Living life in a country where it is socially desirable to prove one's patriotism by investing decibels in national narratives of Serbian or Montenegrin provenance is dangerous for all those citizens who recognize such matrices. All national matrices basically repeat the order of behavior seen in these areas in the previous seventy years. Our grandfathers used to sing ... "neutrals are more difficult for me than all horses and donkeys"... and then they would unanimously start counting national blood cells according to the principle whoever is not with us is against us, that is, a traitor. The phrase is repeated so many times in good times and bad times, that, in fact, it has lost its meaning and turned into a kind of hunting cry for an ordinary decent citizen.
While cold-blooded mafia executions and drug smuggling are taking place around us, simple-minded populism is conquering Montenegro. Instead of offering citizens the security of the law and a real economy of social justice, Montenegro has become an adventure park of the most primitive kind. Religion and nation have been reduced to the level of primitive folklore. How fortunate that we became Saints and Njegoš's Montenegro because these were examples of enlightened society in their time. Half-literate politicians have misused our bright history. The question is not when this madness of public rape of the social scene will end, but the real question is whether decency, modesty and faith in one's own success will disappear.
And no one talks about economic existence and normal topics anymore, the Budget is our mailbox with all the populist wishes of the type of bread without a hoe. And something else. You won't hear from these experts of ours how to make money? It is only heard from their mouths how to tax it and spend it?
The phrases "Let it be eternal" and "Serbian world" are products of transitional processes and represent mimicry of social values. The generational deposition of the moral code, which created a kind of sociological brand from the former Montenegrins, crumbled into dust and ashes. The current generations of citizens of Montenegro even have a problem with their national identity. The dangerous coin "every bird flies to its own flock" is in force, and this is what must be fought to the end. The collective "WE" (nation, people, party, government) replaced the individual "I" (ordinary decent citizen, individual).
The image of economic well-being that was projected for domestic use has begun to peel and take on a gray color. The main characters of the socio-economic elite from that picture built and are building new moral norms and the appearance of desirable values in Montenegro. How many of these protagonists are there without socially valorized successes in their biographies. In simpler terms, the measure of success is resourcefulness and the already famous Byzantine nepotism and sole cheek! The measure of social norms has become a matter of agreement among socio-economic elites. This nation is allowed everything that the fathers of Montenegro agree on!
In post-transitional Montenegro, it is precisely the flaw of democracy that is most abused, namely the right to personal choice of the individual. Imitating the famous contracts of bourgeois societies that put the individual in the foreground, that is "his highness the citizen", we forgot that in Montenegro civic consciousness is still in its infancy, and replaced it with collective consciousness. Everything else we act. For the sake of Europe. Not to touch them. So today we have a fake middle class as a source of political and economic power that gives the government electoral legitimacy. This means that first the elite projected the citizens, in the bourgeois sense of the word, and then deposited their legitimacy in that appearance. Montenegro is now a real Potemkin village! In such a social environment, it is possible to declare every decision of the government as legitimate because it comes as a product of the supreme bourgeois principle, which is the right and the will of the individual citizen, who was designed and created by that government.
The government also met the second criterion of modern European societies, which is that it is responsible for its actions to the citizens, which it itself designed and created. Thus, we arrive at a strange paradox in which the government apparatus is self-sufficient. The regime even has a self-sufficient political opposition for a more complete appearance from abroad. Words such as ideas and ideology have been replaced by the words personal gain or profit.
May I be allowed to paraphrase Thomas Mann... There is no black and white Montenegro, Montenegrin and Serbian. There is only one Montenegro. Montenegro, to which we all have an equal right. We have to step out of the national matrices for once. Montenegro was not created in 2006 as a society of collective freedom of people from other peoples, as a society that is a paradise for the poor, and a people's state as a connective tissue of all mass political movements. Quite the opposite - Montenegro must be completely different.
We need to hear each other, to begin with. And the road to any recovery is long and difficult. It requires a lot of sacrifices and sacrifices. The first step in our social recovery is to reacquaint ourselves with the truth. The truth about themselves. We need a big sobering up. To understand that we are not a "successful European or any national story" but a society that should still determine its social priorities. Only then comes the "long journey through the night". We should understand that every individual in Montenegro, every citizen, has the right to his "personal happiness", but that it depends on him and his work. Citizens of Montenegro should understand that the term entry into the European Union means that we immediately start applying European norms and rules. Not tomorrow, not after, but today. The Union should bring its own social and economic values.
National revival will certainly not be brought to us by various gurus and fathers of the nation, even if they are twice as successful in their work. Because they are successful only at home and for their own benefit. Society and civic consciousness are not built on divisions and insistence on differences. On the contrary. Revival begins with recognizing and nurturing the various differences that unite us. New values and identities are created on the basis of these united differences. Made in Montenegro then becomes the property of all of us, its citizens. The only question is how long the intellectual elite of Montenegro will remain silent.
The author is a member of the General Secretariat of CIVIS
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