Two recent mass murders continue to keep us shrouded in black, many more things are being written about us, and all of this is under the auspices of the "black swan". This is the name of the risk analyst Nasim Taleb's theory, according to which large earthquakes are caused by unexpected events, which are subsequently discovered to have been predicted.
Of course, no one could have predicted the massacres in "Ribnikar" and around Mladenovac, nor that the laudable stabilocracy here would be shaken this spring by the biggest civil protests of this century. But, gradually, it appears that at least something similar could be expected, that the dramas are not rootless.
The authorities were caught as "fairies in what they were not", because for the first time something completely informal ruled the country - a flood of strong feelings, from solidarity in grief, to anger at the apparent impotence of the state, whose organs persistently presented themselves as omnipotent. In places it resembled an emotional upheaval, at least in the souls.
The authorities then undertook a series of consoling measures, but by no means did they manage sufficiently on, for them, untried terrain - humanity. Preoccupied with numbers, investors, megalomaniac projects and ventures that always have to be eye-popping, they neglected permeating with concrete citizens, even though they live off their taxation and whose priorities they should serve.
Humanity is practically taken for granted, as if it were an innate quality. In the anthology of her qualities, in short: what you don't wish for yourself, don't wish for others, compassion, respect for those who disagree, trying not to let personal interests come at the expense of the common good, respect for the law, responsibility, truthfulness, non-ostentatiousness, broad-mindedness, decency...
Well, hardly anyone practices all these virtues, but on the political scene they are quickly discarded, as if civility has become a flaw, a sign of weakness. Lies, insults, arrogance, declaring opposition members traitors, inventing preparations for a coup d'état prevail, and the violation of the Constitution has taken root as a rule of law.
Such pollution of the atmosphere, imbued with threats and impunity, favored the spread of various undesirables and even violence. Certain writings by foreign authors about their countries seem to describe our situation. In Spanish Dam therefore, confrontations between political rivals are criticized, so to speak, with blood and knife, whereby they harm not only each other, but also spread distrust in the political system. And in Washington Post is reminded of the words of the ancient philosopher Erasmus of Rotterdam that civility is the basis for mutual respect and harmony, so that according to this criterion Americans do not deserve to be considered humanists.
And us? Maybe we could find each other in Ivo Andrić's "Signs on the Road". He wrote: "One of the essential characteristics of a civilized society is the willing service to consideration, which through good upbringing and long tradition becomes the second nature of people, and which is the best antidote to all the inevitable evils of social life. When these considerations stop giving way and become the object of criticism and irony, it is a sign that society is doomed, that its evils have overtaken it, that it is going faster or slower to its ruin, and that the first forms of a new society are on the horizon".
These considerations were relaxed by Vladimir Putin when he ordered the aggression against Ukraine and by Donald Trump when he does not recognize the proven results of his electoral defeat, as well as by a number of other leaders who imagined creating a new order at their discretion. Aleksandar Vučić fits both by calling that "sister services from the East" (read Russia) told him that the "Serbia against violence" protests are an attempt at a "colored (read pro-Western) revolution", as well as by calling for dialogue with the oppositionists, while he thinks of them as " all the worst" and places them in the "annals of dishonor".
It should be remembered that a year and a half ago, Aleksandar Vulin, as the then Minister of Internal Affairs, agreed in Moscow that the two countries would cooperate in suppressing "colored revolutions" as an instrument of the West to undermine certain countries, "under the pretext of democratization". The protests of "Serbia against violence" strive for democratization, but they did not identify themselves with "color revolutions" in any word.
The impression is that the government was further swayed by the aggravation of the situation in Kosovo, where in addition to the immediately competent quintet (representatives of the USA, Germany, Britain, France and Italy) it turned to its opponents Russia and China for support. Such double-sidedness is a "white swan", because it has been applied for a long time.
But what all this will lead to remains uncertain, under the patronage of the "black swan", unpredictable expectations. A kind of "swan song" can be sensed, probably only to those who ignore the warning from Will Durant's book "The Mind Rules", that "every form of government destroys itself when it oversteps the mark in preserving the basic principle". And currently the most striking principle as such is the disregard of citizens' demands for essential changes in the system.
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