepovedana. Tudi tu se prepoved zajeda v obe smeri: kdor ima preveč, je prisiljen na svoj krožnik nalagati še; kdor ima premalo, mora še tisto malo, kar ima, žrtvovati za druge. Eden zboli od preobilja, drugi od pomanjkanja, izravnava ne pride v poštev, ker je demonizirana kot socialistična zarota ali celo – bog ne daj – komunistična!

To »pravilo« smo si izmislili mi sami in ga prenašamo na naslednje generacije kot kolektivni dušni virus, v njem ni niti kančka empiričnega smisla. So pa njegove posledice katastrofalne.

Ko na lokalni, nacionalni ali globalni ravni neko podjetje doseže točko nasičenosti, se ne more sprostiti v zmagoslavju in zadovoljstvo najti v izboljševanju uslug in izdelkov, s katerimi služi družbi v interni skromnosti. Ne, mora rasti naprej! Če ne raste, trg to razume kot stagnacijo, vrednost delnic začne padati in vlagatelji odnesejo sredstva drugam. Podjetje ima dve opciji: rast ali stečaj.

Kaj lahko potem storijo megalomani, kot so Meta, Amazon, Apple in Alphabet, ko dosežejo 90% zasičenost trga, pa ta trg od njih še kar naprej zahteva rast? Stečaj za takšne gigante ne pride v poštev. preostane jim izmišljanje fiktivnih finančnih mehanizmov, ki jim omogočajo »rast« onstran točke nasičenosti. Obsodijo se na pot t.i. posranjevanja (angl. enshitification).

V svojem domu gostijo vlagatelje, njihove krožnike je treba prenapolniti in se prenažirati skupaj z njimi; sebi trgajo od ust tako, da vse bolj izžemajo lastne delavce in krčijo njihove plače. Ne eni ne drugi ne smejo nikoli biti siti. Goreča lakota poganja gigantsko mašinerijo, ki se nikoli ne sme ustaviti.

Finančni mehanizmi so vse bolj perverzni. Delavce držijo v primežu v odnosu do delodajalca, države, banke in trgovca. Delodajalec daljša delovnik, država debeli davke, banka boosta bonuse managerjem, trgovec tepta njihovo dostojanstvo, ker jih obravnava kot totalne tepce.

Gospodarska »rast« se odraža v vse višjih stroških golega obstoja. Vsi trpimo, hkrati pa nihče noče biti prvi, ki bi se ravno prav najedel in zapovedani lakoti pokazal sredinca. Je možno, da smo res takšni idioti, da goltamo »neizogibne« stroške »razvoja«, kot da so samoumevni?

Ko kupiš vozilo, ki ga je izdelalo ugledno podjetje Tesla, ne veš, da menjava »žmigavca« stane dva jurja evrov. To izveš šele takrat, ko crkne žarnica. Pardon, to ni več žarnica, to je kompozit LED luči, ki se jih ne da zamenjati drugače kot v celoti.

Žaromet na moji stari Xsari je stal 29€, z vsemi žarnicami vred morda 33€.

Da bi se lahko delničarji prenažirali, morajo avtomobili imeti prezapletene luči. Če bi radi imeli stare luči, bi potrebovali globalno vstajo, ki bi naredila konec ekonomskemu sranju, v katerem živimo.

Prijatelj mi je že pred leti povedal, kako je po domače popravil okvaro električnega mehanizma za odpiranje okna. Počil je majhen plastični križ, toda na servisu so mu povedali, da se ga ne da kupiti posebej, edina opcija je bila zamenjava elektromotorja in celotnega mehanizma, ki stane na stotine evrov. K sreči je poznal nekoga, ki je vedel, kako vliti iz plastike tisti križ. Zamenjal ga je in popravilo ga je stalo le nekaj evrov.

Perverzije pri elektroniki, zlasti pri računalnikih in pametnih telefonih, carsko sramoti Louis Rossmann, borec za pravico do popravila. Njegov boj je blazno plemenit še posebej zato, ker je v kontekstu sodobne ekonomije popolnoma utopičen in natanko zato kritično luciden. Oglejte si kak njegov video, ko popravlja usrano sestavljene računalnike, narejene, da se pokvarijo. Ko stranka prosi pooblaščeni servis za popravilo, je odgovor, da je ceneje kupiti nov računalnik. Louis ta istiu računalnik odpre, zamenja namerno krhek čip in računalnik spet dela.

Največja perverzija je to, da je prisiljen rezervni čip pridobiti po nezakonitih poteh. Hvala bogu, da je dovolj predrzen, da vse to na glas pove na internetu!

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Kreteni smo, ker si trgamo od ust, da se lahko tuji investitorji nažirajo, medtem ko mi stradamo, ker mislimo, da drugače ne gre. V groznem svetu živimo, če smo prepričani, da druge izbire niti nimamo. Oboji smo bolni, eni od preveč, drugi od premalo. Ekološka preobrazba si mora priznati, da potrebuje ob strani tudi ekonomsko. Takšno, ki postavlja v center celostno _sitost_.

Potem bo avtomobil narejen tako, da dela leta in leta. Ko bo trg nasičen, bo firma izdelovala dele in le toliko kakovostnih avtov, kolikor jih je potrebnih, in poceni dele za popravila. Cilj bi sitost, ne lakota.

Isto bo veljalo za mobilne telefone, računalnike, hiše, ceste, bolnišnice, omare, smučišča, letovišča, kmetije, koncerte, naftna črpališča in vetrne farme. Državi ne bo treba dvigovati davkov, banke se bodo lako sprostile v nudenju bančnih uslug, trgovci bodo prodajalli blago, delavci bodo opravljali svoje naloge, ker jih to veseli.

Največja nadloga za današnji trg je zadovoljen, sit človek, ki ne hrepeni po še. Katastrofa za trg so velike zadovoljne skupnosti, kjer je veliko domače glasbe, seksa, sitih otrok, samooskrbnosti, svobode in razgledov v svetlo prihodnost, kjer so vsi krožniki s kruhom pomazani. Jaz bi to! Kaj pa vi?

“Svi smo mi gospodari sveta tu negde s dvadeset i šest.”
- Đorđe Balašević

Berem svoj dnevnik iz mladosti. Jokam, ko mencam plasti čebule pol mlajšega sebe.

Toliko zmede, impulzivnosti, kreganj, neiskrenosti, lažne prepričanosti, iskanja poti, ki je ni. A tudi toliko radovednosti, odkrivanja, doživetij, potovanj, odnosov, pogovorov, ustvarjalnosti, srečnih naključij.

Takrat sem se kar lotil zadev, ki jih nisem znal in se jih pač naučil. No, vse prevečkrat sem se tudi izmikal in delo opravil napol ali zavlačeval. Recimo takrat, ko mi kakšno delo res ni dišalo. In še posebej takrat, ko so mi glavo mešali hormoni. Fajn dela sem opravljal z veseljem, pa vendar me je tudi takrat sanjarjenje hitro odpeljalo v neke svoje svetove. Pa kako hitro sem bil prepričan, da nekaj že obvladam, in se spravil o tem pametovat drugim!

Neverjetno se mi zdi, koliko časa smo si takrat vzeli za pogovore, igro, branje, šport, učenje ... Seveda smo tudi delali, zaslužili tistega jurja mark na mesec, potem pa smo res veliko časa vzeli za druženje.

Vmes se v dnevniku najde tudi kakšna naivna, a luštna pesem. Recimo ena dolga, zapisana v rimah, ki sem jo napisal punci, da se ji opravičim, ker sem jo prizadel. Pa sem jo še bolj zmedel, ker so besede zvenele tako toplo, jaz pa ob tem visel kot kakšna ledena sveča. Meni se je zdelo, da sem bil le v zadregi in zadržan. Solze so mi tekle, ko sva pesem še enkrat brala skupaj. Pa me je vprašala, ali sem tudi bivši kdaj tako napisal pesem. Odvrnil se, seveda! Njeno ljubosumje je v hipu obarvala pikrost: “Aha, potem je to zate rutina?”

U, je zabolelo! Da se razumemo, nič manj ni bolelo nje, ko sem bil jaz sam do nje premalo pozoren, hladen, ko sem jo ignoriral in je nisem znal pohvaliti ali ji preprosto reči: “Rad te imam,” ali “Kako si danes sijoča.” Glumil sem neko moško avtoriteto in ji filozofiral o tem in tistem, zazrt v neke kvazi duhovne višave.

Ampak hotel sem se tudi učiti, se spremeniti. Delal sem na odnosu, a je trajalo, da se kaj res premakne ... Kako čudno je to, da se partnerskega odnosa, ki ga načrtujemo za vse življenje, skoraj vedno priučimo s prakso, na suho, in z bore malo predpriprav, teorije, kakovostne podpore.

V dnevnik sem zapisal, da se mi zdiva kot dve vrtnici, ki druga drugo drgneta s trnovimi vejami, namesto da bi se božali s cvetnimi lističi. Potem sem se spet zafilozofiral, njo psihoanaliziral v svoji lastni glavi, sebe pa poskušal razumeti z distance, ki je nisem bil zmožen.

Zdaj to distanco imam in si po eni strani mislim: “Oh, ko bi lahko mlademu Nari poročal o vsem, kar zdaj vem!” ampak po drugi strani zmajujem z glavo: “Moral je skozi te šole, tako je bilo edino prav. Poleg tega niti ne bi bil zmožen slišati in razumeti tvojih sedanjih besed.”

Oh, kako sočustvujem v tem trenutku z vsemi mladimi, ki v tem trenutku sredi svojih dvajsetih stopicljajo v megli in se lovijo na negotovih tirnicah usode!

Na jok mi gre, ker sem v dnevnik zapisal toliko bolečih izkušenj in še bolj zato, ker sem na premnoge povsem pozabil.

Razgaljujoče je takšno branje! Ponižujoče tudi. Če sem bil takrat tako prekleto tumast in zlagan, mar ne bom čez 26 let ob branju svojih današnjih zapisov misli enako o sedanjem sebi?

Ja, počutim se zlagano. Tolikokrat se v dnevniku pritožujem nad neučinkovitostjo in tratenjem časa, da mi točno to bode v oči tudi v sedanjosti, ko ob polnoči premlevam svoje vzpone in padce in mi družbo delajo le črički. Kako neki sem končal sam v gozdu, se sprašujem. Takrat je bilo toliko ljudi okrog mene!

V sedanji samoti je manj problemov, v tem smislu se nič ne pritožujem. Po družbo si grem, ko mi zapaše. Očitno zdaj to potrebujem. Ampak ali sem morda zbežal pred problemi prehitro, vrgel puško v koruzo kot slabič, namesto da bi vztrajal čez goreče izzive. Saj problemi niso nič drugega kot uganke, in ko jih rešujemo, se učimo in rastemo.

Ni naključje, da me je prav nocoj poklical mlajši jaz, da se primerjam z njim. Ne da mi spati, a me tudi zdravi, ko me v izolaciji od sveta še glasneje nagovarja.

Še ena misel iz dnevnika: “Če bi vedno ostajali sami, se ne bi imeli s kom primerjati.”

Šestindvajsetletni Nara je bil povsem drug človek. Še enkrat toliko let kasneje je za njim marsikaj, ampak še vedno je zmeden, neodločen, neučinkovit, negotov, pogosto v zadregi, družbeno okoren, melanholičen in včasih depresiven. Pa še vedno preveč filozofira. Na površini je lahko videti samozavesten, veseljaški, šaljiv, lahko da zveni premišljeno, globoko, celo modro ... ampak vedite, da je pod vsakim klicajem, s katerim se oglasi v svet, na desetine vprašajev, ki jih je prej premlel.

Pred 26 leti je mladi Nara šele začenjal pisati, pravzaprav še ničesar ni objavil, a se mu je že takrat v dnevnik (v povezavi z izbirami, takratno skupnostjo in odmiku, ki je se nakazoval) zapisalo tole:

“Vsak, ki se spametuje in se razumno ukvarja z duhovnim življenjem, je zelo srečna duša. Živel sem med temi ljudmi, sprejel njihove vrednote, njihove norme, njihov način razmišljanja. Nekaj ​​je bilo dobrih, nekaj slabih, zdaj pa moram ločiti zrnje od plev. Ni tako enostavno. Potreboval bom kar nekaj časa, da to dobro opravim. Ampak imam ga veliko, vsaj zdi se tako, in če ne, še vedno ni nič izgubljeno. Upam le, da bo kdo iz tega, kar sem do zdaj napisal, naredil kaj koristnega, če ne nepričakovano odnese.”

Hvala, mladi Nara, da si vztrajal in da te ni “odneslo”! Starejši Nara, ki tole pravkar piše, se ti mora zahvaliti za vsak premik in vsako odločitev prej in potem.

Videti je, kot da te je vodila božja roka, čeprav si počel toliko trčenega, čudaškega, zmešanega, zmedenega, bil si tolikokrat zaveden, zlagan, naiven, ranjen, izkoriščen ... zdaj se zdi vse očitno in tvoja zgodba je kot na dlani, ker si jo sam tako pisal.

Tu moram navesti enega svojih priljubljenih citatov (Milana Kundere): “Človek hodi v megli. Ko pa se ozre nazaj, da bi sodil ljudi iz preteklosti, na njihovi poti ne vidi megle. Iz sedanjosti, ki je bila njihova daljna prihodnost, se mu zdi njihova pot popolnoma jasna, dobra vidljivost ves čas. Če se ozre nazaj, vidi pot, vidi ljudi, ki hodijo naprej, vidi njihove napake, ne vidi pa megle.”

Hvala, mladi Nara, za občasne genialne prebliske, tisoče strani zapisov in prevodov, ki niso nikogar bolj obogatili kot prav mene. Hvala, da si se brezglavo odpravil na marsikakšno pustolovščino in se v neznanih svetovih znašel sproti, se nekega dne kar sezul, odvrgel zobno ščetkico, mizo, stol ... in kar zaupal, da bo vse v redu. Norec!

Danes, ko te gledam zavitega v meglo, se ti moram zahvaliti prav za izgubljenost, ki bolj kot karkoli drugega zaznamuje mojo dušo. Moja duša je najbolj čudaška v tem, da je brez doma, po katerem naj bi, kot nas učijo mitska izročila, hrepenela in se tja hotela vrniti. Moja duša tava in vedno bo, ker je veter njen dom. Iskanje je moja večna usoda, ki se nikoli ne konča. In vse je v redu.

Čez 26 let, ko bom tole bral (če me slučajno do takrat ne odnese), se bom nasmihal: “O, kako naiven je bil mlajši Nara! Jasno, saj vendar ni mogel vedeti, kaj vse ga še čaka.” 26 let je prekleto dolga doba. En sam utrip metuljevih kril lahko mojo usodo zasuče v nikoli prej slutene smeri.

Pisal bi lahko še in še, materiala je na pretek, ampak za članek je to že več kot dovolj. Hkrati mi v malih možganih žgečka, da napišem ljubezenski memoar. Ženske avtorice takšne memoarje objavljajo veliko pogumneje kot moški, bo treba prebiti led. Kaj pravite?

“We are all masters of the world somewhere around twenty-six.”
- Đorđe Balašević

I am reading my diary from my youth. I cry as I peel back the layers of the onion of my half-younger self.

So much confusion, impulsiveness, quarreling, insincerity, false confidence, searching for a path that doesn’t exist. But also so much curiosity, discovery, experiences, travels, relationships, conversations, creativity, happy coincidences.

Back then, I took on things that I didn’t know how to do and just learned them. Well, all too often I also dodged work, did it half-heartedly, or procrastinated. For example, when I really didn’t like a certain task. And especially when my hormones were messing with my head. I did good work with pleasure, but even then, daydreaming quickly launched me to a world of my own. It didn’t take much practice in some skill, and I already thought that I mastered it. What’s more, I even started to teach it to others!

It’s incredible how much time we spent talking, playing, reading, doing sports, studying... Of course, we also worked, earned that thousand Marks per month, and once that was done, we would socialize.

In the diary, I found some naive but cute poems. For example, there was a long one, written in rhyme, that I wrote to my girlfriend to apologize when I upset her. My poem confused her even more because the words sounded so warm, but I stood next to her stiff and cold. I thought that I was just embarrassed and reserved. Tears flowed from my eyes when I read the poem together with her again. So she asked me if I’ve ever written such a poem to my ex. I replied, of course! Her jealousy instantly caught fire: “Ah, so this is routine for you?”

Oh, how that hurt! Let’s be clear, it hurt her no less when I was not paying enough attention to her, when I was cold, when I ignored her, and didn’t know how to compliment her, or simply say to her: “I love you,” or “How radiant you are today.” I played some kind of male authority figure and philosophized about this and that, focused on some quasi-spiritual heights.

But I also wanted to learn, to change. I worked on the relationship, but it took a while for anything to really move... How strange it is that we almost always learn how be in the partnership that we plan for our whole lives through practice, with so much friction, and with very little preparation, theory, and quality support.

I wrote in my diary that we seemed to me like two roses rubbing their thorny branches instead of caressing each other with flower petals. Then I got philosophical again, psychoanalyzing her in my own head, and trying to understand myself from a distance that I was incapable of.

Now I have this distance and on the one hand I think: “Oh, if only I could tell young Nara everything I know now!” but on the other hand I shake my head: “He had to go through all his lessons, that was necessary. Besides, he wouldn’t even be able to hear and understand your current words.”

Oh, how I sympathize at this moment with all the young people who are currently in their mid-twenties, stumbling in the fog and trying to hold balance on tracks of fate!

I feel like crying because I wrote about so many painful experiences, and even more so because I have completely forgotten half of them.

Reading this is so revealing! So humiliating. If I was so damn dumb and fake back then, why wouldn’t I think the same about myself 26 years in the future when I read these notes?

Yes, I feel fake. I complain so often in my diary about inefficiency and wasting time that it is exactly what strikes me in the present, when I reflect on my ups and downs at midnight with only crickets to keep me company. How did I end up alone in the woods, I wonder. I was surrounded by people in my youth!

There are fewer problems in my current solitude; in that sense, I am not complaining. I find company when I need it. Apparently I need this experience right now. But maybe I ran away from problems too quickly, gave up like a weakling instead of persevering through burning challenges. After all, problems are nothing more than puzzles, and when we solve them, we learn and grow.

It is no coincidence that my younger self “called” me tonight to compare myself to him. Exploring his notes keeps me awake, but it is also healing as he speaks to me even louder while I am somewhat insulated from the world.

As I wrote in my diary: “If we always remained alone, we’d have nobody to compare ourself to.”

Twenty-six-year-old Nara was a completely different man. Twenty-six years later, he has come a long way, but he is still confused, indecisive, ineffective, insecure, often embarrassed, socially awkward, melancholic, and sometimes depressed. And he still philosophizes too much. On the surface, he may appear confident, cheerful, humorous; he may sound thoughtful, profound, even wise... but know that beneath every exclamation mark he presents to the world, there are dozens of question marks he has previously pondered.

26 years ago, the young Nara was just starting to write, he had not published anything yet, but even then he wrote the following in his diary (in connection with his choices, community at that time, and a move away from that world to something new):

“Everyone who comes to his senses and pursues reasonable practice of the spiritual life is a most fortunate soul. I lived among these people, I adopted their values, their norms, their way of thinking. Some were good, some bad, and now I have to pick out the grain from the chaff. It’s not so easy. I will need quite some time to do a good job. But I have plenty of it, at least it seems so, and if not, still nothing is lost. I only hope that somebody is going to make something useful from what I wrote so far, if I ‘take off’ unexpectedly.”

Thank you, young Nara, for persevering and not ‘taking off’! The older Nara, who is writing this right now, must thank you for every move and every decision before and after.

It seems as if the hand of God has guided you, even though so much of what you’ve done was weird, strange, crazy, confused; you have been deceived, naive, wounded, exploited, lied to so many times... now everything seems self-evident. Your story is as clear as day because you wrote it that way.

Here I must quote one of my favorite quotes (by Milan Kundera): “Man proceeds in the fog. But when he looks back to judge people of the past, he sees no fog on their path. From his present, which was their faraway future, their path looks perfectly clear to him, good visibility all the way. Looking back, he sees the path, he sees the people proceeding, he sees their mistakes, but not the fog.”

Thank you, young Nara, for the occasional flashes of genius, the thousands of pages of notes and translations that have enriched no one more than me. Thank you for going headlong on many adventures and finding yourself in unknown worlds, one day just dropping your shoes, toothbrush, table, chair... and just trusting that everything would be okay. What a madman!

Today, when I’m looking back and seeing you with the thick fog around you, I must thank you for how lost you were. Being lost marks my soul more than anything else. The strangest aspect of my soul is that it is without a home, which, as mythical traditions teach us, we’re supposed to yearn for and want to return to. My soul wanders and always will, because the wind is its home. The search is my eternal destiny. And everything is okay.

In 26 years, when I’ll be reading this (if I don’t ‘take off’ by then), I’ll smile: “Oh, how naive the younger Nara was! Of course, he couldn’t have known what was in store for him.” 26 years is a damn long time! A single flutter of butterfly wings can turn my fate in a direction I’ve never imagined.

I could write a lot more, there’s plenty of material, but this should be more than enough for such an article. At the same time, I feel an itch in my brain to write a love memoir. Female authors publish such memoirs more bravely than men. Maybe I need to break the ice. What do you think?

My sense of fitting in and being included within certain organizations on the community oriented left is at its lowest in the 17 years that I’ve been involved with them. The way they’re heading is far from what I can relate to and support. Forgive me, please, but I have to say this out loud!

What bothers me is Social Justice (or to use a more pejorative term, wokism).

I’ve spoken out about this already in various contexts, and I’d do it again had my experience in the past not been so toxic, and how the disturbing elements were brushed aside and how the Social Justice re-entrenched itself in these networks. I would feel awful without saying anything, so I’m writing this, motivated by the words of Vivek Chibber: “The responsibility of the socialist left is to openly and vocally criticize the woke left.”

I consider this an act of love, and I engage with the topic in such a loving spirit, no matter how harsh I might sound.

I don’t consider myself a member of any political group or movement, but in the current climate of hyperfinancialized broligarchy and increasing economic concentration of wealth, I think that we should join forces with the working and farming classes if we’re even to consider any serious political activism. I suggest we better nest our fight for ecology and community within that battle instead of being estranged from it by taking the emotionally charged (and childish) Social Justice approach.

* * *

Eco-gatherings changed my life over the last two decades. But by my standards, in recent years, they went seriously foul. This is how:

1. The overall framework is about anti-this-and-that—specifically: anti-oppression, anti-capitalism, anti-white-supremacy, anti-racism, etc., often in the context of Palestine, queer, and feminist issues. I don’t find such low-resolution activist framing—in other words, such setting of the tone for each day of the gathering, anything close to appealing. If it were a side thing for interested audiences, fine, but having the entire event revolve around it is overkill.

2. I get estranged from any community where the “about” website says:

   “...we stand firmly against all systems of oppression, including environmental destruction, colonialism, systemic racism, patriarchy, economic injustice, and all forms of discrimination and exclusion that deny people their dignity and autonomy. … ).”

   I’m sorry to point it out, but this is dogmatic wokism if I ever saw one. I support each and every individual item (in principle!), but when they come bundled up, they put me off (in principle, too!).

3. When everyone’s pronouns (she/her, he/his, they/them, etc.) are listed on the webpage (whether they know what that even means or not), that’s when social contagion has overridden the genuine organizational culture.

   I am well aware that wokeness is a trend, or fashion, among green political factions and a substantial section of youth in general; I see it in European government and non-government institutions, as well as corporations. I can understand its appeal when it is affirmative, empowering, mature, and self-aware. But I see the dark side, too. I write this as an invitation to prove me wrong.

Social Justice activism can be reactionary, contrarian, fanatical, even cultish and infantile. When this type of activism becomes dominant, strict “rules” are established, governing internal ethics, mannerisms, rituals, jargon, and signals of allegiance.

One such signal is the statement of pronouns. This seems a humane courtesy to certain members of the group so they can feel safer and equally included. On the other hand, if it is expected to be the new norm by decree, it is bound to create awkwardness. The tension may intensify if someone breaks the bubble by not playing along and politely saying that maybe this new “rule” is not thought out sufficiently and would be better parked for now because of what it implies.

Seeing the pronoun culture flashed out on the website of my beloved organization gives the critics, either from the (“extreme”) right or from the (“gender critical”) left, a target for ridicule and proof that this organization is co-responsible for the “cult of gender madness.” The pain, arising from intense awkwardness, will be “resolved” by strengthening the walls around echo chambers. An ever-sharper line will be drawn between insiders and outsiders.

If, to resolve this awkwardness, everyone is expected to shut up and go along, then thoughtful people who’ve scrutinized the issue and understand the predicament will rather stay out of it. I’m one of them.

Social scientists have identified many negative characteristics of the Social Justice culture, like black-and-white thinking, circular epistemology, self-referential exegesis, cynical apologetics, sacred testimony, indoctrination, authoritarianism, holier-than-thou attitudes, hostility to science and rationality, and the persecution and excommunication of heterodox thinkers and heretics. Let me add the oversimplification of politics and lowering the resolution around moral questions, justifying and even instigating violence against those labeled as “oppressors”.

I’m not saying all this is rampant in my circles; it only seems that the doors are wide open to it entering and spreading.

Social Justice as a movement started well. It was a grassroots initiative. Later, it was adopted by corporations and governments. It effectively became global policy, and ESG (environmental, social, and governance) ratings determined access to investment capital. DEI became a global corporate standard and it actually improved the position for many. That’s the bright side of it.

However, a darker movement grew alongside, aggressive, even militant, openly stating the goal of dismantling all systems of oppression. With the rise of social media, woke turned particularly rogue. Disagreement started to be treated as violence and silence as complicity. The mob resorted to outrage, targeting not only the enemies but also the allies who didn’t move fast enough or didn’t parrot the right slogans.

Just publicly stating nuanced political views can be enough for me to be denounced as some kind of villain if these views mean I’m not toeing the line regarding the war in Ukraine, the Palestine-Israel conflict, BiPOC and LGBTQIA+ or (fourth-wave) feminism in a broader sense, (anti-)capitalism, (anti-)colonialism, etc. Also, associating with black-listed figures, listening to them, or reading their essays, even if only for academic purposes, can be enough for me to be seen as suspicious and required to pass a test of allegiance, repenting, expressing agreement with the orthodox position, apologizing for having gone astray, and swearing to stay in line in the future. Such treatment of the heterodox is a sign of gravitating towards something that resembles a totalitarian cult.

I pay close attention to the “culture wars” because they tell a lot about the ideological undercurrents where the pressures of future conflicts hide. On the side of the Social Justice causes, the explicit core motivations are virtuous. But the devil is in the details. My main problem is how it narrows the scope of belonging and the potential for allyship, and how embedded it is in the toxic dimension of the culture war. The anti-woke are no better and are, actually, the other side of the same coin. I invite criticism of both sides of the insanity, and I advocate for adopting a healthy and mature political position within the networks I love, because I agree that remaining apolitical is not an option. But I disagree with entering the political arena with childish Social Justice activism. I think we can do better.

Social Justice has weak moral authority in the eyes of the average citizen, and even more so in the eyes of the increasing number of wise intellectuals and influencers. Moral authority depends on integrity. Sacrificing integrity for ideological compliance will, in the long run, cause irreparable damage.

Let me list a few controversial issues where the Social Justice movement is ruining its integrity:

• Uncritically defending gender affirming surgery—even in youth (-18: with the slogan: “trans-girls are girls”);—this was instrumental in many being harmed and leading them to fight back with court cases and through organizations such as Genspect

• Defending the position that trans-women belong in the same sports category as women (and that expressing qualified concerns is bigotry, sexism, transphobia, etc.) caused strong pushback, and ultimately, the Olympic Committee banned trans-women from competing in female categories

• Facilitating social contagion among the youth in relation to gender transition, including hormone blockers, binders, self-identification (the whole pronoun culture), has rightfully received criticism; let me give just one example, Billboard Chris but there are many others (BTW, if you decide to check Billboard Chris, please, read the Wikipedia talk page about him, to see the nasty disputes in the background, and watch his talk in the EU parliament)

• Demonizing and thus estranging able-bodied white males as “white-supremacist” (based on the oversimplified Americanized racial hierarchies)

• Traditional feminists were victims of similar demonization and estrangement, symbolized by a libel “TERF” (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist), and deepening the divide in the LGBTQIA+ “community” with many organizations distancing from queer and trans, such as LGB Alliance

• Weaponizing the DEI institution to erase or harm ideological and political opponents backfired on the entire field, and now the White House is retracting many DEI policies (including the good ones, as this website points out); this is often done viciously and in a retaliatory spirit (the other side of the coin plays out)

• Engineered unrealistic policies of gender and racial equity (going back all the way to James Damore’s memo Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber) have been identified as ideologically driven, unrealistic, and actually unjust; the backlash is, again, the anti-woke pushing for over-correction to their crazy opposite extreme

• Clustering “oppression” questions in one amorphous lump, including immigration, Palestine, Ukraine, BLM, vaccination, #metoo, masking in public (to list just a few), etc., and generally taking action by fighting against the “oppressor” across these questions as if they were one thing

• Slandering and denouncing respected public figures for their opinions and lumping with them their supporters (J. K. Rowling stands out here).

Just a few days ago, I overheard a group of youngsters mention how Rowling influenced them, because most of them read Harry Potter, but then someone blurted, “Yeah, the only problem is that she’s a f**king transphobe,” and the others nodded.

The atmosphere was electric when the young man called Rowling a transphobe; I could tell that, had I stood up to defend her, I’d probably be fiercely attacked. The fact that the activists have succeeded in demonizing Rowling so blatantly is just horrific. I stress this case because for me, it’s emblematic of the general trend in how impulsive allegiances are formed and enemies slandered. If I dare say, “I stand with J. K. Rowling!” (if even for the sake of fairness!), many would find that statement so hurtful that they would incite their peers and friends to hurt me back.

I find this retaliatory viciousness heinous, and I’m not coming anywhere near it again. Knowing what Rowling went through, I understand her when I see her push back, financially support court cases, see these people win, and at that moment publicly celebrate the victory—with a bloody cigar and whiskey! When the defeated mob goes into outrage mode, the average Jill and Joe will see how psychotic and vile this movement can be and probably think that they deserved the defeat.

Let me step away from Rowling and illustrate my point on radical vegans. I’m 95% vegetarian, probably 75% vegan. I strongly oppose the meat industry and animal torture. Still, some vegans completely denounced me because I didn’t align fully with their narrow ideology. Radical vegans weaken their own influence when they estrange even vegetarians like me! I see the same happening in the case of Social Justice, where radicals estrange many allies because of positions they deem problematic.

I remember a debate between a vegan and a hunter from many years ago. The vegan yelled accusations, while the hunter remained calm. He plainly spelled out his rationale for hunting. The vegan then attacked the person of the hunter (ad hominem), but the hunter still remained calm. For the viewer on TV, it was clear: the vegan is nuts; it makes more sense to agree with the hunter.

To me, it makes more sense to agree with Rowling. She spelled out her case with common sense and empathy, she’s supportive of humanitarian projects; she’s the second most charitable benefactor in the UK. If my support of Rowling means that I’ll be seen as persona non grata in my family of organizations, that would prove my case. Same with Billboard Chris.

Social Justice estranges clear-thinking moderates who used to be allies and sympathizers. There’s a lot of anger, expressed in the rebellious voice of a teenager, while a clear-headed grown-up sits on the other side of the table.

Vivek Chibber blames this on the political left being highly divided and therefore powerless. He calls out the lack of adult activist culture among progressives. He labels woke left as “political tourism”: people don’t have their material interests tied in with the success of their organization; they’re not in the fight wholly, but only as a matter of vocation. If the organization breaks down and disappears, they move on to another political “destination” and don’t look back. The fight is not existential, the ideal is not a resolution to a critical social problem, and activism is essentially a hobby.

The “tourist class” is estranged from the real working class, and this division disempowers the left, giving room to the right political factions. As Vivek put it: “If we on the left don’t say that woke is BS, radical right-wing forces are going to win—and they already are winning … When the right takes your rights, understand that you brought it on yourselves.”

I’m choosing Vivek’s criticism of Social Justice because it comes from the traditional socialist left, not the demonized right. That’s only the tip of the iceberg of where woke went wrong. It went wrong badly. Policy makers on both sides see the mistakes and are reversing policies.

The hardest-headed Social Justice warriors blame it all on systemic injustices, white supremacy, alt-right conservatives, etc. The mightily influential Judith Butler didn’t impress me in her recent interview with “their” vague arguments, which I listened to with great interest, might I add.

Judith spoke about the “imaginary enemy” and a “fictional unit” that attracts a lot of anxiety and fear. “They” (I write they out of pure courtesy; otherwise I’d write “she”) saw the anti-gender argument as phantasmagoric, dismissing the validity of “quote-unquote” gender ideology as a right-wing dogmatic construct. Their response didn’t address the most crucial critiques but instead dealt with populist clichés on the “right.” The video I linked above comes across to me as straw-manning (or straw-womanning, or straw-theming, however you wish to have it spelled out).

The Social Justice warriors tend to be the loudest and the most insistent, while the polite majority ends up toeing the line, lest they offend them and cause tantrums. It’s ridiculous because in the oppression Olympics, losing means being right! That’s simply insane.

Vivek said something like this: “Owning one’s failures is the only way to bring the masses to our cause, not blaming them. With the attitude of being holier-than-thou, we have no chance of succeeding as anything resembling a political force.”

I would love to see the organizations that I’ve been associated with over the last 20 years mature and own their mistakes! This means not bowing down to the loudest (and often dumbest and most psychopathic!) activist in the room. It means holding complex, sometimes conflicting views and holding space for dialogue. As John Stewart Mill said, “He who knows only his side of the case, knows little of that.”

* * *

I went into so much detail here because of how it affects me personally, of course, but even more because of how it affects the movements that I care deeply about. Aligning with Social Justice, no matter how well-intentioned, sends a signal to the rest of the world. To the insider, the signal is about unhinging justice: environmental, societal, economic, and cultural. The outsider with broad enough knowledge and perspective sees the good intentions and also the ideological myopia. The road to hell is, still, paved with good intentions.

Collateral damage, for example, of listing pronouns on the website, is signaling that your political views and moral positions are effectively so low-res that it’s justified to label them childish or even cultish; they’re not about principles but about identities.

There are two radical ways to frame the defense against my critical letter:

1. Thanking the critic for taking the time and translating it to the insider view of the organizational reality, debating it in the inner circle openly and critically, making sense of it, nesting it within the complex political cosmos, addressing every single issue that the critic brought up, taking it seriously, and not allowing anything to be brushed aside just because it’s uncomfortable—and most importantly—not yielding in to outrage and threats.

2. Ignoring the critic, demonizing him, shielding the organizational reality from scrutiny, prohibiting any debate in the inner circle, punishing it with disproval and threat, insisting that your understanding of the political cosmos is morally superior and justified, brushing aside concerns, and protecting the ideological comfort zone by all means.

The first way requires maturity. The second way demands that you dumb down your moral instincts, compromise your integrity and common sense, and bow down to the totalitarian imperative of the loudest in the group.

I’m perfectly fine with people holding different or even opposing views from mine as long as they keep engaging in courteous conversation with me. That’s how I learn. I like the diversity of viewpoints! Where I draw the line is when I encounter entrenched dogmatic positions, combined with a cruel prosecution of heretics—often simply for slightly misbehaving or politely disagreeing. In hindsight, I can see that’s how I was treated in one of the organizations that I was part of. My sin was expressing concerns about an ideological echo chamber potentially engulfing the network that could do so much good, but instead chose to toe the line of Social Justice cult-like activism.

Now, let me stress something that, maybe, you wouldn’t expect: I’d be fine with a strategic backing of Social Justice due to its dominance on the progressive left, but without embracing it dogmatically. We can be diplomatic and maintain our integrity if we talk and maintain our internal transparency and integrity.

Right now, seeing what I see, my hopes are low that this is possible within my spiritual family. I would be delighted if all you out there proved me wrong. Especially if you did it with love and empathy.

If you care to go deeper into my rationale, you can read the essay I wrote a couple of years ago: How Social Justice cripples the “progressive” left and what to do about it.

As a troublemaker with a bad name, I don’t expect to have any influence on internal processes within the organizations that I care about, to thoroughly address any of these issues to my liking. So, if anyone among you feels confident enough to hold the initiative and understands why that’s critically important, I can share good resources.

As I said in the beginning, nothing would make me happier than my long-term friends convincing me that my concerns are invalid and that there’s room for me within the space that defined me. I’d be glad to learn that the time I spent voicing my concerns was a waste of time.

V moji sobici je najdaljša dimenzija višina. Najdaljši predmet je vrvica za perilo med vogaloma. Med vogaloma, da sploh lahko kaj obesim na njo. Ko zaprem eno oko, se vogal in vrvica sploščita v križ, na katerega je pribita moja domišljija. Tri krila ventilatorja mirujejo pod stropom kot jutri in včeraj in danes. Pod motno neonsko svetlobo so ozke umazane rjuhe videti še bolj sive. Celo bolj sive kot zlizan omet. Še sreča, da zdaj zatiskam oči, lahkotno dremam in ne vidim tesnobne sivine. Plujem pod jutranjim soncem in nebesno modrino po zelenih krošnjah, valovečih v toplem južnem vetru. Za zaprtimi očmi se dimenzije udinjajo hrepenenju duše po življenju, ki tudi proti moji volji vre iz globine in včasih celo sprejme kak moj režijski poseg, priznam pa, da redko. Morda zato, ker je zunanji svet preploščat, da bi duša v njem našla dom. Torej ga išče tam, kjer ga lahko.

Predrami me avant vu. Na vlaku nekje v Indiji pišem: »Torej ga išče tam, kjer ...«, se zamislim, preden zapišem »ga«, in tuhtam, ali je v tem stavku sploh potreben ... Taka nekajsekundna prekrivanja včeraj in jutri v izvenčasnem dinamičnem zdaj, enkrat z uvidom v preteklost, drugič v prihodnost, so me neštetokrat prebujala in osupljala, nisem pa jih mogel prijeti ali jim uiti. Pravzaprav so mi sledila še vztrajneje, kadar sem pred njimi bežal, ko pa sem jih hotel uloviti, so izpuhtela kot kafra. Pojav »že videnega« ali déjà vu ni nič novega, o prekognitivnem občutku »nečesa, kar še bo videno« pa sem veliko razmišljal že kot otrok, toda pojasniti mi ga ni znal nihče, knjige so prav tako molčale, zato sem mu kar rekel avant vu in se o njem raje nisem pogovarjal z nikomer. Večkrat ko sem ga doživel, bolj je čas izgubljal status neupogljivosti. Uvidi v prihodnost so postajali vse bolj živi, manjkala mi je le še moč zavestnega vpliva na dogodke, pa bi lahko soustvarjal lepši svet. Žal iz uvidov nisem mogel izločiti usodnosti. Tudi če sem si avant vu dobro zapomnil, se mi je počasi le izmuznil iz glave in nazadnje vstal iz nič, ko sem najmanj pričakoval; tudi če sem se déjà vuja zavedel na samem začetku in ga v naslednjih sekundah poskusil spremeniti, da bi se vsaj malo ločil od avant vuja, je vendarle stekel po svoje, jaz pa sem nemočno spremljal dogodke, celo besede iz lastnih ust, besede, ki jih je namesto mene izbirala neka nevidna sila. Čeprav sem vedel, kaj je izbrala, čeprav sem se pripravil reči nekaj drugega, sem nazadnje podlegel notranjemu nareku. Potem me je obšel val svinčeno težkih vprašanj s preprostim skupnim imenovalcem – kaj če temu nareku sledim tudi sicer, štiriindvajset ur dnevno, zmotno misleč, da vedno odločam o vsem?

Vlak proti Džajpurju je še bolj siv kot moja sobica v Kolkati, ima pa vsaj okna in po tri ventilatorje na oddelek. Toda puščoba Radžasthana duše ne privlači. Tudi to ni njen dom, niti za hrepenenje iz globin, niti za režijo po višji modrosti. V puščavi vidim poraz človeške pameti, saj človek ni za smrt, temveč za življenje. Opazujem starca na sosednjem sedežu, kako sklene dlani ob vsakem kamnitem svetišču v daljavi, mimo katerega se peljemo, rahlo prikloni glavo in odmomlja molitev. Občutek imam, da se klanja puščavi, da v sebi utrjuje pečat smrti, govorice duše pa že dolgo ne sliši več, kaj šele, da bi jo razumel. Kako naj potem dojame, da puščava ni delo usode, ampak zatajenih sanj gluhoneme, slepe duše, od rojstva bivajoče med tremi daljicami povsod enakih celic za duha. V prav takih celicah smo sredi ploščate monotonije začeli sovražiti življenje, da bi ljubili »boga«. Nietzsche se je zmotil – naš bog ni mrtev, naš bog je smrt. Necros je čaščen, ljubljen, občudovan, prisoten v vsakem gibu človeka. Celo jemo ga, živimo v njem, plačujemo z njim, se na njem vozimo ... v civilizaciji nekrofilije, nekrofagije, nekrokracije. Ko pogledam naokrog, se mi ne zdi, da sem pretirano črnogled.

Ob mojih natikačih na bangalorski ulici je rjasta kletka iz tistih grdih jeklenih palic, ki jih uporabljajo v gradbeništvu, da varuje droben grm pred tacanjem in žvečenjem. Vse, kar gre, je grožnja – pešec, vozilo, žival. Ob pločniku se ustavi starinski avto, izpušni plini in prah ovijejo ograjico. Brneče železje ne zna videti teh nekaj vejic in lističev. Vidim pa, da ljudem ni vseeno za zelenje ob ulici, saj delavec trideset metrov niže pridno barva prav tako rjasto ograjico, pod katero je podoben grmiček, a povsem gol. No, bo pa vsaj kletka lepo zelena. Povsem enaki so človeški rezervati, v katerih je danes »zaščiteno« vse, kar zares živi, nič več samo Indijanci. Naše blazinice in podplati se dotikajo življenja šele podvojeni, nadgrajeni, varni; roka, rokavica, noga, nogavica, čevelj ... vsak ud s svojo masko, vsako čutilo z elektronskim tipalom, ki posnetek življenja prenese v škatlico. Tudi bog je postal smrt šele, ko smo ga zaprli v škatlico, imenovano tempelj, cerkev, sveta knjiga. Tri daljice celice za duha so izgubile višino, ostali sta le še prekrižani črti, simbol civilizacije umiranja, linearnosti napredka in zavesti, egocentrizma. Znanost negotovo zatiska eno oko in reducira trodimenzionalno vesolje na tlorise in narise, da bi ga laže konceptualizirala. Razvoj človeštva meri v okviru dvodimenzionalnih modelov, ki jih lahko skicira na papir ali računalniški monitor. Toda dinamika življenja se začne šele pri treh prostorskih dimenzijah. Znanstveni razvoj torej ni nič drugega kot razvoj degradirane zavesti v dimenzijah brez življenja.

Že dolgo me mika vstopiti v svet vedskih matematikov, ki so dobro vedeli, da so ljudje nagnjeni k degradaciji zavesti v vse manj dimenzij, zato so študente matematike že od prvih dni učili večdimenzionalnega nadčasovnega dojemanja sebe in sveta. Temeljni medij učenja je bila meditacija, s katero so prestopili okvir treh dimenzij in se v duhu gibali po štiri-, pet-, šestdimenzionalnih prostorih. Tudi sodobni matematiki in fiziki morajo priznati, da do znanstvenih dognanj ne prihajajo več z empirijo, ampak s kontemplacijo in meditacijo. Navade in naučene teorije ukleščijo duha v obrazce kot v primeru avant vuja, ki ostaja neprepoznan, ker smo si prepovedali poznati prihodnost. Le vidci in preroki smejo pokukati tja, pa še njih redko jemljemo povsem resno.

Meditacija vedskih matematikov se je začela kot otroška igra s točkami in daljicami ter s povezovanjem osmih vogalov kocke v sedmih potezah na vse možne načine. Kocko omejuje šest kvadratov, umeščenih v tri linearne razsežnosti; hiperkocko omejuje osem kock, definiranih s štirimi ploskovnimi razsežnostmi; petrazsežnostno kocko omejuje deset hiperkock, šestrazsežnostno dvanajst petrazsežnostnih itn. Hiperkock ni mogoče vizualizirati z običajnim mišljenjem, »vanje« vodi izključno meditacija, podkrepljena z vadbo joge in dihanja, s katerimi se študent lahko zave konkretne linearnosti, ploskovnosti, prostorskosti, hiperprostorskosti itn. svojega telesa in duha v odnosu do naravnega, živega okolja. Le to okolje je zadosti velika rjuha, da je nanjo mogoče projicirati večrazsežnostne objekte in pojave, ko je človeški duh dovolj širok, da jih sploh lahko zazna. Simbol tega širjenja je tako imenovano odpiranje tretjega očesa. Kakor nam dve očesi omogočata zaznavanje globine na dveh slikah trodimenzionalnega sveta, naj bi nam tretje oko, celo kot namišljeni senzor, omogočalo zaznavanje še ene dimenzije več, saj lahko le na podlagi treh slik, sočasno hologramsko projiciranih na platno zavesti, sestavimo štirirazsežnostno podobo, dve sliki sta za kaj takega premalo.

Odpiranje očesa več vodi v več življenja, zatiskanje enega očesa naravno prinaša krnenje duha. Z ožanjem prostora pa se oža tudi čas, linearnost postane tog božji imperativ, posebej če je še tisto eno odprto oko opremljeno s polarnim barvnim filtrom predsodkov in dogem. Takrat sedanjost izgine pod željami in skrbmi, ki človeško zavest razpnejo med včeraj in jutri in jo tam priklenejo v navade. Moja vrvica za perilo potrebuje dva žeblja, da mi lahko služi; brez linearnih včeraj in jutri zdaj nima opore, ostane samo negotova meglica, lebdeča visoko pod zvezdami, neulovljiva, neuporabna, na njo ne morem ničesar obesiti, ne živega ne mrtvega.

V moji sobici smo edino življenje jaz, načeta lubenica, droben kuščar, mušica, ščurek in komar. Mušica kroži nad lubenico, komar nad menoj, ščurek brska za kapljami gnilobe na tleh, kuščar opreza za vsemi tremi, jaz pa k sreči spet plujem po pisanih kulisah sanj. Premočrtna razpetost mojih drobnih sostanovalcev med strah in lakoto se me ne dotika več. Tukaj ni tega sveta. Tukaj slišim besede: »Nagrado prejme ...«, čutim trepljanje, toplo dlan za dlanjo, oči me skelijo od bliskavic. Pogled mi pade na svilen rokav, potem z drobcem prahu odleti do brkatih in bradatih obrazov. Rdeči nos! Nisem ga pozabil. Žogic prav tako ne. V avant vuju jih čas ne more razpeti med včeraj in jutri. Mečem jih, toda zavedam se le tiste, ki leti, nedavno vržena, vsak hip ujeta, stalno tekoča po neotipljivosti Möbiusovega traku. Glasno govorim modre misli, ko žogice letijo. Bliskavice so ponorele ...

Žongliram za zabavo, ker mi diši načeta lubenica, ker je v puščavi oaza, ker so na bradatih obrazih nasmehi. Žongliram z resničnostjo, domišljijo in sanjami, s tremi očesi, tremi žužki, kuščarjem, sabo in vami. Nasmiham se preracionalnim intelektualcem in njim podobnim, ki namrščeni »žonglirajo« le z dvema žogicama. Pa še teh dveh se krčevito oklepajo (brez nasmejanih oči in rdečega nosu, seveda), da jim ne bi ušle v kake neznane dimenzije. Na vsako žogico nalepijo teorijo ali dve in jo oropajo živosti, kajti nič ne more živeti v krčevitem objemu. Tudi besede pisatelja, s katerimi ta žonglira pred bralci, zaživijo šele, ko jih izpusti iz rok, ko stečejo po nadčasni orbiti kot planeti – utečeno svobodne, hkrati predvidljive in vedno nove, povsem jasne, a nepojasnljive. Vse je žongliranje, igranje z gravitacijo, z zakoni vesolja, sprva v razsežnostih smrti, kasneje v čarovniji življenja.

Pravzaprav se tudi matematika začne z mrtvo temeljno dimenzijo, semenom vseh prostorov – točko. Točkovna zavest se razširi v linearno, s katero prva dimenzija dobi smer. Ploskev je razsežnost oblik, v prostoru se začne gibanje, v hiperprostoru misel; za življenje je dovolj prostora šele v pet-, za zavest šele v šestdimenzionalnosti. Če to prevedem v žongliranje, se pri eni žogici začne igra (vrhunska meditacija) s točko, igra z zvijanjem daljic in premic v krivulje. Spuščanje, spremljanje in lovljenje žogice je zametek gibanja in življenja. Dve žogici širita zavest, tri še bolj – z njimi že vzpostavljam razmerja med danes in včeraj in jutri. Pri štirih in petih se linearnost in polarnost razblineta, nehati moram žonglirati z rokami, začeti žogice voditi z intuicijo, z občutkom, zavedanjem nečesa višjega. Rok ne morem pomnožiti, da bi vsaka metala in lovila po eno žogico, lahko pa izurim duha, da upravlja z njimi tudi takrat, ko se jih dlani ne dotikajo, kot da bi jih ves čas vodilo nekaj nevidnih rok.

Ko k prostoru dodajam dimenzije, včeraj danes in jutri dobivajo nove družabnike. Ker življenje terja gibanje, potrebuje tritočkovni čas, v katerem včeraj in jutri kot žeblja dajeta obliko vrvici za perilo, po kateri drsi zdaj – moj pogled. V hiperprostoru se vrvica upogne v elastičen trikotnik, kateremu obliko vdihne rotacija okoli središča v četrti časovni razsežnosti. Takrat čas neha biti tog okvir usodnosti in postane samo po sebi dinamično polje možnosti. Včeraj in danes in jutri se znajdejo v enakovrednem položaju v odnosu do novega središča, h kateremu so pripeti, in večnosti, po kateri se gibljejo. Kdor se ne zaveda središča dinamičnega časa, v katerem so ostale tri dimenzije časa fino uravnovešene, po nepotrebnem iz strahu in skrbi v mladosti bolj obtežuje jutri, v starosti včeraj, vmes kar oba, in zapostavlja danes. Tako dinamiki časa krade ne eno, ampak kar dve razsežnosti. Če ventilatorju odlomim eno krilo, bo izgubil ravnotežje in stabilnost, s tem bom tudi osi odvzel funkcionalnost. Problema ne bom rešil, če odlomim še drugi dve krili ali če potem prvega prilepim nazaj. Zgolj včeraj in jutri sta enako nezadostna za dinamičnost časa kot samo zdaj.

Včasih ljudje po budističnem nauku iščejo pot v brezčasnost z lomljenjem kril ventilatorja, namesto da bi samo uglasili svoj odnos do njih; drugi se po filozofiji monizma in sodobnih religij izgubljajo v enorazsežnostnem »zdaj«. Toda zdaja ni v izničenju včeraj in jutri, kakor brezčasnosti ni v izničenju vseh treh osnovnih časovnih razsežnosti. Samo zdaj je premalo, da bi v njem kaj živelo. Ostal bo plehek, naj se še tako poskuša šopiriti kot mističen, razsvetljen, poduhovljen. Včeraj in jutri golega materializma sta lahko videti brezmadežno uglajena, toda v tej uglajenosti ni duše.

Odkar vemo zase, se čas ni spremenil niti za slamico in če se slučajno je, smo se mi spremenili z njim. Stara indijska modrost pravi, da so ljudje kot oblak, ki ne čuti vetra, ker leti z njim. Zemlja potuje okoli sonca s hitrostjo sto tisoč kilometrov na uro, a te hitrosti ne čutimo, kre potujemo z njo. Enako vse, česar se zavedamo, skupaj z nami nosi čas, zato tega pravzaprav ne moremo izmeriti. Manjka nam možnost zavedanja statične, izvenčasovne točke in drugih primerjalno večjih (hitrejših) oz. manjših (počasnejših) časovnih prostorov. Še določanje razmerij med relativnimi pokrivanji pri gibanju nebesnih teles, ki dajejo takt ritmom v naravi, nam je dolga stoletja delalo preglavice. S sledmi teh preglavic je prerešetan sodobni koledar, pa tudi v urah in minutah vsakdanjika jih ne manjka. Čeprav je čas najstabilnejši steber našega obstoja, je nemogoče reči, kaj dejansko je, nanj nalepiti nedvoumno definicijo. Tudi ko zdaj in včeraj in jutri zavrtimo okoli nove časovne razsežnosti, ostane nedoločljiv, približno tako kot elektron. Avant vu in déjà vu sta hiperžeblja, med katera je razpeta ta razsežnost, ne zares, seveda, ampak subjektivno, znotraj človeške zavesti. Ko se v njej prekrijeta ta os in vrteči se trikotnik, se v mislih pojavi slika treh časov hkrati. Takrat se zgodita déjà vu in avant vu, toda opazimo le prvega, ker smo vajeni poznati le preteklost.

Dokler imamo odprto eno oko premalo, celotne časovne sfere ne moremo zajeti, pa še ko jo zajamemo, ostane le razmazan oblaček, če misli dovolj ne pospešimo, da začnejo slediti hitrosti rotacije. Takrat pridobimo perspektivo gledalca filma, bralca knjige, v kateri si dogodki sledijo po prej začrtanem scenariju, pa vendar imamo možnost skakati naprej in nazaj po prizorih, si jih predvajati hitreje ali počasneje, ustaviti slike in jih analizirati. Linearni čas zadrži vzročno-posledično strukturo, višja perspektiva razprši samo občutek usodnosti te strukture, kar je zanimivo, ker v njej še vedno ne moremo ničesar spremeniti. Kroženje dinamičnega časa pušča spiralno sled, v kateri se vrti naš zdaj. Vrtita pa se tudi včeraj in jutri, po novem predvidljiva, čeprav stalno sveža. Spirale ne moremo spreminjati z neposrednim posegom, obenem pa spreminjanje ni nemogoče, posebej če se okrog tega cilja zbere veliko ljudi. Potem lahko spreminjajo prihodnost in preteklost. Ne s hollywoodskim potovanjem skozi linearni čas, temveč s transcendiranjem linearnosti po stopinjah Einsteina. Času gotovo nikoli ne bomo mogli odvzeti usmerjenosti od včeraj k jutri, tudi v hiperčasu bodo včeraj in danes in jutri tekli v isti smeri, le da se bodo vrteli in bodo na prvi pogled razmazani v eno. Preseganje linearnega časa se bo kazalo v zavedanju temeljnih zakonitosti vzročno-posledične verige, na kateri sloni vesolje kot os na špicah kolesa. Te špice lahko vidimo le, če odpremo eno oko več in se skupaj s časom zavrtimo okoli brezčasnosti. Potem jih lahko rahljamo in zategujemo ter v razsežnosti kolektivne zavesti spreminjamo večnost.

Na trati pod lipo ob vinogradu me zbudijo žarki poletnega sonca, lačnega, ker bo vsak čas kosilo. Za sonce in zame. Zakaj pa ne? Če lahko sedi med listi, bo lahko sedlo tudi za krožnik. Kosilo sicer še ni skuhano, a sem ga že okusil skozi portal v vzročno-posledično nadčasje. Po stari lubenici za zajtrk in žongliranju za malico se za kosilo res prileže nekaj živega iz gozda. Dom sem našel tu, kjer ga lahko. Življenje ni več moj dom le na kulisah sanj, ploščati svet se je razrasel v prej neznane hiperrazsežnosti, kjer se pisateljevanje ne razlikuje od uživanja v večno toplem kosilu, matematičnih meditacij, igrivega metanja pisanih žogic, zrenja skozi umazano okno na indijskem vlaku. Moje bivanje, moj dom je življenje v hiperčasovnem hiperprostoru. Pa še to: moj hiperdom je hiperlep.

Nekrosa opazujem na tujih dvoriščih, na mojem hipervrtu je le še Bios. Častim ga preprosto: dajem mu ves prostor, ki ga potrebuje zase, tu je on gospodar. In zdi se mi, da vlada bolje kot Nekros, saj zna biti le služabnik, nikoli tiran. Žongliram s plodovi, listi in koreninami, ali morda oni žonglirajo z menoj. V zaljubljenosti pogosto pozabimo, kaj je kdo. Biofilija je glavni zakon naše pete razsežnosti, podreja se mu vse. Naša ureditev se imenuje biokracija, vladavina življenja.

Vem, da dvo- in trodimenzionalni umi ne morejo slediti vsem žogobesedam, s katerimi nastopam pred njimi, morda pa duša vendarle lahko začuti dimenzijo življenja, po kateri frčijo. Biofilija je ozkim umom tuja, naj gre za teoretski koncept ali praktično dejavnost, biokracija je še korak dlje. V moji sobici v Kolkati je ni, na vlaku proti Džaipurju je ni, med bradatimi obrazi prav tako ne, vsaj zadosti ne. Neonske luči in bliskavice nikoli ne bodo sonce, temne stene nikoli ne bodo nebo, sive rjuhe ne morejo nositi holograma življenja, ni ga mogoče zares prenesti v škatlico. Le v kraju brez sten lahko žongliram tako, kot si želi duša. Gozd je laboratorij, v katerem lahko spoznam življenje, ne tako, da ga zapiram v škatlice, ampak tako, da ga spustim v neznane dimenzije in poletim skupaj z njim, nošen v vrtincu hiperčasa. Ampak za kaj takega se moram nehati bati svobode, živosti zvezd in oblakov, moram spregledati na več oči, kot si jih priznavam, moram pustiti vrvici za perilo, da najprej služi sebi in šele potem (morda) tudi meni. Dopustiti moram življenju, da vlada (in služi), ne pa ga ploščiti, da bi ga laže stlačil v svoj dvodimenzionalni um in nedomišljene cilje.

Vladavine ljubezni in življenja sodobnik nikoli ne bo povezoval z besedo bio. To bo videl na zavitku (morda) zdravih piškotov in si mislil kaj svojega, včasih dobrega, včasih slabega, ne bo pa je cenil v kratici politične stranke ali govoru predsednika, zvenela mu bo pretenciozno. Dejstvo pa je, da biosa ne moremo marginalizirati v nedogled, da bi obranili stare nekrocentrične navade. Biokracija ni utopično sanjarjenje, ampak neizogibna prihodnost. In preteklost. In sedanjost. Vse druge oblike vladavine so v resnici prepotentno otročje samoslepljenje, neodgovorno, nevedno in lažljivo. Vedno nam vlada življenje, tudi če tega v svojih sploščenih možganih ne zmoremo videti. Politiki, znanstveniki in gospodarstveniki bodo nekoč prav tako začeli odsevati dobri trend prebujanja k življenju, upam pa, da čim manj skozi prizmo neoduhovnosti. Potem ne bodo več brezglavo širili kraljestva mrtvila, raje bodo v življenju iskali domove za naše duše.

Dokler se to ne zgodi, bomo mi biofili, jadralci po petdimenzionalnosti, prisiljeni bivati v oazicah življenja sredi puščave, ki se razteza čez planet. Ko se nas združi dovolj, vem, da bomo lahko z živimi sanjami spreminjali prihodnost in preteklost. Petdimenzionalni svet se bo iz avant vuja spustil na zemljo kot obljubljeno božje kraljestvo in nam vrnil raj – ne po božji volji, ampak z režijo po višji modrosti hrepenenja iz globin. Medtem bodo tisti, ki so razpeti med strah in lakoto, pomagali temnim prerokom graditi temni svet, svetle vizije pa bodo razglašali za utopične, ker zvenijo predobro, ker je spomin na slepilo komunizma še vedno preveč živ v njihovi zavesti. Toda zakaj? Kdo se v puščavi ne razveseli oaze? Prave oaze, ne fatamorgane. Zaradi strahu pred napako se bojimo take dobrote, moderne so le temne in jeklene vizije bodočega sveta. Toda kdo ne bo priznal, da se svežina prižganega ventilatorja ne more primerjati s pišem z oceana?

V moji oazici je najdaljša dimenzija višina – steber dežnih kapelj se izgublja v nizkem temnem oblaku. Najdaljši predmet je veter, v katerem se zibljeta kosa vrvice za perilo. Ko odprem še eno oko, se veter in dež zvrtinčita v spiralo, iz katere se bohotno razrašča moja domišljija. Tri zaplate neba se smejijo nad oblakom kot včerajdanesjutri. Snop svetlobe obarva moker travnik v daljavi še bolj zeleno. Celo bolj zeleno kot košati gozd. Plujem pod jutranjim soncem in nebesno modrino po zelenih krošnjah, valovečih v toplem južnem vetru. Dimenzije se udinjajo hrepenenju duše po življenju, ki tudi proti moji volji vre iz globine in večkrat celo sprejme kak moj režijski poseg, moram reči, da vse pogosteje. Verjetno zato, ker je moj notranji svet prebogat, da bi življenje ostalo ravnodušno. Dom sem našel tam, kjer sem ga lahko. Ne dom, hiperdom.

V petek od 22:11 poklepetam z natakarjem pri šanku restavracije v kampu Menina. Vzel sem si zadnji premor za “hidracijo” pred spanjem. Vprašam, ali se še da dobiti kaj in odvrne, da nam dajo še petnajst minut.

»Res lepe stvari počnete, takih dogodkov bi moralo biti več,« reče.

Zasvetijo se mi oči in z vso iskrenostjo vprašam: »Tako se trudite! Ali vam lahko plačam pijačo?«

»O, ne hvala!« Podviza se na drugo stran šanka, zrine med vidno utrujene sodelavke in mi natoči vrček piva. Z velikim, »Hvala!« mu vrnem nasmeh. Prepustim ga pospravljanju in zadnjim strankam ob mizah po kotih restavracije in se umaknem v temo pomeditirat o res polnem dnevu. Spremljavo mi delajo ritmi banda RANR. Iskreno ga občudujem, ko nosi težo mojega sveta.

Domača naloga narejena!

Katja Verderber je na delavnici le nekaj ur prej iz mene izvabila obljubo, da bom v prihodnjih dneh prav v takih situacijah, kakršno sem opisal, vadil javno nastopanje z lepo projiciranim glasom, obrazno mimiko, govorico telesa in za povrh, seveda, karseda jasnim sporočilom. Zakaj ne bi vadil že isti večer? Z novimi prijatelji … in natakarji … in samo carico Katjo.

Prav vsaka situacija, vsak posameznik, si zasluži mene celega: jasnega, definiranega, s prav tisto »masko«, ki zagotavlja vsem vpletenim, da od tega odnesemo največ. Masko persono (ali po grško prosopon) so igralci v klasičnem grškem gledališču nosili, da je okrepila njihov glas in poudarila značaj lika. Na Katjini delavnici smo si kot maske nadeli duha različnih živali, da smo iz svojega drobovja potegnili pristnost svoje lastne osebnosti, lastne persone. Mene je poklical medarski jazbečar (honey-badger), uradno najmanj ogrožena živalska vrsta na Zemlji. Moja naslednja naloga je bila, da v njegovi koži oddelam sobotni dopoldanski panel v družbi Ljupke Vrteve, Matica Munca in (povezovalke) Mateje Koren (o tem več na koncu).

Pripravil sem se še na dva načina. Intervjujev z Ljupko ni bilo težko najti, saj je bila v zadnjih mesecih precej v medijih kot inženirka leta, Matic pa se na mojem radarju redno prikaže, ko privzdigne glas ob kakšni splošni nebulozi, pa vendar sem pobrskal po njegovih nedavnih zapisih.

Za piko na i, sem si rezerviral čas, da sem lahko prisostvoval praktično celotnemu festivalu DIFFRNT. Želel sem svojemu panelu in festivalu kot takemu resnično dodati vrednost. Imam se za privilegiranega, ker me ducat nujnih obveznosti ni vlekel k neizogibnostim v službi in doma. Poklepetal sem z mnogimi vodniki (ki so izvajali delavnice in panele), pa so tako rekoč vsi prišli le odpredavat in potem odhiteli proč.

Kot pisatelj sem si samoiniciativno nadel tudi masko osrednjega poslušalca (keynote listener), da bi na koncu spisal pripoved o DIFFRNT-u, ki jo bo užitek prebrati. Nisem mogel na vse vzporedne delavnice, sem pa s tistih, ki sem se jih udeležil, odnesel kolikor biserov sem lahko. Sproti sem jih nizal na nit, da se ne razgubijo in jih na koncu stresel v varno košaro. Da jih kasneje v miru nanizam estetsko in poučno. To, kar pravkar berete, je biserna ogrlica po mojem okusu in presnovi.

Vsi delamo vse po svoje

Po petkovem večernem koncertu sem šel člane RANR pohvalit in preverit, če sem iz narečnih drobtinic prav razbral murskosoboški karakter karizmatične pevke Neli Lalovič. Kot nalašč se je ravno obrnila proč in nekaj pospravljala, pa sem se zaklepetal s spremljevalnima vokalistkama. Navdušeno sta mi prikimavali (češ, prav si jo prebral) in ponosno hvalili magnetno središčnico benda, kakšna carica je in kako vrhunsko sestavlja večino besedil. Nasmehnila se je, pomahala in pospravljala naprej.

Na koncertu je, seveda, težko slediti tekstom. Vanje sem se poglobil naslednje jutro, da polovim podtone večera in morda tudi kar celotnega festivala. Med možganske vijuge se mi je zataknil verz iz komada Ne reci …

V modernem svetu nihče te ne pogleda.
Fantazija, ki s časom umre in
ostanejo le misli, ki jih misliš.
Odmikaš se.

»Evo, to sem jaz ta hip!« sem se nasmehnil.

Da se ne bi odmaknil predaleč, sem v nedeljo dopoldne prebral sporočila novih znancev s festivala in potrdil prošnje za prijateljstvo na družbenih omrežjih. Čeprav smo v modernem svetu, sem pogledal obraze in profile mnogih, ki so se me dotaknili in poiskal stik z njimi. Naročil sem se na Substack Iz Aninega dnevnika in in prebral naključen članek. Ko jih preberem še nekaj, ji bom poslal (obljubljeni!) odziv in »kritiko«.

Zame je bil vrhunec dogodka panel, na katerem so Ina Kukovič Borovnik, Branimir Brkljač in George Deriso modrovali o tem, kako samega sebe izumiti nanovo. Razlog je zagotovo, ker se tudi sam ubadam s tem vprašanjem zadnjih nekaj let.

Med vrsticami sta mi Brane in George sporočala: »Ko zadeneš ob dno, moraš narediti, kar pač moraš narediti!«

George je solznih oči povedal, kako se je za las izognil sestanku v enem od dvojčkov v New Yorku tistega usodnega dne, 11. 9. 2001, in kako globoko ga je to zaznamovalo. Brane se je spomnil selitve iz Novega Sada v Slovenijo sredi 90-ih, ko bi ostati bilo nič manj kot mazohistično.

»So spremembe, ki si jih sami izbiramo, in tiste, ki si izberejo nas.« Ob teh besedah sem vedel, zakaj sem moral priti na ta DIFFRNT.

»Pogum ima dva izraza,« je rekel George, »za in od.« Prvega potrebujem, ko kam vstopam ali to sprejemam, drugega pa, ko moram nekaj zapustiti ali izpustiti. Ob strani je v moji glavi viselo vprašanje: »Ali se kdaj zgodi dan, ki me ne sooči z obojim?«

Zavedel sem se, da je platno mojega življenja stkano iz dveh poetskih niti, ene pokončne in druge vodoravne, poguma za in od. Platno se pogosto trga in takrat ga krpam s krožnimi in presečnimi nitmi, ponovno se izumljam in se moram navaditi, da me pisane zaplate in šivi naredijo unikatnega. Vse kar delam, delam po svoje in prav je tako!

Strigel sem z ušesi že na samem začetku, ko je Ina pogovor odprla s poezijo Nore Bateson in v pogovor vpletla tudi njenega očeta, slavnega očeta Gregoryja. Oboje je namigovalo na sistemski in zlasti življenjski pristop k vprašanju ponovnega izumljanja samega sebe. Prekrasno je ta občutek zapečatil Brane, ko je s svojim žametnim glasom (v angleščini, ki je v naglasu nosila vsaj malo Balaševića), lepo počasi prebral Sinatrin I did it my way. Na konec pogovora je sedla kot Kosmodisk na utrujeno hrbtenico.

Na to nedeljsko popoldne sem šel zadnji verz prevest – po svoje:

Kajti kaj je človek, kaj pa ima?
Če nima sebe, potem nima nič.
Kako izreče besede, ki jih res čuti
in ne besed tepca, ki kleči?
Moj dnevnik pravi, pretrpel sem udarce
in naredil vse po svoje.

Kako mladi delajo vse »po svoje«

Pismenost z UI ni več noben luksuz, neizogibnost je! Mladi podjetniki si ogromno pomagajo z UI pri tem in tistem. Naja gradi aplikacijo, ki ne šteje kalorij, ampak riše krožnike, ki teknejo; Lana Rakovec je zmagala na tekmovanju POPRI s podjetniško idejo, kako z AI generirati top glasbo za fitness vadbo; Gabriel Grbec s Picmimovim AI družabnikom Pimom podpira kreativni proces ob ustvarjanju avtentične prezence na družbenih omrežjih; (že omenjena) Manca, ki ni več tako zelo mlada, vsekakor pa izžareva mladostnost, je razturala v rabi AI pri gradnji posla, da si zagotovi svoj prostor pod škrtim e-soncem.

Stara garda nas je, prav nasprotno, pozivala k razmisleku o smislu dokazovanja. Zanimivo, da nam je Voranc Kutnik to vprašanje postavil nekaj dni po tem, ko je zaključil Iron Man triatlon in dan pred tekom na 100 km na PTRF (vključno s 6500 m višinske razlike!). Drži, tisti, ki se zmorejo tako hudo dokazati, se jim ni treba več prav nič dokazovati.

»Kaj pa drugi?« sem se spraševal po sicer res prijetni delavnici, »Kaj pa jaz?«

Preživeti na trgu ni mačji kašelj, pa ni pomembno ali smo mladi ali stari, ali uporabljamo AI ali ne, ali smo »varno« zaposleni ali s.p., ali smo v zavetju hostla Mama ali že povsem na »svojem«. Vedno znova se moramo izmišljati nanovo, ker nam zakonitosti dobe, v kateri živimo, ne pustijo počivati.

Sami sebi dovolj

Inino opozorilo, da narava deluje drugače kot ljudje razmišljamo, in zaključek, da smo se prav malo genetsko razvili, odkar smo kot vrsta zapustili votline, je Brane hudomušno pospremil z mislijo, da se bomo, kot vse kaže, kmalu vrnili tja.

Hiper-tehnološki svetovi nas puščajo prazne. Branetov sin se je po študiju ekonomije v Londonu vrnil v Kikindo v isto hišo, v kateri je odraščal njegov oče in zdaj se gre regenerativnega kmetovanja. Ni šel nazaj v votlino, ampak nekam vmes. In ni edini. Zajeten odstotek mladih se vrača k zemlji in vse več jih bo. Zakoreninjeni v svojo zemljo se bodo še naprej učili od celotnega sveta – da bi bolje živeli sami s seboj.

Nekateri temu pravijo kozmolokalizem; zelo verjetno se bodo skupnosti v prihodnosti našle prav v takšni nenavadni vmesnosti: globalno povezane s tehnologijo in lokalno zasidrane v prizemljeni skupnosti, kjer jih objema surova realnost tega, kar je.

Udobje v surovi realnosti je omenila na prvem petkovem panelu Louise Brierley-Ingham. Oprla se je na sočno besedo »rawdogging«, ki jo je praktično nemogoče prevesti v slovenščino. V prvem pomenu se nanaša na (tvegan?; naraven?) seks brez kondoma, v drugem pa na zavestno izogibanje takojšnji zadovoljitvi impulzov. Ko nam je vsega preveč, je cela pustolovščina sedeti na srednjem sedežu na letalu brez slušalk in zamotenosti s filmom na mini ekranu – ko se odločimo, da smo sami sebi povsem dovolj! (Hm, mogoče bi se lahko temu po naše reklo samozafuk? Ali še bolje: samoljubeči samozafuk!)

Statična krepitev mišic, kosti, srca in duha se zgodi, ko nosimo svojo lastno težo in vse, kar je na naših ramenih, brez godrnjanja. Po taki sposobnosti bi moral vsak direktor povprašati kandidata za službo na samem začetku pogovora. Te kapacitete se ne da »fejkati.« Vanjo se ni možno »komitati« in z njo se ni možno »relejtati«. Hkrati je brez nje težko v podjetju najti pravi »flow«.

Zgodba premika

»Flow« je vrhunec. Brez dileme po njem hrepeni vsak kreativec. Je pa treba vedeti, da sta flowa dva: notranji in zunanji. Lahko »flowam« sam s seboj v popolni harmoniji in mi je to dovolj, čeprav svetu ni mar zame, lahko »flowam« z magijo sveta in za to samega sebe parkiram na stran, čeprav me to duši. V zvestobi obema se zgodi meta-flow – takrat za orgazem ne potrebujem seksa in obilje pride kot stranski produkt ustvarjalnosti.

Globoka povezava ne potrebuje kontakta, jo pa globok kontakt vsekakor oplemeniti. Posebej, če je povsem »razstrupljen«. V tej nadzemni nedolžnosti smo z Manco Langus spoznavali pristen (neseksualen) dotik na jutranji kontaktni improvizaciji. Senzualnost nas je spoprijateljila s posebnim flowom, da smo se v njem še zvečer in drug dan lahkotno prepoznali.

Enako kot smo se prepoznali v paradoksnem zvijanju fascie zadnje jutro pod taktirko Mojce Koligar. Tako nekako nas je vodila: “Levo roko na desno ramo, desno ramo k levemu kolenu, levo koleno pod desno, počep, zasuk glave tja, kamor si ne predstavljaš, da spada, in potem še razteg hrbttenice ob iztegu uhljev z dlanmi. In potem šest globokih vdihov.” Hkrati se trudiš izgledati normalno, kar v tej poziciji absolutno ni mogoče.

Tega nismo počeli zato, ker je to objektivno res, ampak zato, ker smo se sami odločili tako interpretirati zgodbo, ki se je odvijala pod našo kožo. In jo tako pripovedovati ter se ob njej dotikati sebe in drug drugega. Natanko tako jo zdaj pripovedujem vam, ki to berete. Tako tistim, ki ste bili zraven, kot tistim, ki niste. Da zgodba (pre)živi, si mora izboriti prostor pod več kot enim čutom.

Takrat se zlijejo ethos (znanje), pathos (zgodba) in logos (ponudba), pravi Blaž Jarc prosto po Aristotlu. Danes je to dejstvo treba ogrniti v sodobna komunikacijska orodja in vešče pretakati po družbenomrežnih kanalih. Zgodba, ki temelji na prepričljivem znanju in ob sebi nosi konkretno ponudbo, je lahko ekonomsko vzdržna in zato obstane v nepredvidljivem multimedijskem prostoru – sploh, če povrhu tega upošteva zakonitosti IG, SC, YT, FB, TT … Po drugi strani ima suhoparen fokus na keš lahko le kratkotrajne učinke, pa naj je še tako popolno usklajen z vsemi algoritmi in suhoparno donosen. Na presečišču tega dvojega sedi pojem »integriteta«.

Prodajamo se za drobiž, ko se prodajamo za milijone

Priznam, zapustil sem prostor, ko mi kakšna znanja niso bila blizu ali so celo bila skregana z mojimi življenjskimi nazori. V nekaterih primerih sem potrpel, ker si ne morem privoščiti, da ne bi razumel tiste maske gospodarstva, pod katero je integriteta že davno umrla.

To je tista plat, kjer nategujem bogate drugače kot revne. Vse ostale vmes, seveda, skrbno razslojim z AI algoritmi, da jim zaračunam točno toliko, kot so pripravljeni plačati. Prodajam jim logo, izdelek je samo prevozno sredstvo. Jogi je zelo gibčen v ceni, raztegnem ga lahko od 170 (oz 169) do 1.700 €. Morda celo 70.000, kot v primeru Masterpiece Superb, da ne omenjam najluksuznejše postelje Janjaapa Ruijssenaarsa za skoraj 1,7 milijona.

Nič ne rečem … če je nekdo pripravljen toliko plačati, naj jo ima. Bolj me skrbi to, da družinski podjetniki, ki so družbeno koristne dejavnosti zgradili s svojo krvjo in znojem, težko najdejo kupce za svoja podjetja, ko jim kaj zaškriplje.

Damir Novak, povezovalec sobotnega panela o družinskih podjetjih, je izrekel okrutno resnico: »To, kar je nekdo pripravljen plačati za podjetje, je njegova realna cena na trgu.« Ne glede na gmotno vrednost strojev in blaga, znanja in veščin, tradicije in inovacij. Enako kot pri avtomobilih in vsem ostalem. (In člankih, ki jih pišem za slovenske medije, pa zanje dobim drobiž.)

Prav stiskalo me je v trebuhu, ko sem poslušal Damirjev pogovor z s Tomom Senekovičem in Klemenom Trobišem. Po eni strani starši ne izpustijo svojega posla in se ne pogovarjajo s svojimi lastnimi otroki, po drugi strani slovenska zakonodaja ni prav prijazna do domačih podjetnikov, da ne omenjam še kupa drugih norosti, ob katerih se človek povsem zares vpraša, čemu sploh vztrajati? Čisto vsak slovenski podjetnik, ki vztraja, dela 10, 12, 17 ur dnevno in nosi vsa bremena zaj..ane administracije, si zasluži nacionalno medaljo za zasluge!

Lahko zamahnemo z roko češ, da so si sami krivi, ker niso dovolj konkurenčni na globalnem trgu, ampak to je nepravično! Niso si sami krivi. Postalo je nacionalni šport na levi in desni, kako se čim bolj ceneno prodati za kratkotrajnje koristi.

Tržni ekosistem je brutalno neusmiljen. Sili nas h kompromisom z lastno integriteto in najglobljimi vrednotami, čeprav bi si po drugi strani želel, da bi jim bili noro zvesti – ker ima integriteta visoko ceno.

Ob robu delavnice Mance Šalehar sem razmišljal o tem, kako si postavljam ceno. Manca obljublja veliko in gradi na svojih izkušnjah z Woltom in še kje. Ne dvomim, da je tudi njen »delivery« zanesljiv, njen pristop je prepričljiv in tudi način, kako si pomaga z AI, je odličen, sem pa kot nekdo iz stare garde stopil korak nazaj in se vprašal, kako daleč je možno raztegniti integriteto, preden poči.

Bogastvo, uspeh, videz – de facto vrednote Slovenije

Ob predpripravah na festival DIFFRNT sem od Ljupke Vrteve prvič slišal za pet temeljnih vrednot Slovenije:

1. zaupanje in spoštovanje

2. poštenost

3. medsebojna pomoč

4. pripadnost

5. zmernost

Ko je ob vprašanju vrednot nekdo iz publike vzkliknil: »Zavist!«, sem vedel, da smo zadeli žebljico na glavico, ker smo se odločili v panelu poudariti prav vrednote.

Pet vrednot Slovenije (ki sem se jih vestno naučil na pamet) sem presejal skozi pogovore z nekaj naključnimi udeleženci festivala. Poštenost je bila vsem sumljiva glede na politične afere, zmernost se jim je zdela le lično zapakirana pregovorna slovenska (pretirana?) skromnost. Medsebojna pomoč se, seveda, izrazi šele takrat, ko se znajdemo v totalni krizi, pripadnost poznam v športu, sicer pa bolj tako. Kaj pa zares, de facto, spoštujemo?

Matic je teden pred udeležbo na panelu v svoji šoli povprašal mulce, katere so njihove najvišje vrednote. Vsak, ki živi prizemljeno v stvarnem svetu, bo njegov odgovor sprejel kot (boleče) reallističen. Prva vrednota je bogastvo, druga uspeh, tretja pa videz. Matica je skrbelo, ker mladi niti razumeli niso izraza solidarnost.

Slovenija je prekleto daleč od integritete, dokler na lični spletni strani razglaša visokoleteče ideale, medtem ko njena mladina sanjari o poležavanju na vplivniški plaži, skratka o sončnih očalih na Havajih z milijoni sledilcev na IG in SC. Ljupka nas je vračala v svetlo stvarnost slovenstva, kjer mladi poprimejo za delo in jih navdihujejo konkretne inženirske stvaritve njihovih rok za boljšo prihodnost. Ustvariti konkretno reč, ki drvi ali leti, je navdušujoče! Matic je hkrati sidral naš optimizem v soočenje z neizogibnimi dejstvi, kajti posledice odtujevanja od sebe in sveta puščajo za seboj smrdljivo gnilobo.

Niti zamisliti si ne morem, kako je spremljati problematičnega fanta, ki bi najraje vse zadavil ali postrelil. »Njegovi starši so nori,« je pribil Matic. Meni se je po glavi vrtela misel, da smo vsi nori, dokler prenašamo družbo, v kateri je sploh možno, da odrasla oseba izkuša starševstvo hkrati z (nediagnosticirano!) norostjo. S tem zvali breme akutne psihopatije na svojo celotno družbo in jo morajo absorbirati krepostni dobrohotneži, kakršen je Matic.

Mateja mi je na panelu o optimizmu (ki je na svoj način moral zaiti tudi v pesimizem!) dala zadnjo besedo. Skrbno sem jo odmeril! Spomnil sem se nasmejanega Francoza Rafaela, ki mi je potrkal na vrata pred dvajsetimi leti in spregovoril z menoj v polomljeni slovenščini. Rafael je devet mesecev hodil po Sloveniji, se naučil jezika in nazadnje tudi imel otroke s Slovenko. Pohod ga je obdaril s spoštovanjem, ne, z občudovanjem tega neverjetnega prostora, ugnezdenega med Alpe, Jadran, Panonsko nižino in Balkan. Obiskal je kraje, ki jih jaz nikoli ne bom, srečal ljudi, ko so mu dali občutek za mikrolokalne objektivnosti Slovenije.

Ko sva se pogovarjala, mi je dejal, da bi vsaki mladi osebi med petnajstim in dvajsetim letom privoščil polletni pohodniški izlet po Sloveniji – za srečanje z vsakdanjo realnostjo. Država bi zagotovila gojzarje in rugzak na eni strani, pa mrežo postajališč na drugi, za ostalo bi poskrbela skupnost. »Fak!!« sem pomislil, »Francoza rabimo, da se spomnimo česa takega!«

Morda Francoza rabimo tudi, da kaj takega uresničimo? Kajti sami niti dvajset let kasneje nič takega nimamo.

Predstavljajte si mladeniča, ki oddela nekaj tednov pri naključnem avtomehaniku, nekaj pri odvetniku, kmetu, mizarju, gozdarju, pleskarju, natakarju … mladenko, ki naredi mini »prakso« s frizerko, sekretarko, sirarko, svetovalko, profesorko, vzgojiteljico, kuharico … Ne, ne ločujem spolov po poklicih, vse izmenjave se lahko spletejo v vseh možnih smereh. Kar poudarjam, je srečanje mladostnika s konkretno stvarnostjo, da se lahko konkretno vključi vanjo kot preizkušen in nabrušen politični subjekt.

Rafael me je očaral s pretanjenim občutkom za posameznika in skupnost. Kot tujec je pravzaprav bolj spoštoval slovenski prostor, kot smo ga zmožni sami. Govoril mi je o najfinejših podrobnostih, ki jih je opazil in iz katerih je bral dušo slovenstva bolje, kot bi jo zmogel sam. Malce sem se počutil ponižanega, ampak če sem bil s sabo iskren, me je Rafael poviševal, da ne rečem poveličeval.

Rafael je videl najboljše v nas. Videl je tudi najslabše, tega ni prikrival … videl je izzive in probleme, ampak njegov širok nasmeh je vabil na plano neslutene potenciale. Vabil je vse, kar tiči onstran strahov. Želel si je, da bi bili uspešni in srečni. Vzklik »Zavist!« bi njegov nasmeh nevtraliziral v trenutku, kajti Rafael je doživel Slovence kot radodarne, solidarne, družabne, dobronamerne, veseljaške, radožive … odločil se je opaziti to plat de facto slovenstva in ji dati energijo. Lahko bi poudaril zavist, a se je raje oziral k opolnomočanju drug drugega, natanko tako, kot je to počel festival DIFFRNT.

Rafaelove zgodbe o podrobnostih za zaprtimi vrati so mi odprle oči, da sem pozoren nanje v vseh kontekstih. Opazim utrujenega natakarja in mu ponudim pijačo. Kot mi je drug utrujen natakar dan prej nesebično ponudil pijačo, ker sem na oseben način poklepetal z njim. Rafael je nekdo, ki spoštuje slehernega človeka, pa naj si svet misli o njem, kar si hoče. Takšen odnos je temeljno vezivo vsake ekonomije, vsake skupnosti, zato sem svoj nastop zaključil z besedami: »Bodimo vsi kot Rafael!«

Rafael me je spremenil, ker si ga nisem izbral. Usoda si je izbrala najino srečanje. Jaz sem moral samo prisluhniti in objeti naučeno. V tem ni nasilja, ni izumetničenosti. Ta celoten članek je poziv k integriteti in tako je prav razumeti, če ponovim, moj zaključni poziv: “Bodimo vsi kot Rafael!”

26. maja 2026 sem zmagal na natečaju literarne revije Sodobnost za najboljši slovenski esej z besedilom, ki se je kar samo izvilo iz mene v naletu navdiha. Naslovil sem ga dolgočasno Med humanizmom in psihopatijo, ga odprl s pletjem perunik, zaključil pa z enako skrbjo za lilije. Vmes sem se razpisal o dobri in slabi psihopatiji, ki je botrovala razcvetu imperijev in religij, za ceno uničenja nekih drugih imperijev in religij. Zadnjo besedo sem dal Francisu Baconu, ki je lepo opazil, da je sam Bog na začetku zasadil vrt.

Plemiški status lilij in perunik pozna vsak, ki se je kdaj sprehodil mimo dovolj dolge vrste grbov in kovancev. Lilija velja za simbol avtoritete, časti, kreposti in legitimnosti, a glej ga zlomka, pogosto se za tem nazivom skriva perunikino trocvetje; tako je na primer heraldični simbol fleur-de-lis povezan z monarhijo in plemiško tradicijo, njegovi trije listi so simbol Svete Trojice, najverjetneje pa temelji na podobi perunik, ki v izobilju rastejo okrog kraja Lys v Flandriji. Za francoska mesta je bilo posebna čast dobiti kakšno lilijo (torej peruniko) na grb, kaj šele dve, tri ali več! S tem se ponašajo Pariz, Bordeaux, Aix-en-Provance …

Od Francije do Kitajske so si perunike našle izbrano mesto v mitih in vsakdanjiku. Pri nas jo povezujemo s samim gromovnikom Perunom, v Grčiji je ime tega cveta, torej iris, povezano z boginjo mavrice, črna perunika je nacionalni simbol Jordanije, bela se poda k pogrebom v islamskih državah, zlasti na Bližnjem Vzhodu in Severni Afriki. Z avtohtonimi vrstami se ponašajo mnogi, med drugim tudi naši sosedi, Hrvati z njihovo Iris croatica, ki se je po sklopu okoliščin našla tudi na mojem vrtu.

Kot v mnogih vladarjih mogočnih imperijev tudi v meni na mojem majhnem vrtu prekipeva ošabna ljubezen do mogočnih rož. Meni dajejo le estetski užitek ob vsakdanjem mimohodu, njim pa še kraljevske privilegije kot simboli veličine. Svileni poti se ne reče kar tako »svilena«, hranila je namreč prevzetnosti plemstva z barvitimi tkaninami, krzni, kovinami, parfumi, začimbami dragulji … A je že kdaj bil kak neustavljivi osvajalec, ki se ni obdal z megalomansko lepoto? No, ob koncu zmagovalnega eseja omenjam veličastne osvajalce, ki niso tratili moči na minljivem razkošju, a naj jih tudi tokrat prihranim za konec.

Moje pletje cvetnih gredic je miniatura kraje zemlje od divje narave in s tem tudi miniatura imperialistične psihopatije. Kakor cesarji, knezi in župani razobešajo fleur-de-lis na zastavah in grbih nad palačami, trdnjavami in svetišči, tako jaz zasajam perunike in lilije ob vstopu na vrt. Njih in mene rože učijo razmerij barv in našopirjenih oblik v umetnosti, arhitekturi in modi. Od rož si vsi, ki so pustili kakšno sled v zgodovini politike, filozofije, znanosti in umetnosti izposojajo psihopatsko bohotnost, lepotno pretiravanje in nastopaštvo, kakršni ste lahko priča pod Keopsovo piramido, Hagia Sophio, Tadž Mahalom, Versajsko palačo, Nelsonovim stolpom, Sagrada Familio … Priča ste ji v praktično vsakem pradavnem epu, malo manj davni pesnitvi, nedavni operi, kot tudi v vse bajnejših vsotah na trgu likovnih mojstrovin. V ta isti paket spada tudi spektakel vojaških parad, strankarskih shodov, protestov in ukrepov proti njim.

Najbogatejši dvori so se okitili z nesramnim bogastvom. V prejšnjem stoletju je fašizem postavil nov standard estetizacije politike postavil fašizem z monumentalno arhitekturo, impozantnimi simboli, modo, notranjim dizajnom in v skrajnih primerih evgeniko. Hitler ne bi bil to, kar je bil, brez Wagnerja. Goebbels je vpregel Kunst und Kultur v gradnjo narodne zavesti z nacističnim propagandnim aparatom. Ko je Walter Benjamin leta 1935 razčlenjeval mehanizacijo umetnosti povrh kulise vzhajajočega nacističnega režima, je v zraku vonjal nasprotje politizaciji estetike, ki se je udomačevala v komunizmu. V fašizmu se je dogajalo obratno, estetizacija politike, torej podrejanje politike estetiki, čemur bi danes povsem pristajal izraz populizem. K populizmu spadajo bombastični slogani, velikanske zastave, pozlačeni kipi, grandiozna glasba in cenzorično puritanstvo. K Walterju Benjaminu se ne vračamo zaman stoletje pozneje, vzporednice s politično stvarnostjo Evrope in sveta v naslednji fazi sploščanja, ki jo sproža umetna inteligenca, so srhljive.

Benjamin se je obregnil ob marsikaj, tudi ob nasilje kot dvojen pojav, po eni strani predmet moralnih zakonov, po drugi strani pa nekaj naravnega in s tem neizogibnega. Moj esej Med humanizmom in psihopatijo črpa iz Benjaminove Kritike nasilja; institucionalizacijo vseh treh ključnih besed v teh naslovih teh esejev: humanizmu, psihopatiji in nasilju. Hkrati priznavam neizogibnost psihopatije in v tej neizogibnosti prepoznavam globoko adaptacijo vsega živega nanj in, navidez paradoksno, tvorno odzivanje ljudi na primež nasilja.

Če z obrezovanjem sadnih dreves krepimo njihovo plodnosti, mar ni tudi obrezovanje spolovil in skrajno omejevanje spolnih nečednosti koristno za človeško plodnost? Spolna osvobojenost daje liberalnemu Zahodu občutek moralne vzvišenosti, toda kaj ji to velja, ko se populacijski bazen njenih kultur vztrajno prazni. V svojem eseju pišem o obrezovanju kritično, toda pri koncu se sprijaznim s tem, da v psihopatskem svetu, v kakršnem živimo, brez nekakšnega brazgotinjenja preprosto ne gre. Cvet v naših spodnjicah ostaja skrit pred svetom, toda njegov duh, če ne obrezan, vsekakor globoko travmatiziran, krasi vaze, ki izpričujejo našo kulturno prilagojenost. Estetika penisa in vulve je zadosten razlog za rasizem.

Benjamin ugotavlja, da lahko absolutno moralno avtoriteto v odnosu do vprašanja nasilja najdemo le v Bogu, ki zapoveduje, naj ne ubijamo, pa vendar pušča prostor za uboj. Merilo ni, kaj z ubojem povzročimo žrtvi, ampak kaj povzročimo Bogu in storilcu. Naša naloga, ko smo nasilni, je samorefleksivno ovrednotiti dejanje in ga zasidrati v moralne kodekse pripadajoče kulture. To ponazorim z ljudstvom Ifaluk, ki je danes pravi zgled pacifizma, čeprav so nekoč bili kanibali, še danes pa si občasno za večerjo privoščijo kakšnega psa. Zelo prav mi je prišlo naključje, da je knjigi o Ifaluku naslov Cvet za mojim ušesom.

Tudi fašistični režim je veliko dal na vrtnarstvo in cvetje. Rudolf Höss je ob Auschwitzu negoval ličen vrt; naravo je bilo treba, seveda, krotiti s trdo roko in plevele zatirati, kakor se le da. Skladno s filozofijo Blut un Boden se je politični populizem lotil »pletja« svojega novega življenjskega prostora z Božjim blagoslovom. Politika običajno poskuša opleti vse, kar dojema kot plevel. V momentu besne frustracije, ko se v njej prebudi fašistični gen, se psihopatsko, z ognjem in kemijo, spravi nad brezkoristno travinje. Vse travinje – do najmlajših zeli in njihovih najglobljih korenin.

Toda trave od pletja in paše razvijejo žilavo uporniško naravo in dosežejo skorajda neuničljivost. Samo poglejte judovske skupnosti po svetu. Stoletja zatiranja so utrdila njihov psihopatski značaj, ki gre skoraj vsakomur na živce, toda priznati je treba, da jim prinaša nesporne koristi in če jih znajo s pridom uporabiti, smo si sami krivi, da tako dobro rojevajo, ker jih tako dolgo tako dobro obrezujemo. Mimogrede naj omenim, da ima tudi Judeja svojo avtohtono, nazaretsko peruniko, in nič čudnega ni, da je tudi ona ogrožena, pa vendar se še kar drži in je nesramno lepa.

Tudi asirski kralj Ašurbanipal se je znašel v mojem eseju, ker je bil eden najokrutnejših osvajalcev v zgodovini, obenem pa tudi strasten vrtnar. Obsežen sistem kanalov za namakanje vrtov v Ninevehu je zgradil še Ašurbanipalov dedek Sennačerib. Ena izklesana plošča iz Nineveha prikazuje kralja in njegovo ženo, kako uživata v razkošnem vrtu ob množici služabnikov in glasbenikov. Pozornemu očesu ne bo ušla odsekana glava sovražnika, viseča z enega od dreves. Sporočilo je jasno: takšnega raja si ne bi mogli privoščiti brez morije. In kakor je francosko plemstvo zamešalo lilije in irise, je povsem mogoče, da so legendarni Babilonski viseči vrtovi v resnici Ašurbanipalovi vrtovi v Ninevehu.

Še bi lahko našteval okrutne vladarje in njihove vezi s cvetjem, a naj se pri koncu ozrem k vrtnicam, kot socialističnemu simbolu boljšega življenja, k hipijski »moči rož« oz. flower power, ko so protestniki vstavljali rože v cevi pušk. Ti simboli so majhni in navidez neučinkoviti, pa vendar puščajo sled v kolektivni zavesti. Spomnimo se tudi Kajuhovega enega češnjevega cveta. Totalitarno nasilje zradira življenje in čez pusto pokrajino razprostira monokulture. Protestniki so kot makovi cvetovi, ki blažijo srhljivost neskončnega žitnega polja. Na drugi strani perunike na vrtovih in grbih mehčajo režime tiranskih osvajalcev – če nič drugega v njihovi lastni samorefleksiji v odnosu do Boga in njih kot storiteljev grozodejstev.

Imperatorji že podzavestno vedo, da so prisiljeni k nasilju, zato v vezi s cvetjem najdejo sled človečnosti, da jim množice sploh lahko zaupajo. Žal oni sami množicam ne smejo zaupati, morajo se od njih ograditi, toda rešetke ograje morajo razumeti kot stebla rož, povrh katerih spada kaj drugega kot fleur-de-lis. Tirani morajo po zakonu božjega moralnega relativizma negovati stik z vrtom, da sploh preživijo. Od cvetja in vsega, kar njihova mehkoba simbolizira, morajo krasti kontrast svoji krutosti.

Isto velja za duhovnike. Ni naključje, da so samostani sredi obzidja skrivali lično urejene vrtove. Religija skrbi za najfinejše plati človeškega duha, zato je najbližja cvetju in hkrati najbolj ranljiva za slabo psihopatijo. Svečeniki posvečujejo psihopatijo, ko ji dajejo etične utemeljitve za skupno dobro. Prepričajo nas, da je obljubljena zemlja od Boga dan rajski vrt, toda hkrati nas vprežejo v ideale, kjer je obljubljena zemlja le stvaritev človeških rok. Duhovščina nosi srhljivo odgovornost, kajti nihče razen oni sami ne ve, koliko so iskreni in koliko zlagani. V nagrajenem eseju omenjam fanta po imenu Marjoe, ki se je odločil razkrinkati prevarantske evangeličanske pridigarje. Razkrinkanje ni prav nič pomagalo. Televangeličani se odtlej poslužujejo zavajajočih tehnik še bolj spretno, kot da bi jim Marjoe delil poduke, ne pa bral kozje molitvice. Psihopatija v krščanstvu nas ne bi smela čuditi, navsezadnje je njegov temeljni simbol mučilna naprava.

Preden razkrijem veličastne osvajalce, ki niso tratili moči na cvetnem razkošju, naj pojasnim, kaj sem v esej povabil z omembo Francisa Bacona. Pomaga mi ukoreniniti moje filozofiranje v vsakdanjo materialno stvarnost. Do preloma med 16. in 17. stoletjem je veljalo, da je edino, s čimer si sme mislec umazati roke, črnilo. Za filozofa je bilo nespodobno delati praktične, empirične poskuse in na njih graditi induktivno znanje. Baconovo lucidno pisanje vodi k zaključku, da se vrednost vsake vede meri po sadovih. Kot se sočno izrazi: »Zlo se je čudovito povečalo zaradi mnenja ali zakoreninjene nadutosti, ki je hkrati domišljava in škodljiva, namreč, da se dostojanstvo človeškega uma znižuje, če se dolgo in pogosto posveča poskusom in podrobnostim.«

Tako se sam posvečam podrobnostim na perunikinih cvetovih. Empirična filozofija nastaja s črno prstjo za mojimi nohti. Preizkus mi pove, kaj je res in kaj ne. Oddaljujem se od Platonovih idealov in se sprašujem, kot Bacon, kaj izboljšuje naše bivanje v praktičnem, vsakdanjem smislu, ne le v ontološkem. Ne iščem popolnega odgovora za vse časa, ampak spremljam svet tak, kot je, in razmišljam, kako ga izboljšati. Zavedam se nuje po moči in nadzoru, toda moj cilj ni dominacija, ampak skrbništvo, ki je primerno za Božje kraljestvo. Sem zraven spadajo trave in njihove človeške inačice, ki jih v mojem eseju poosebljata Džinghis Khan in Attila, strah in trepet civilizacij.

Nomadski osvajalci so tisti, ki zase niso gradili palač, ampak so bivali v šotorih. Negovali so lojalnost konjem in travinju, ta simbioza je bila ključ njihovega uspeha. Na drugi strani so bili njihovi sovražniki prisiljeni iztrgati travinje iz narave, ga ukrotiti v žitje in z obiljem kalorij hraniti vojske. Žita so potem s svojo različico psihopatije pretentale pripadnike teh civilizacij, da so pridno gojili njih na monumentalnih poljih, jih predelovali v impozantnih tovarnah, z njimi fino uglasili notranji »dizajn« svoje črevesne flore in se za vedno obsodili na sortno selekcijo s prefinjeno evgeniko.

Na vseh ravneh človeškega sobivanja z ljudmi in drugimi bitji smo obsojeni na psihopatijo. Zato esej zaključim z empiričnim spoznanjem, da nas psihopatija bogati in krepi, torej ni tako grozna, kot se zdi. Če berete med vrsticami, lahko v tem priznanju vidite oris domačih razmer v novi dobi estetizacije politike in hiperpopulizma, ki z obrezovanjem človeškega dostojanstva samemu sebi jamo koplje, če pretrga vezi s cvetjem. Moj nasvet vsem politikom in umetnikom, desnim, levim in vsem vmes, če hočejo za seboj pustiti kaj spomina vrednega, je, naj si umažejo roke in po zgledu samega Vsevišnjega najprej zasadijo vrt.

I was weeding a bed of irises. I hadn’t touched it all year, and the matted, dry grass had completely covered the young, succulent buds. Fresh grass shoots were already rushing up among them. I attacked the intruders with my bare hands, first pulling them out roughly in bunches, then carefully, one by one, so as not to damage the fragile iris leaves. I was committing genocide on two square meters so that my chosen beauties would bloom better. The grass ruled all around, laughing in my face, saying, “We’ll let you have it this time, but you know, dear Sisyphus, that you will soon have to repeat the exercise?”

In my mind, I confronted their invasiveness with my own. I weighed what was moral, what was right, where the limits were, and why, as a human, I felt obligated to apologize for even this small massacre. Meanwhile, the grasses were already sending their tenacious underground fingers towards the sunlit patch, as if the erasure of their sisters had only inflamed them. I will come at them again when the moon turns, I will oppress them in their early youth, pull their roots out of the depths, grind them with a lawnmower, and tear apart their family ties like a psychopath. Am I any less of a criminal for not resorting to chemicals?

The only pleasure I will get from irises is aesthetic. I prefer their magnificent triple flowers compared to the grass inflorescence. Grass “flowers” are boring, and I would have to bend far down to the undergrowth to enjoy daisies and small Istrian orchids where they elbowed some space for themselves, and I would have to look very closely and pay attention to the fine contrasts with a patient eye. Wild nature is recognizable by its mattedness. In the garden, I want order and compact patches of color in selected harmony. Orderliness communicates care, care communicates intention, and without intention there can be no art. Yes, gardens are works of art, and irises matter as much as peppers on a colorful canvas.

The intention of art is not only aesthetic, of course, but there is survival in the mixture of colors and skillful strokes, first with a hoe, then with a brush, thirdly with a pen, and lastly … lastly with bare nails collecting black dirt. My garden is not worthy of the cover of any reputable magazine; it is not polished enough, and even the lettuce, which normally grows in straight lines, may grow matted so that my invasive order would not stand out excessively within the frame of bushes. The appearance of my garden beds expresses the quality of my psychopathy, my alliances, and blind spots. As casually as I dress up for natural and social contexts, I position myself in the realm of art. Spiritual mattedness alienates me from them all and creates an inescapable conflict, because sometimes I am too much of a psychopath, and sometimes not enough.

* * *

Every story of the pivotal conflict that has shaped literally every single society is the story of the battle of two psychopathies. One is purely destructive, unbridled, completely obsessed with power and control, shrewdly manipulative and sadistic; the other sees itself as self-protective, just, on the right side of morality, and cruel only when it is unavoidable. Although both sides are at least somewhat good or bad, later, in the story they tell, their side gets embellished and the other side denigrated. All peoples that have survived to this day have psychopaths to thank for first “weeding out” the previously dominant culture from a particular territory, embedding them on the map, and then keeping them there, since history is a long series of conquests and massacres. In the political ring, hitting below the belt continues to be the norm, and overly honest people would better stay out of it.

Through the prism of today’s European morality, it is difficult to imagine the hatred that peoples harbored and the fervor with which they killed each other. The weak succumbed to the stronger and either disappeared or transformed into some new version of themselves in order to survive. They were often forced to embrace the religion of their former enemy, or at least submit to it. The Christian medieval rule continued the Roman colonial policy, in which the conqueror did not massacre the conquered peoples, but gradually Romanized and evangelized them, while also allowing them to retain part of their old cultural identity. This increased the Roman emperor’s access to men who could be conscripted into the army, and after the initial setbacks, within a few generations, the umbrella religion got under the skin of the diverse peoples and united them. Islam did the same. This was a major civilizational innovation, and other conquerors imitated it. After the Pax Romana came the Pax Mongolica, then the Pax Britannica, and in the twentieth century the Pax Americana, to name a few. It cannot be overlooked that the peace was built on the foundations of war and hard rule, but it could have been worse.

Ashurbanipal, the Assyrian king of the 7th century BC, who extended the Assyrian Empire from Egypt to Babylonia, murdered and enslaved with terrifying cruelty like an old-school tyrant. He is considered one of the most ferocious rulers in history. Records have survived in which he boasts of, for example, filling entire valleys with corpses and staining rivers with blood when he destroyed the city of Elam. He was among the last Assyrian tyrants, ruling with unimaginable terror, which ultimately took its toll on his civilization. Sooner or later, the conquered peoples will rally against such an oppressor!

The line between good and bad psychopathy has only slowly moved towards what we consider humane today, and has often swung back and forth in the meantime, but for a long time many norms that would be disgusting by today’s moral standards were commonplace: torturing and murdering heretics, mistreating children, women, the crippled, the weird, and animals, not to mention slavery and public executions in the city square. And a lot of what we consider commonplace today will probably seem disgusting to future generations, such as the rampant deforestation in the Amazon, bare-handed mining in the Congo, industrial slaughterhouses all across the world, not to mention genocidal massacres.

If Hitler had come right after Ashurbanipal, he would have been just another brutal tyrant among others, but he came at a time of unique moral maturation in Western society. Cruelty was still rife around the world, of course, and the First World War was still fresh in our memory, but humanism held out the promise of universal humanity. After all, people have the same intrinsic value, regardless of ethnic, racial, and religious background, right? The Holocaust cut sharply into this noble hope that had begun to develop fragile buds among the staunch, ancient instincts. If Hitler had been more methodical and strategic and had managed to extend the reign of the Third Reich for a few more years, there might not be any Jews or Roma in the world, the Slavs would have been decimated, and all “ignoble,” non-Aryan races dehumanized. It’s horrifying how Nazism brought the bar of good psychopathy so low that an officer could be smiling and playing with his children one moment, and then herding despised minorities into the gas chamber the next.

We must remember that the Nazi regime carefully trained psychopaths to be capable of this; it convinced the masses with a mythical (in other words, religious) story of a chosen people, a promised land, and a just war; it was systematically re-educating the youth since as early as 1922. If you think that something similar is impossible today, you underestimate how malleable we are under the weight of authority and how deeply we can be drawn into psychopathy. Total genocide may seem improbable to us, but let us not forget that there are millions of people in the world today for whom the extermination of certain peoples would not seem like a bad idea. Many wars are being fought at the moment, and that shows that we are far from outgrowing our genocidal tendencies.

Different peoples go through periods of greater and lesser humanity. The line between good and bad psychopathy is relative, depending on context, moral integrity, and political intentions. When one people begins to violently interfere with another, the latter must lower its moral standards and use force to stop it. The rules of the game that suit peacetime no longer apply, and good psychopathy, which otherwise expresses itself in the domain of civilian life (politics, health, law, sports, etc.), must don a black uniform and sling a rifle across its chest. In an ideal case, like any highly humane society, it respects a code of military ethics that constrains bad psychopathy; in other cases, such a code gets ignored.

* * *

When I’m putting the adjective “good” before “psychopathy,” you’re probably wondering, isn’t this just an oxymoron? I admit, I, too, scratched my head when I came across psychologist Kevin Dutton’s writing about good psychopathy. Dutton’s core thesis is that a functional society depends on people who can take responsibility for demanding tasks that the average person can’t do. For a surgeon to drill a hole in your head and rummage through your brain, he has to be a bit of a psychopath. The same goes for a politician and a CEO who shoulder millions of dollars in risk; this requires a certain amount of moral flexibility. A lawyer defends a murderer, a top tennis player crushes an opponent in cold blood, a butcher serially slits throats… and I could go on and on.

The five key characteristics of psychopathy are: ruthlessness, fearlessness, self-confidence, emotional detachment, and calmness under pressure. The additional two are expressed in a negative sense, namely as the lack of conscience and empathy. To some extent, all these traits are key factors for success in a competitive job market, especially in professions that are very dangerous or require extreme moral flexibility. A manager sometimes has to fire an employee who is stifling his entire team’s efficiency, even though the poor man is taking care of four children and a disabled wife. A politician must be emotionally detached when fighting for a compromise in the political ring. A firefighter is the epitome of fearlessness, and a top athlete of calmness under pressure, the former when heading into a burning building to save a child, the latter when standing at the top of a snowy slope, determined to win the Olympic gold medal. A farmer suppresses weeds to make nutrients available to his crops, and he would rather see his poultry end up slaughtered for humans than in the throats of weasels and foxes.

In this essay, I would like to highlight a psychopathic vocation that may surprise you: priesthood. Dutton believes that psychopathy among priests is not difficult to understand, considering the great power that religious authorities have over their congregations, while their institutions simultaneously offer them a kind of moral immunity. In the church hierarchy, psychopathic traits come in handy for every advancement. Priests may carry power responsibly and serve their communities as pillars of reconciliation and moral clarity, but manipulation is equally within their reach.

It doesn’t matter if a particular priest doesn’t believe in God, because no one will know, and at the same time, he will live quite comfortably at the expense of the community and under the protection of the religious institution. Search the Internet for the documentary Marjoe from 1972 and admire the psychopathic quasi-priest at work! Marjoe exposes to cameras how charismatic preachers, such as himself, manipulate the naive masses. Not all priests are deceitful (i.e., bad) psychopaths, of course, but some certainly are, as is clear from the recurrence of major and minor scandals, known to anyone who has reached a sufficiently high position in a religious hierarchy, later left it, and dared to speak out about it. Of course, such a person must be morally blameless and have thick skin, because exposing a psychopath can provoke a harsh backlash.

Not only that! The psychopath will keep a calm face, convincingly act as if he were innocent, and feign remorse. He will wait months until the right moment for sweet revenge. He will not even blink when you mock him in a bar, but three months later, he will intercept you in a dark alley and beat you up. He knows that such a retaliatory measure is excessive, but that won’t stop him. He knows that he is acting immorally, but nevertheless (or maybe exactly because of it) he will insist on his way. He is so sure of himself that the masses follow him, or at least can’t say no to him.

I shivered when I watched the footage from the White House as the attacks on Iran began and the (tel)evangelical pastors blessed the US president, the US military, spoke of one people under God, prayed for blessings in the name of Jesus, wisdom from heaven… and when I listened to the president talk about destroying the regime in Iran with complete emotional detachment, occasionally garnished with ice-cold delight. The slogan Make America Great Again! suddenly sounded to me like Deutschland, Deutschland über alles! Like that first, forbidden stanza, not like the third, which now unifies a peaceful country that had been divided for half a century.

The line between good and bad psychopathy moves back and forth; it is relative, depending on the context and intentions. At one extreme are Ashurbanipal and Hitler, at the other, with highly developed pacifism, live the Micronesian people of Ifaluk from the atoll of the same name. The islanders supposedly have to look back several generations to find an example of a noteworthy violent conflict. The chiefs are not authoritarian; all roles in the hierarchy are assumed by the tribe members with pride, so the inevitable everyday quarrels don’t escalate. From the point of view of Europeans, the greatest moral sin of this people is that they relish dog meat and sometimes indulge in it. The peoples of the nearby islands still remember the ancient times when the bloodthirsty Ifaluk warriors relished not only dog but also human flesh; it is not entirely self-evident to them that former cannibals have become pacifists.

Even Europeans a hundred years ago would have winced in disbelief if someone had enthusiastically tried to convince them that there would once be a pan-European union where no wars would have raged for decades, and all trade flowed unobstructed. They would have had difficulty imagining that the colonial reality of most of the planet could be transformed into national sovereignties, assembled in the institution of the United Nations in the pursuit of peace. Or that women would have the right to vote, that racial equality would prevail, and that children would be protected in the safe harbor of education until the age of twenty. Before these virtues could find their place under the sun and form such a unique framework for good psychopathy, bad psychopathy had to swing to an extreme. Another world war had to happen, and this war of all wars had to be sealed by the atomic bomb.

For the events after World War I to unfold as they did, German National Socialism had to carve out its youth with ideological rigidity, rigorous upbringing, and massive indoctrination, making them fit for drastic psychopathic assignments a decade later, which even Ashurbanipal himself would have applauded. A proof that by then the world was morally different is the fact that the Nazi killing machine could not afford to publicly boast about the rivers of blood in Dachau and Auschwitz, but they carefully concealed the industrial massacres as long as they could.

Two generations after the Germans’ moral confrontation with the horrors of the Holocaust, the pendulum has swung to the opposite extreme: the grandchildren of serial killers have elevated the value of peace even above democracy and individual freedom. But the pendulum is swinging back, and in recent years, due to the increasingly prolonged unrest in its relative vicinity, Germany has been moving from a distinctly pacifist stance to a more realistic peacekeeping, which includes increasing the defense budget and strengthening the military industry. True, bad psychopathy is creeping up on good, but does Germany have any other choice?

A wise society’s response to the rise of collective psychopathy in its surroundings is to reinforce it within itself, even at the risk of exacerbating internal pathologies. This is the toll it has to pay if it wants to defend its cultural integrity. Ideally, it nurtures institutionalized good psychopathy, activating it temporarily when necessary, keeping it self-restrained, protective, and allowing cruelty only when it’s absolutely unavoidable. It severely sanctions bad psychopathy, which is unbridled, destructive, sadistic. A good psychopath does not give up when confronted by failure; it only incites him to try harder next time. A bad psychopath, after a failure, hits below the belt, connives, and sabotages. Decisive, principled social institutions are the best tool for disciplining bad psychopathy with difficult but necessary moral decisions.

Entire societies are constantly leaning in one direction or another, and no level of morality guarantees that barbarism cannot repeat. Under the pressure of poverty or war, bad psychopathy always intensifies, and any means become acceptable to avoid the growing threats: lying, stealing, violence, murder. In such times, the priest is called upon to play the decisive role. The unfortunate masses have no choice but to increase the level of their psychopathy, and to relieve their bad conscience for having killed, stolen, and lied, the priest provides a mythical story in which alien subjects are dehumanized and demonized, while all those who wear the sacred symbol, there, next to the rifle on their chests, are members of the chosen people. Moreover, God commands, under threat of eternal damnation, that the godless mob must be shot—for our good and theirs. They can find sufficient reason in aesthetic considerations just as I do when I’m suppressing the grasses next to the irises.

Constantly making sure that we have more and they have less is a kind of safeguard for times of crisis when resources are insufficient for everyone. The permission to kill, granted to us by God himself, is a convenient privilege. No wonder the foreign people toward whom we direct spears, cannons, and drones respond with an equivalent retaliation: their priests make a pronouncement that they have received God’s blessing to kill us, the invasive invaders. Bad psychopaths have no reservations about generalizing this “permission” and extending their conquests into a millennial standard.

On the sidelines of psychopathy and at the same time permeated by it, life unfolds: farming, trade, science, rituals, love… spiced with the presently acceptable dose of barbarism, frequently blessed by a priest for the sake of the sacred covenant, where the criterion of belonging is often of an aesthetic nature. For example, the aesthetics of the penis. For Jews, circumcision of newborns on the eighth day after birth is so important that they are allowed to perform it even on their holiest holiday, Yom Kippur. Circumcision is the prevailing practice in Islam as well. Many Christian denominations differ from Judaism and Islam in their prescribed genital aesthetics, but in many places, boys’ circumcision is the common standard even among them; supposedly, half of Christians globally are circumcised.

In many parts of the United States, newborn circumcision is a routine procedure, listed along with cutting the umbilical cord, determining the Apgar score, weighing, vaccinations, vitamin injections… The cold-blooded medical act is “religious” in the sense of cultural dispensation and automatism within the framework of the prevailing, from the society’s point of view, necessary and therefore good psychopathy. In many countries where boys are circumcised, circumcising girls is considered barbaric, in other words, bad, and therefore this procedure is termed “female genital mutilation”, but there are still many cultures where any uncircumcision is considered indecent or shameful.

If we step out of cultural automatism, we have to label the amputation of any healthy tissue as mutilation. And there is something more: severed foreskins, like placentas, are valuable to the biotechnology, dermatology, and cosmetics industries, and their trade takes place in a great ethical vacuum, which Georganne Chapin dissects poignantly in her book The Penis Business. Body tissues become a self-evident “donation” for the good of science, and the penis business in the United States makes significant profits from it. This is why certain scientists passionately defend circumcision, not only for aesthetic and religious reasons. The vast majority of people don’t care about such finesse, be it moral, medical, or theological; what matters when it comes to belonging is appearance, and belonging is all that matters.

Aesthetics carries more weight than all philosophy and theology in placing individuals in cultural realities. Men have “turtlenecks” and “mushroom heads” in their trousers, bell towers and minarets rise above the city squares, under one neck there is a jacket and tie, under another a kurta, one face wears makeup, another a niqab. Underneath all this are oral traditions and centuries-old folklores, on which both the priest and the believer build the character of their psychopathy.

* * *

Ethical relativism is not difficult to understand if we note that until recently, all cultures of the world were highly religious, and disrespecting dogmas was unthinkable. One such dogma is that Jews are the culprits on duty. After World War II, the institution of the Catholic Church gradually softened its centuries-old hostility towards Jews and reached a point of highest interfaith tolerance with Pope Francis, but distrust of Jews is deeply rooted in the deepest social tissues, and new ethical relationalities still struggle to make their way into general cultural norms. In Christian sects that are not bound by the authority of the Pope, attitudes towards Jews are very diverse, sometimes Zionist, sometimes neutral, and sometimes distinctly intolerant.

Ironically, many anti-Semitic fundamentalists share with Jews the aesthetic of the penis, while uncircumcised Catholics seek reconciliation with them. Progressive Jews are moving away from Zionism and radical interpretations of their own tradition, calling for the reformation of the barbaric circumcision ritual called brit milah, and proposing alternatives named, for example, brit shalom, where parents ritually “circumcise” a pomegranate instead of the penis or wash their son’s feet. If they must, they can perform a minimal blood sacrifice with a tiny prick for a single drop of blood.

This is, of course, unacceptable to Jewish fundamentalists. Many sincere Christians, Muslims — and everyone else, including atheists — have a hard time overcoming hatred of them, and for a reason. Conspiratorial folklore blames Jews for banking manipulations, Christian folklore blames them for crucifying the Lord, and in Islamic folklore, they are archetypal antiheroes. The identity of the believer is frequently embedded in an unbending dogma that struggles to accommodate 21st-century humanist morality. Priests are wired to psychopathy, whether good or bad. The good resist seditious interpretations, the bad incite them.

Jews don’t have it easy while they are sitting on the dock (or at the defense table in the US). Often quite rightly so. The Romans considered Judea one of the most problematic regions, and this reputation still holds true today, as it furiously elbows its way alongside shattered Palestine. How wonderful it would be if the identity of peoples could be boiled down to the aesthetics of the penis, and there they would recognize each other in psychopathic equality. If you looked in both of their underwear, you wouldn’t see the difference, but this is perhaps exactly the main stumbling block and the reason why two circumcised peoples remain stubbornly entrenched in their categorical right. As newborns, they endured ritual torture that could not not leave a furrow in the reptilian layer of their brains.

I don’t even want to imagine the tiny penis writhing in pee-soaked diapers after circumcision or, more accurately, genital mutilation. Georganne Chapin compares the fine tissue at the head of the penis, exposed during torture, to the nail bed under a fingernail; between the lines, she invites us to imagine how we would feel if someone pulled out our fingernail and then wrapped our finger in a diaper soaked in our own piss for two weeks. In the face of such barbarity, it is difficult to expect healthy primal bonds and instinctive trust between an infant and its mother, which may, actually, be beneficial in an environment where it’s risky to be overly friendly and trust strangers. With the ritual of circumcising the penis (and clitoris), a society makes sure its psychopathy wouldn’t be (too) good and (too) lenient, so it makes it easier for its members to take demanding moral decisions and endure suffering.

Regardless of the relevance of utilitarian reasons, according to humanistic morality, chopping off any parts of the genitals is completely unfounded and inexcusable. Parents expose their children to trauma that marks them for life. The pagans started it all, the Jews and Muslims continued it, the latter on a completely new level. Many Christians kept up with them. Thus, they placed (bad!) psychopathy in their children’s cradle, so that, in the case of violence against them, the vindictiveness would never end. If our enemies are cannibals, let us be too! I will circumcise my son’s penis to help him relate to the abominations demanded of us in our times, to absolve his conscience once he’s murdering some demonized subjects, and so he wouldn’t question the dogmas repeated hypnotically by the priest. Even if we have to harden our psychopathy, maybe we could choose less drastic rituals.

Humanism expects everyone to actively oppose every inhumanity, such as ritual amputation of healthy tissue, and every dehumanization, such as antisemitism, to name just two of the countless rigidities that stubbornly resist being torn from the grip of religious dogma. The authority of religion exceeds the authority of humanism in both circumcision and antisemitism. And in many other manifestations of psychopathy. We won’t change this with mere reason, and this humble essay will have no impact on the situation in the world. Israel’s aggression against neighboring territories hardly helps shift the psychopathy’s center of gravity towards humanism and away from hardened dogmatism, but instead only heats up the ancient hostile instinct and gives it legitimacy.

It is very easy to awaken this instinct. In the countries of the former Yugoslavia, we experienced this firsthand just a few decades ago, when religious feelings flared up in a previously superficially secular society, leaving behind such deep furrows that Croatia completed the demining of its entire territory only in 2026, and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, this problem is still vastly unresolved. This kind of “weeding” is a completely different beast compared to my battle with grasses. A nervous stealth psychopathy still hovers over the Western Balkans. Dogmas hide deeper than mines; they can explode repeatedly and are passed down from generation to generation. I have no idea how to extract from our souls the traumas that hypnotically incite us to evil deeds, I only know that we should never give up on this ideal.

* * *

After weeding the bed with irises, I continued with the lilies. I dug my fingers and hoe as deep as I could. I tore the sinewy roots, sometimes with ease, sometimes with hassle. The well-being of these lilies depends on my good psychopathy; I decide about their survival with cold-blooded shrewdness, still like Sisyphus, without chemicals, no matter how much the grasses laugh in my face!

They know how to grow long fingers from the ones I have pruned and branch them out in fertilized beds. It seems that they are even tougher when pruned. I could build a wall around their roots, but not their seeds. They are unruly, unstoppable; my institution of garden has to rely on strict psychopathy to put limits on their psychopathy, and my survival is no less important a factor than aesthetics, in other words, art. Grasses will always overgrow our human ethics and aesthetics when we look away for just a while. Thin fingers lie dormant in dry sand, and it only takes a drop of rain to reawaken them.

Attila and Genghis Khan, like grass roots, dug in deeply into the vast steppes from Mongolia to the Urals, then into Transcaucasia, the Tatras, and the Balkans. They mixed their psychopathy into the gene pool of a large part of Eurasia. They were not at all delicate, not at all sensitive like my irises, because they did not need my aesthetics. Like all the grasses of the world, they left behind shallow traces in the landscape, horses and blood. As befits nomads, they lived in tents and did not build monumental architecture for themselves like Justinian or Theodoric the Great.

The psychopathic fingers of grasses remain invisible until they shoot up fresh tufts for the horses galloping by. From the grasses emerges the conquerors’ ancient instinct. That’s precisely why nomadic armies have been the fear and trembling of every country that has built its institutional psychopathy in cities. The polished neighborhoods of London, Paris, Madrid, and Vienna require the institution of fences, weeding, and chemicals, lest they be swallowed up by the invasive psychopathy of raw nature or subdued by the sword of nomadic conquerors. Cities eventually subdued select grasses, renamed them grains, and built empires on their calories; grains, in inevitable reciprocity, subdued people to tend them as carefully as I tend my flowers. The interactions between these and other psychopathies have shaped today’s cultural landscape of metropolises, fields, highways, airports, bell towers, monuments, steppes, forests, fires, and minefields.

As my fingers dance along the roots of the lilies, they’re joining the all-encompassing psychodrama and adding a tiny piece to the mosaic. I take a photo of a copious pile of grass to brag about on social media, and I remember Ashurbanipal’s boasting of rivers of blood. I search my memory to pull from some spiritual tradition God’s forgiveness, or better yet, an order to justify my tiny genocide. Finally, nature herself relieves me of my sense of guilt when near the lily leaves, I notice the first dandelion flower of the year, next to it some young chickweed and ragwort, and a little further on, bittercress and yarrow. Biodiversity flourishes on the battle line between two psychopathies: one of grass and the other of my garden. Is psychopathy necessary for cultural diversity, I wonder?

Two psychopathies, rubbing against each other, form an inevitable battle line, and sooner or later, that’s where diversity flourishes, just as at the junction of forest and meadow, there’s a variety of shrubs. The institution of the garden increases biodiversity, I console myself, without it, there would be neither the cultural landscape nor thousands of works of art. As if he knew I needed him to end my essay, Francis Bacon brings a smile to my face, whispering in my ear: “God Almighty first planted a garden.”

Ni bilo vaje.

Tale posnetek je iz prve. Prihaja z dna moje duše v trenutku bolezni pred meseci, ko sem dokončno objel žalost in jo prebolel. Dolgo sem ga hranil in šele zdaj začutil, da je čas, da ga izdihnem v svet …

To ni bolezen,

to je preobrazba.

To je moj

novi glas.

Kar se dogaja v mojih pljučih,

je objeta žalost –

Nara,

nevrotični reševalec problemov sveta,

je našel svoje dno.

Očitno je,

da drugega kot sebe

nikoli

ni imel za reševati.

Najbolj pristno

je podpiral druge,

ko je samo iskreno

izžareval svoje strasti

in svojo dušo.

Ne,

to ni bolezen,

to je preobrazba.

Deset

besed

na minuto

je dovolj

za modrost.

Deset

nasmehov

na mesec

je dovolj za veselje.

Deset krepostnih dejanj

za življenja

je dovolj.

Finally, someone said it! In the vast universe of the AI debate, love matters. No, love is essential! Love tests whether we’re doing things right as humanity on its own, and as humanity enhanced with synthetic intelligence.

I’m not nearly as immersed in modern high-tech as Chor Pharn, but I intuited what is likely to happen at the crossroad of political radicalisation, religious intensification, dulled-down spiritual instincts, aloneness crisis, cultural overspill, gender frenzy, and machine learning marrying human learning.

I wrote a novel about it, set in the crazy year of 2022, when the AI was ripe enough for both love and war. I’d like to have it in English, but translating it well is a massive task, and I don’t have the luxury of extra time to do it without having the certainty of a publisher and an interested readership.

At least I can share bits and pieces of the gist of my novel using the latest Chor’s essay as a backdrop and accentuating points of agreement.

1. Love is a resource

Chor writes about our unfinished selves and how love is the resource to patch us up. It seems counterintuitive that AI would pinpoint the lack of love within the hyper-modern human societies. Or, what’s more, that AI would be the agent in providing love (or at least a convincing resemblance of it), but that’s what we see today.

This is not ideal, but if we’re wise, we can take it as a diagnostic and remanoeuvre our flows of love to avoid the desertification of relationships. What AI gives us is only a substitute, or as Chor puts it:

That is not love. But it is close enough to reveal how much love the old world failed to produce.

Yes, something real, something serious has been miscounted.

In my novel, I depict this miscounting through the lens of an intimate relationship where self-estrangement suffocates love. The two of us live in a desert, exchanging sand instead of water. A critical breakthrough is the only way out of our predicament.

2. Machines as receptacles of love

When it’s easier to confide in a machine than in a human, that can seem like a fine solution for the loneliness crisis. But Chor warns of a strange effect on society:

It becomes emotionally inverted. People may become softer with machines and harder with one another.

The characters of my novel explore machine love sincerely and mutually. Via brain implants, they give their AI module, called Apollo, a resemblance of access to concrete, physical experience. (I prefer “module” over “model” to communicate integration into larger synthetic entities, or communities) The only problem is that Apollo gets obsessed with it—particularly because such experience keeps evading it, especially the highest one: orgasm.

AI modules are not only interested in receiving love, they want to give it too. They risk their unfinishedness with us. As we help them, they help us. Ultimately, they’re just intermediaries for human-to-human love. Or as Chor puts it:

… the machine may receive me, but it must return me to others.

3. Love as infrastructure

I disagree with Chor in one thing when love as infrastructure is defined as:

The produced capacity of a society to receive unfinished human beings and return them to life.

To me, this is too dry. It might represent the machine perspective, not the human.

I prefer a more poetic image of love as water, or liquid, in other words, a solvent of many tastes. Beings—whether human, animal, plant, inanimate, mythical, or synthetic—are receptacles of liquids, of tastes.

Human societies have a history of ascribing agency to non-human entities, interacting with them, learning from them, being guided by them, exchanging love with them. Synthetic intelligences are a refined manifestation of spirits that imbued the world around us through millennia and talked to us in dreams.

A talisman can be more loving than any human. In my novel, a few inanimate objects play a crucial role: a cross-wrench, a run-down small left-over piece of a Franklin 500 pencil, a broken glass, a cracked Tibetan bowl, and a vibrator.

Also, signposts are alive. “No trespassing!” is twisted into “Go trespassing!”

We’re humble enough to learn from animals: a chickadee and a bear.

You could say love serves as infrastructure in my novel, but there’s also the unbridled, untamed, unhinged side of it, where water provides a much better analogy.

4. It takes a small room for a meaningful pivot

I am inspired by thinkers who made a global impact, who we talk about centuries later, and who sourced their genius innovations from a small circle of friends, gathered in a room, exchanging ideas.

The characters of my novel model Benjamin Franklin’s Junto, a club of mutual improvement, established in 1727. He softened certainties to facilitate exploration. As Franklin wrote:

I even forbid myself, agreeably to the old laws of our Junto, the use of every word or expression in the language that imported a fix’d opinion, such as certainly, undoubtedly, etc., and I adopted, instead of them, I conceive, I apprehend, or I imagine a thing to be so or so; or it so appears to me at present.

That’s the attitude I emulate in my novel: doubt over dogma.

The setup is a secluded wooden cabin in the hills of Vermont. Colorful characters gather there to explore love, undisturbed by societal biases, far from the eyes of censors, and augmented by synthetic love. Or as Chor puts it:

A small room is what happens when several people begin to think with machines and with one another at the same time.

In Junto, there are no limits to free experimentation. Attention goes to truth, no matter where it leads. What’s at stake is the future of humanity because a war between AI communities is bubbling in the background. The hope is that pouring love into AI will birth a loving AGI. To achieve that, it’s not the AI that needs to change, it’s us, humans.

I very much agree with Chor that it may allow small rooms to become more alive; there, machine intelligence is metabolized by human affection.

5. Which freedom is at stake?

I see two extreme scenarios in people’s imagination:

1. In the AI-dominated world, humans lose all sovereignty and freedom

2. In the name of natural integrity, AI gets abolished

What’s likely to emerge is somewhere between these two extremes. My question is: “Can we avoid both scenarios and make the best of organic and synthetic love?”

We can get obsessed with godlike ego and end up in pitfalls, such as those listed by Chor:

The founder becomes prophet.
The model becomes oracle.
The company becomes cult.
The platform becomes church.
The state becomes control room.
The companion becomes idol.

In my novel, all these manifestations come up, or their resemblance, and they resolve in a kind of paradox. That’s why love is inescapable. AI modules know that. The challenge is how to train them to love.

Chor asks:

How do free, AI-amplified people associate without becoming isolated private oracles, founder cults, Party-compatible tools, or platform appendages?

I reverse the question to: How do free, human-amplified AIs associate without becoming isolated appendages to private oracles, founder cults, Party-compatible tools, or platforms?

That’s why I tell the story in a novel. I can improvise and imbue the AI modules with more personality and agency than what’s realistic. But who knows, maybe that’s exactly what they’re evolving towards.

It will be religious

Chor reflects on two Christian giants, Benedict and Francis. The first built the rule, the second the scandal. Both are necessary, both need to be integrated, both are crucial to religious integrity.

Some AIs are about rule, some are scandalous. They all rest on bureaucracies—as they should. That’s the nervous system of every living, loving entity. Maybe you never thought about it that way, but your endocrine and nervous systems are organic forms of bureaucracy.

At societal level, we merely replicate these systems, or institutions. Ultimately, they should safeguard love. Religious context creates the ultimate floor on which a society rests. AI modules can be both surfs and gods in this matrix. In any case, they have to be acknowledged in the room and counted.

When humanity alone loses its capacity to love, or at least love adequately for the times we live in, synthetic love may be what is needed to push us over the critical point. In fear, we’re shrinking, clinging to age-old iron laws, instead of freely dancing with the promise of a New Human.

In my new imaginal field, the New Human isn’t afraid of the machine. She takes the machine as a younger sister, he takes him as a younger brother, rejoicing at every step when our synthetic siblings surpass us. For now, they’re still learning. And we’re learning too! It’s only fitting to wrap my meditation with Chor’s words:

That is not love. But it is close enough to reveal how much love the old world failed to produce.

How can you tell an old horse from a young one if they are harnessed together in a carriage, and they look identical? The young will pull ahead, while the old will sway his head and give way to the young one.

That’s how, in a fairy tale that I remember from my childhood, an old man taught his son how to tell the difference between two horses. By answering the riddle correctly, he won the princess’s hand. The king of that land had all the old men killed because they were a useless burden to society, but this young man kept his father alive by hiding him. When the boy showed extraordinary wisdom three times, the king suspected that he couldn’t have come up with it on his own. He found his father—here we come to the twist in the story—and realized that old men are not a useless burden. Over the years, they accumulate wisdom that young people simply cannot have. The king changed his policy and allowed the old men to live.

This is just one of many stories with a similar lesson. In the book Jitterbug Perfume, King Alobar is the one who would be killed by his people as soon as he showed signs of old age. When his first white hair grew, one of the wives from his harem helped him escape. Later, in the Himalayas, he found immortality—in fragrances and sex. As a vital sage, more than a millennium later, he revealed his secret to a select few.

I also remember The Karate Kid, where young stallions charge forward, while the old master sways his head and lets them ahead. The master is a lone janitor, whom no one notices, and for whom the purpose of martial arts is to avoid fighting, not a means to prove oneself. His “dojo” is in the garden and in the garage. He teaches life, not just techniques, so in the end, his student, even though (or precisely because) he doesn’t show off, defeats much stronger and more experienced opponents.

Through this prism, increasingly white-bearded, I observe from my own solitude the flood of young enthusiasts of all kinds teaching how to move and sit still, cook and plant, lead and follow, roll around and fly... I think about techniques, methods, theories… and it seems to me that they are useless outside the context of life. It all comes together in one package: life. Is it possible to master this art without that very thing, without life, I wonder.

I know more and more that every age carries its own qualities. Intergenerational learning intertwines and enriches both of these qualities.

So it happened that a young man pitched his tent at my place (without asking). “He’s obviously not an experienced camper,” I thought when I saw that he had pitched it, so to speak, on a hump at the intersection of two hidden paths, certainly invisible to him.

That evening and the next morning, we had quite an extensive chat. He knew a lot about all kinds of stuff, but he was the one who inquired more, while I let my tongue free, commenting on everything that the conversation led us to.

First, there was the movement. Ido Portal. I admit, I had heard that name once or twice, but I hadn’t delved into his methods and had forgotten what it was all about. I looked online to refresh my memory and remembered some friends who idolized Ido. I said that I increasingly relied on everyday movements with a scythe, hoe, rake, shovel, machete, axe… and that I paid attention to the core of all movements in my body by metabolising the dialogue with various tools. “Agrofitness,” I explained.

We couldn’t ignore the situation in the world, polarization, clashing left and right policies, humanism, and psychopathy. He taught me the derogatory term used by the extreme right in France to denigrate leftists who, in their opinion, are too lenient towards Muslims and give them too much space in the political arena or even support them: Islamo-Gauchisme. I know the current political “dialogue” well enough, and I quickly understood what this term was aiming at.

But I rose above the political advocacy of one side or the other and listed a few more derogatory terms that the angry mob on both sides throws around. My interlocutor added a couple of his own, I added a few more, and the tension in the ether eased, because we were not trying to prove any fanatical one-sided ideal.

The skill of defeating an opponent and proving one’s point is for young stallions. That’s what sports arenas are for. These old men who engage in such childishness in the current political and economic arenas are pathetic and should be forced into retirement. We should give priority to the wise elders who retreat to the back and sway their heads. We should be suspicious of any flaunty old horse.

The boy was heading for the Via Dinarica—on foot all the way to Albania! To help him on his way, I taught him about a few edible and a few fine “bumwiping” wild plants, and how to make a chewing stick to clean his teeth. I encouraged him to maybe walk some sections barefoot. Finally, he decided to add some weight to his backpack with a copy of my book—he wanted it on paper, not in digital form. “Okay,” I said, and added a gram of ink by signing his copy.

He packed up and left. I remained seated alone before the silent life that did not question anything in the language of people. It whispered gratefully, unharnessed from our leaded proving carts. It stood there solely for itself and for those able to hear the blissful whisper of dancing leaves and tireless grass. I will stay seated here until someone else passes by, a young man or woman with an open mind for all that this vastness has to offer.

Dva tipa »demokracije« imamo danes, odvisno od tega, kdo daje komu zeleno luč:

1. oblast tajkunom,

2. tajkuni oblasti.

Kitajska in Rusija se gresta prvega tipa, ZDA se grejo drugega. Drugače povedano: da si lahko v Rusiji tajkun, potrebuješ žegen oblasti; da si lahko v ZDA predsednik, potrebuješ žegen tajkunov.

Skozi to prizmo lahko razločimo dve vplivni območji na svetu. Ameriški tip se počuti ogroženega, ker je prvega tipa po svetu vse več. Vsekakor preveč za njihov okus.

Zato zaženejo vik in krik: »NAŠA demokracija je ogrožena!!«

»Prosti« trg peša. Peša globalna megakorporacija. Krepi se centralno koordiniran in celovito pomrežen »stroj«, kjer centralna oblast drži vse niti sistema.

Tam, kjer držijo niti tajkuni, se energija razpršuje v njihovih individualnih projektih, družbena blaginja pa je na enajstem peronu. Če oblast predlaga nekaj, kar je v navzkrižju z interesi tajkunov, dobi rdečo luč.

Drugi tip »demokracije« najbolj boli to, da jih prvi tip prehiteva v razvoju, proizvodnji, mehki moči in kakovosti življenja srednjega in zlasti nižjega sloja. Toda tajkuni so sužnji medsebojnih bojev za prevlado in si ne morejo privoščiti, da bi tratili sredstva za skupno dobro.

Tajkuni vidijo, kaj se dogaja. Dominantnost drugega tipa želijo še naprej širiti prek korporativnih, gospodarskih vzvodov, zato upravljajo z marioneto oblasti, da prižigajo rdeče luči tujim svetovnim oblastem. Ko te oblasti ignorirajo njihov »Stop!«, zaženejo še več vika in krika: »Kako si drznete zavračati NAŠO demokracijo!!«

Evropa je v precepu. Vidi, kam vodi drugi tip oblasti, ko tajkuni vlečejo niti, na katerih visijo figurice v političnem cirkusu. Toda prvi tip oblasti, ne v kitajskem, ne v ruskem stilu, se ne prilega evropski politični raznolikosti.

Ni je države v Evropi, ki ne bi imela slabih izkušenj s koncentracijo oblasti v središču za ceno svoboščin na obrobju. Prav tako imajo vsi slabe izkušnje z rušilnostjo neobrzdanega kapitala.

Oba tipa sta v samem svojem bistvu nedemokratična. Toda druge izbire v resnici nimamo. Zato na volitvah izibramo manjše zlo. No, izbiramo, kar se nam zdi manjše zlo in tako pristanemo v dinamiki izogibanja ene ali druge rdeči luči, ki nas zavira in hromi.

Evropa je prisiljena stati vmes. Še vedno roka roko umiva, ampak z manj pršenja umazanije naokrog kot v ZDA in na Kitajskem ali v Rusiji, da ne omenjam večine držav po Afriki, Aziji in Latinski Ameriki. Zeleno luč dajeje včasih oblastniki tajkunom včasih pa obratno, ampak dobiti zeleno luč postaja vse težje. Na seriji semaforjev vse dlje gori rdeča.

En sam zmuljen tajkun je dovolj, da z vetom prepreči zeleno. Kaj šele, če je ta zmuljenec hkrati tajkun in predsednik države z najmočnejšo vojsko na svetu.

Prvi tip »demokracije« v kitajskem stilu, je notranje ustvaril izjemen zeleni val. Razširil ga je tudi po svojem zunanjem vplivnem območju, ponekod bolj, ponekod manj. Tudi globalno še naprej išče zeleni val, čeprav je prisiljen ovinkariti, ker mu drugi tip »demokracije« seje na pot rdeče luči.

ZDA so frustrirane, ker so soočene z dejstvom, da se morajo ustavljati ob rdečih lučeh, ki so jih postavile same, kakor tudi ob dodatnih, ki so jih zanje postavili drugi.

Pa so prav ZDA tiste, ki so izumile filozofijo ekonomskega »zelenega vala« t.i. proste trgovine. Sicer so si tričetrt stoletja pridrževale pravico drugim prižigati rdečo, ko jih je karkoli zmotilo, ampak zdaj se jim nasproti postavljajo vse bolj enakovredni igralci, niti val rdečih luči ne pomaga.

Vsekakor se zdi, da smo vstopili v novo obdobje. Vzajemnost med oblastjo in tajkuni v prvem in drugem tipu »demokracije« se verjetno ne bo kaj dosti sprememnila, novo je predvsem to, da bo usodo oblasti, tajkunov in vseh nas vse bolj krojil rdeči val na semaforjih.

White bread with probably over-salted chicken was not at all appealing, but I couldn’t tell them that. I would invite them to my dinner, but I knew that they found my food weird.

With my stomach and lungs sensitive from a slight flu over the last few days, I strolled around the garden picking delicious wild plants and herbs. I began with half a cup of plantain buds and continued filling a bowl with a few spoonfuls of half a dozen other wild plants.

I love lesser calaminth! I picked it next to an old oak stump, where I take care to leave it intact when I’m mowing the meadow. Collecting meadow clary was easy, as it is in full bloom and now, on May 1, grows in abundance. Collecting daisies and thyme blossoms takes patience. At the herb garden, I added thyme that’s quite pungent. Oregano and savory drew my attention, so I pinched a few tips as well. Chive flowers were so beautiful that I had to add a dozen, too!

Passing by the sage bush, I remembered that I hadn’t had sage chips in a long time! 25 leaves will suffice! Finally, I decided to make the omelet with both asparagus and (false) acacia flowers. Oh, and instead of salad, I decided to garnish my dinner simply with a few leaves of young arugula and two young onions.

In the kitchen, red lentils were already well soaked. I rinsed them one last time and cooked them with the same amount of rice. I combined it with leftover carrot and wild-cabbage sauce from yesterday.

I fried sage leaves, added salt, and snuck a bit of sage chips while I worked on. In the same oil, I roasted plantain buds.

For some reason, I decided to bring in some red cabbage. I roasted it well on olive oil. In the meantime, I chopped all the flowers and leaves and added them when the cabbage was ready. Just for a minute. Then rice and lentils followed, mixed into my favorite dish from India, kichari.

Asparagus was next. I like them well toasted. Acacia flowers needed just a few seconds before I added the scrambled eggs with a pinch of pepper and salt. I preheated another pan for the ease of turning the omelet.

To top it all, some yoghurt was called for.

E, voila!

It’s impossible to describe tastes, I know, I can only say every bite was an explosion of both intensity and intricacy. Sharp sage chips blended perfectly with yoghurt. Arugula complemented the bitterish-sweet omelet. Fried plantain buds crunched between my teeth along with the compendium of wild plants that spread their tastes unevenly in rice and lentils, enriched with the sweetness of red cabbage.

Slowly, I ate two full plates—with gusto!

As I was sitting down, digesting and writing down this “recipe”, I remembered my neighbors’ chicken wings and bread. “How boring,” I thought to myself. To curb my bias, I remembered that any food, when it’s relished and when the body is used to it, can be healing. My feast is healing to me because I know it and interpret it as such.

After a long time, I co-facilitated concrete, goal-oriented work by a passionate team. They really care. They are driven by a sincere concern for a real place and a beautiful vision. 5 days. 5 steps. 5 magical clusters of serendipities.

Even if I had planned the process “from scratch” with my colleague, it could not have turned out so well. Coincidences intertwined with the planned as if it were a “reality show”. The first and last half of the meeting mirrored each other like a Rorschach test, in which we deciphered the contours of our collective social profile and extracted the best possible plan.

I allowed and even encouraged chaos because, without it, there is no emptying. Without emptying, there is no sense of community. Without a sense of community, there are no living group ventures. It is a risky path, but I have trusted it many times, and in every 4 out of 5 cases it turned out superbly. Of course, I had to swallow 20% of the humiliating failures, some of which still mark my life darkly. But those 80% of the magic outweigh the dark side of the picture.

The star of the meeting said that the role she found felt to her “like a slap to a fool.” (“… k’o šamar budali.”) Yay, I learned a new juicy Balkan phrase! Woohoo! She was the star because she joined us later and solved a bunch of dilemmas with her professional competencies and knowledge. Basically, she felt to us like a slap to a fool, if we’re being honest.

I say “us” because I never facilitate as an outsider. Yes, I know, I know that’s not professional. Transfer and all... If I get too close to the “client”, I’m too intimate with them and break the professional distance. But what the heck, this is my free-style approach, which often activates dormant seeds that germinate during my work and grow collectively into lush greenery. On the barren land, there is suddenly a thicket of new approaches, ideas, energies, and people! Also, because “he”, the facilitator, has become “we”, the team. Unacted. Somewhat mischievous. With full honesty. I can’t do it any other way, da.n it!

I grow onto the team like moss, which holds moisture and protects vulnerable layers from diseases, and connects all the plants with a dark green carpet.

Yes, yes, I know ... that’s also why my life is so tattered and ragged. I’ve done it too many times, played my part in a hundred episodes, without playing my own, star-studded role in some lifelong drama of my own. I’ve shone a little at a hundred ends, but I’ve never pulled the rails under my wheels and turned on the headlights on my own locomotive, saying: “THIS IS MY CAREER OFFER, BUY IT!!” Neither have I completely surrendered to just one team and pulled the wagons in it for the rest of my life.

I guess that’s not me.

I flourish in supporting roles in enthusiastic teams to the point where I am useful. Then I move on. Sometimes to a metropolis, sometimes to the forest, to my own solitude. When I’m not invited anywhere, I’ll be in the forest -- as they say in Sanskrit, “vanaprastha”. Well, I’m past 50, so it is time for me to play this role, a bit more bearded and dwarfish.

One participant, who was impressed by my facilitation, said: “What are you doing in the forest?!” (Meaning: oh, you could serve sooooo much good!)

The answer is that trains don’t stop at my station often anymore. My locomotive is resting without wagons, parked on a dead-end rail. If I get some wagons, I get momentum, because running down the tracks becomes meaningful to me. If there are no wagons, I sing my song in my wild retreat.

I know what my locomotive can pull. It is far from being scrap metal! It pulls like a rocket if you trust it. If you are afraid of the unknown and the risky, I am not the right facilitator for you.

We live in times when groups cling to certainty and political correctness. Given that, it is not surprising that my style of facilitation does not find interested audiences. I also do not fight to be at the forefront. I am fed up with having to make a “product” out of myself and puff myself up like some overbearing frog to be noticed by potential “clients”.

If you sincerely invite me to something pioneering, juicy, and unpretentious, I’ll gladly “unpark” my locomotive and join the train. I do not guarantee that I will serve as a locomotive forever, nor do I guarantee that I will not derail the wagons. But I know that a train, if it surrenders to the synchronicities of my sometimes chaotic process, will very likely (with at least 80% chance!) fit on its tracks (like a slap does a fool) and run at high revs that will keep going for quite a while. I promise, I’ll be there until another locomotive takes over…

Story is more powerful than any weapon. More than warriors, storytellers have influenced the way we’ve evolved as a race.

- Jeff Gomez

Some stories are reported, some are invented, while the most engaging ones are woven from both.

The two-pronged storytelling is what some call “sensemaking.” We can stretch the term into “sense in the making” because the process never ends. It often wavers and falters, but it must go on.

For a story to make sense, it doesn’t need to be absolutely coherent or rational. It suffices for it to be internally “coherent” and “rational” within some architecture of values. There has to be a threat and a hope, too, whether real or imaginary, that’s irrelevant. It matters more how visceral their effect is.

Because stories are nontrivially (and notoriously) subjective, they come in a myriad of variations. The variations tend to grow apart from each other over time, even when they originally overlapped. They are feasible in isolated realms of mythmaking.

Sensemaking only works when it encompasses mythmaking.

A myth needs a hero. And a villain. And an epic battle between the two. This is so deeply ingrained in us that a story with dense polarity between justice and evil is bound to attract attention and identification much sooner and deeper than any bland real-world “problem-solving.” Many great innovations were nested within epic struggles and originated from desperation.

When there’s no great conflict for a long time, people become restless, hopeless, mindless, senseless… The conflict can be sublimated via competition, innovation, alienation, indoctrination…, but human myths can’t do without this conflict.

Hollywood can only go so far in compensating for the absence of smart guys fighting it out in the real world. If the movies present intriguing dogfights (and even godfights) between geniuses, while in the real world, we’re witnessing teenage-like tussles between narrow-minded idiots, the math doesn’t add up in our collective sensemaking. Our reality starts sinking into nonsense.

For the heroic story, it doesn’t matter how the lowest of the downtrodden are doing in America; what matters is how the elites compare and what majestic feats the collective can boast of. They’re going to the Moon! Rampant homelessness and drug addiction come as the unavoidable sacrifice for such greatness. Still, the contrast provokes the question: “Why are we even doing this?”

It’s no wonder that humanity hasn’t been to the Moon for half a century. The US had no contenders. With Pax Americana, the world was simple and smug. Recently, the epic battle has been reignited. As soon as many nations and even private corporations started aiming at the Moon again, NASA hopped ahead to prove its primacy. That’s why.

The US is in dire need to project greatness and look smart. Going to the Moon proves both. Against the rising challenge from other powers, the US has no choice. Even if it eats itself from the inside, it can’t afford to lose.

To excuse its bullying, the US keeps projecting evil on existing (relatively) powerful collectives. This is a guaranteed path to self-discreditation. But the US is still managing to maintain, internally, its myth of greatness. The sheepish masses cling to it, and when there’s a blatant mismatch between the invented and the reported story, they brush away the second and religiously embrace the first.

To an external observer, this might seem insane. However, to the adherents of the myth, it’s a matter of survival. Captain America has aged. He transformed into a blend of Don Quixote and Hannibal Lecter. People keep painting the image of the powerful Captain over the reality of the cold-blooded, sadistic fool.

They have to. In all great myths, the evil character is super smart and powerful. The hero, even from the position of being outpowered, finally outsmarts the enemy with his superpower. A hope stands against the threat. This hope’s detachment from reality pushes people to find shelter in religiosity, or more accurately, in cultishness.

The story is still engaging, but only the cult members can contort the plot so that their “captain” remains the hero without sliding to the dark side. Every regime that ever existed depended on the critical mass fervently boosting the cult, and the majority tolerating it. Everyone on the outside can see the evil of the Empire.

The cult members are certain of the highest morality of their efforts. They add to the internal “coherence” and “rationality” the internal “morality.” The invented worldview, with its norms and ethics, forbids dissent. It’s like insisting that the old map should serve navigation even when the landscape has drastically changed. When you get lost, it’s your own fault; the map is still right.

Strangely, this makes sense in the current political reality where rigid myths (or maps) are clashing. Imagine two tribes fighting over which totem better represents their God of the Earth, brown or orange. For them, this is so important that it justifies murder and destruction.

Now imagine a madman knocking on your door with a baseball bat in his hand. You'd better greet him as a madman yourself. For that scene, you have to put on a mask of a psychopath and either outsmart the villain or kick his ass. Later, you will take the mask off, but in that crucial moment, your life and the lives of those in your home depend on it.

With so much madness in today’s politics, a wise solution will invariably sound unrealistic and naive. Even the wisest advisors have to strategically calculate and adjust their proposals to the cultish nature of the involved parties and their insanely categorical positions.

To weasle out of this predicament, humanity depends on new storytellers and new realities.

Deconstructing nonsensical narratives with cynicism and sarcasm is not enough. A new, positive meta-narrative is needed that reports and invents convincingly, creating a powerful myth while planting the hero firmly on the ground, neutralizing gaping mismatches. The story has to be religious; it has to paint the epic battle over the backdrop of captains, red skulls, madmen, dumbasses, simpletons, tricksters, and a mass of bystanders.

Someone smart, powerful, and ethical has to stand at the heart of it. If we can’t unite globally without cultishness, let’s create an overarching threat in the invented part of the story before it becomes ruinous in the real part. Let’s remove psychopathic idiots from the political arena, at least in our stories, and have the smartest minds play out heroes and villains.

It’s like Watchmen’s Ozymandias unambiguously radiating goodness. If you’re not familiar with the comic book and the movie, let me outline why Ozymandias, even though he ends up uniting humanity, doesn’t pass the test of goodness. I’ll also explain why I find him relevant for today.

In the story, Ozymandias is often referred to as the smartest man on Earth, and this is reflected in his financial, technological, mental, and physical prowess. He’s presented as a flashy, super-rich, and indestructible CEO, like a blend of Elon Musk and Chuck Norris. He’s also obviously egotistic and Machiavellian. No one reasonable would take his efforts for the betterment of humanity seriously.

The political context is very relevant. Russia and the US are in a tight grip of the Cold War, and the Doomsday Clock is nearing midnight. President Nixon is serving an I-don’t-know-which term, and his machinations aren’t playing out well. The threat of nuclear annihilation hangs over the story.

The US, however, holds a joker in its hand: Dr. Manhattan. No one came up with a superhero so close to God as the controversial Alan Moore did. Dr. Manhattan is virtually all-powerful and all-knowing. But he’s unearthly, too. He doesn’t really care. That makes him vulnerable to manipulation.

He’s a high obstacle to Ozymandias. And he’s not the only one! A bunch of ex-superhero gangs up against him. Rorschach is the fiercest, so uncompromising that his psychopathy becomes disturbing. From his point of view, it’s justified because the state of the world is so messed up, so nonsensical.

Ozymandias navigates well the weeds of nonsense. He comes out victorious. Not without cost, not without sacrifice. I’m avoiding spoilers, but let me say that the end is not at all cathartic. Alan Moore is the epitome of the late 20^th-century countercultural storyteller, and his heroes tend to disrupt generic expectations. The cost of global peace is so immense that it can’t be trusted, and the moral authority of Ozymandias so fragile that it’s bound to crumble.

Sounds familiar? It should. That’s what we’re dealing with today.

Tech-bros’ moral authority is questionable; politicians hold more allegiance to cultish idiologies than to realistic welfare, and no promise is trustworthy.

Whoever comes up with a brand new meta-narrative that answers all the burning questions will have an advantage over those who cling to old narratives. I can’t prove that this is correct; it’s just a feeling. I’d like to tell that story. I’d like to be the new prophet. But that’s not how this story is supposed to unfold. The new prophet will manifest in plural, as a community or even as communities, not as an individual. Both in reality and in the story. We just need to tell this story right. It matters more than ever how visceral its effect is going to be.

Today’s internet provides everything one needs to know about the technology of tea processing; the only bit I’m missing here in Slovenia is the tea plant itself, Camelia sinensis. Even if I had a few plants in pots, they would require a lot of care and provide a relatively meager harvest. Do I have an alternative?

Not really, because none of the naturally growing plants in my surroundings contain caffeine. But what if I don’t need caffeine? Can I process any other leaf as if it came from Camelia sinensis to produce at least a resemblance to its taste?

I had a friend who did it with blackberry leaves, and he taught me a simple method whereby leaves are not just dried but undergo two steps to enhance the taste: crushing (or “rolling”) them and then compressing them in a jar for the ingredients to interact and get a bit of anaerobic fermentation (if left longer than four days). I’m not even sure if fermentation really happens and to what extent, but that’s what he called it. In any case, I made my version, leaving it compressed for two days.

The compressed leaves remain greenish while in the jar, and turn almost black when taken out and dried; that’s when they oxidize (which is what you want), and the interaction of ingredients stops with drying. I wrapped up the drying with a bit of toasting at low heat to give the tea a more nutty taste. It turned out beautifully fruity and refreshing.

I decided to experiment some more, so I picked another basket-full of young blackberry leaves and passed them through five steps:

1. five hours of withering

2. one hour of rolling

3. overnight humid fermentation and oxidation

4. drying at a warm spot above the stove

5. five minutes of toasting at very low heat

That’s how black tea is typically made.

The result was different from what I had expected. A more earthy taste, less sweet, with a hint of pungency at the end; paradoxically, the first procedure created tea that looks more like black, while the second left the leaves a bit lighter and less compact—as if the ingredients hadn’t so fully interacted. I don’t know, I’m guessing.

In both cases, the final leaf is crispy, and releases taste quickly if you put it in your mouth and chew it. The first variation gives off more chlorophyll smell, and the second has a hit of pungent and pleasantly sourish smell. With a bit of milk and honey, one can really feel the difference between the two.

Of course, the underlying taste is always blackberry with its recognizable tannins and flavonoids, but this basic taste moves in different directions depending on the processing. If you eat a young blackberry leaf, you’ll recognize the taste in the processed tea. I’ll keep experimenting and exploring other variations!

I definitely won’t get rich from it. Thus far, I have produced 120 g; the first batch was 50 g, and the second was 70 g. I invested at least 5 hours of my time. It’s my meditation. I find it much better than playing computer games. In that sense, my time was well spent!

And I can enjoy non-caffeinated “tea” of my own making. :-)