All our differences: what did Albert Camus learn in Spain?

American-Australian journalist and writer Geraldine Brooks is the author of the 2008 novel People of the Book. It is a romanticized story about the double rescue of the Sarajevo Haggadah during two wars, between which stretched 45 years of the best peace ever remembered in this area. Critics wrote that it is a "violent book that conveys a powerful historical lesson".

Asked in an interview what the lesson might be, Brooks replies: "That our societies are best and strongest when they respect diversity."

Here is a key civilizational and cultural challenge for citizens, nations and their political representatives. Here is the most important test for the environment here, every city, village, ethnic group, any major grouping - how many differences can they bear and are they ready to actively fight for them. The history of Bosnia and Herzegovina, that sometimes bloody saga between four places of worship, people like to observe one-dimensionally: either as a karakazan full of blood and violence or as an idyllic oasis where love flourishes, and butterflies of harmonious coexistence buzz around and land on people and their differences.

A mix of extremes

The fact is that every history rests on a mix of the mentioned extremes, that in our past we can find enough examples and evidence for both one and the other form. All these turbulent events cumulatively flow into a common question: What do we intend to do with our own future and how much diversity can we tolerate today? What have we learned from history and are we able to apply its lessons practically as we advocate them verbally?

In the midst of a truly multicultural Sarajevo, which has been practicing and living together with more or less success for centuries, there were magnificent examples of selfless help under the shells, but also in some places terrifying crimes directed against that concept. The Republika Srpska, as an entity created by the brutal suppression of differences, on the other hand, is currently going through the political culmination of uniformity, led by a suspicious political profile that nailed diversity to a pillar of shame. And tirelessly agitates against it. But it is questionable what the real effects of that agitation are. An eruption of enthusiasm and congratulations that never ends was recently caused by a Facebook post by opposition politician Zagorka Grahovac, who answered the claim from the top that the Federation of BiH is a dark vilayet, openly: if we didn't have that vilayet, we don't know how we would survive. Her spontaneous message to an entire entity taught a lesson in common life. And the entity, with the exception of the rich political caste and its courtiers, enthusiastically accepted that lesson. Here is irrefutable proof that people, only if they are allowed and guided properly, do not hate diversity, but accept it with enthusiasm that opens the door to a different, in any case better life.

New models

If politics succeeds in resolving the multi-year crisis in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the new model of existence must be radically different from everything that has been preached, ordered and practiced since 1990. Confrontation is obviously not a good approach, it failed all possible tests. No one is asking people to break away from brotherhood and unity now, but cooperation instead of conflict is an interesting and feasible option. It is not an attitude, but a process, and it is not a project, but a profound twisting of existing policies, which will be difficult to carry out on a practical level.

Bosnia and Herzegovina is being pushed out of the European tradition with all its might, even though it belongs there with a complete historical heritage. The greatest defeat of contemporary Europe is neither Bosnia and Herzegovina, as is sometimes self-infatuated here, nor Ukraine, but the administrative tangle of visas, entry bans and barbed wire that will isolate Europe, i.e. the European Union as its most dominant part, in prosperity, thus making it vulnerable and exposed. The authors on this portal have already written about these processes: while China is designing the Silk Road, the EU is closing its doors and there is no need to guess which option will win.

Bosnia and Herzegovina can find and preserve its own position in the modern world, but only if there are forces capable of fighting for it. Nothing is ever lost. The question, however, is what kind of political personnel we have and whether they are ready for important strategic developments. A politicized world that develops subject consciousness is not a recipe for survival. The state as an ideological and economic base for people in power only provides them with survival and guarantees. Technological innovations dramatically change relationships in society. The arrival of artificial intelligence is already causing tectonic changes, at the end of which the local ethno-national struggles seem so anachronistic that we should be ashamed. When that model begins to fail, there will be ideological—let's hope not real—blood up to their knees.

"In Spain, my generation learned that one can be right and be defeated, that force can defeat the soul and that courage is not always rewarded," writes Albert Camus in one place. And in Bosnia and Herzegovina, generations are currently learning that there are former war criminals and that, therefore, it pays to kill in the name of the People. Spain plus Bosnia and Herzegovina, and that's the reason why people have no illusions about the possibility of progress. Chances are always there, but they pass us by unused, unused, unwrapped. As we progressed, we progressed, who dug what, dug...

(analysiraj.ba)