Well-known Polish historian, journalist and dissident Adam Mihnjik shook and stirred the Polish public some 50 years ago when, in the lightning-fast rise of the "union" movement Solidarity, warned his society (via Gazeta Wyborcza) with a prophetic thought ""that only anti-communists can be worse than communists."
In other words, the wise and brave Pole of Jewish origin said that nothing is so bad in a society that it could not be worse. In another sense, Michnyk says that everything in society - including political freedom - should be conquered skillfully, persistently and, above all, cautiously. Only with courage and caution does a society deserve freedom.
Because nothing in society "falls from the sky," Mihnjik was cautious.
Similar to the cautious Mihnjik, a Renaissance sage long ago observed that Every man is the measure of freedom, just as freedom is the measure of every society.
Therefore, from the above, it is easy to conclude that the political struggle for freedom - whether of a community or an individual - is directed towards achieving a better and more realistic vision of the development of a society than the existing one. It is about the ontological orientation of man towards achieving new, unknown visions, views of life and the development of man and society.
In this regard, the task of the elite is to understand and accept the unknowns that each vision (perception) carries within itself. All with the aim of reducing the risks and dangers for society and what kind of future it has. (The elite acts in society similar to groping in the dark.)
People with new, revolutionary views on the development of society are called revolutionaries. They create and use their natural environment most often in politics. Such visionary people can also be found in science, art, and numerous other branches of human activity.
In short - people with great visions are very important for the development of any society.
Free fall of society
In our country today, columns of "multi-party" politicians have so overshadowed, overpowered, and occupied all spheres of the human spirit and practice that the meaning and purpose of politics as a reasonable, moral, and visionary activity is being lost.
Politics in our country has been reduced to a bare individual struggle for power. Often with a meager and banal “struggle” for a vision. In this regard, the people are often accused of being guilty of everything, as is usually said. This is a smaller and even shallower part of the truth. The root is far more significant and deeper. Because behind every Montenegrin policy and its visions, including this one, there is the sin of our “elite”. She failed to resist the entropy of the ruling politics and impose it on society. an alternative in search for the spirit of a higher quality of life that has proven possible and better than ours in other environments.
So, it is about a lack of self-critical education of society through personal example - whether it is an elite individual or a small group of people who act discreetly.
Political entropy in Montenegro has been going on for decades. But the power of entropy has accelerated in the last 5-6 years. This is a free fall of Montenegrin society that the people have not yet been told about.
The point is that the elite must create or critically influence the creation of numerous small but also large (strategic) state policies.
Therefore, the important question is whether we in Montenegro have the spiritual strength to create an elite that, as an institution or as a shadow authority, influences the creation of important political decisions. (Let's call this the internal, inner being of the elite.)
On the other, opposite side, the elite knows and must recognize and direct its society towards the external and true side of history. (Let us call this the external being of the elite.)
This second (external) global factor is very important today, with a capital V. It is far more important than the internal one. Because a tectonic rearrangement of the world is taking place outside Montenegro, so it would not be “healthy” for Montenegro to remain outside of history, i.e. disappear as a society. And that can very easily happen.
By experience, we are closer to pessimism as the future reality of Montenegrin society than any other belief. Because the ideological ruling policies in our country have been destroying liberal individuals (elite) for decades and decades, to the point of institutionalizing themselves at least discretionarily as a control system of government. That is on the one hand.
On the other hand - which is much more important - the Montenegrin "elite" is also a perishable commodity, with a weak "backbone" and it was easy to overcome it.
(Regardless of the fact that Montenegro had and still has very talented and even great individuals. But many emigrated from Montenegro, leaving behind a social void and devastation. Many went "belly-to-armchair" throughout Yugoslavia, with a "soft" in Belgrade.)
Therefore, Montenegro in the 20th and 21st centuries has never been able to retain individuals - with honorable and excellent exceptions - who would, with their morality, reflection, vision, rebellion and (above all) their "backbone", pledge their heads and oppose the "will to power" (FN) some (banal) individual in power.
Simply put, the tradition and strength of the Montenegrin agon - embodied in the brutal power of modern Montenegrin politics and prestige - was and remains one of the most important obstacles to the liberal and democratic development of our society.
Let's further expand the topic of the Montenegrin vision and look at it from another angle, another perspective.
Understanding the inertia of the past
It has always been said that there is no politics without vision. No matter what the subject of the vision is or what it is like. Simply, Man is a being of vision., to paraphrase Rene Descartes.
So, a man without vision is a being condemned to a gradual and silent death. Therefore, vision is the strongest foundation of a society. And even utopia, until it comes to power. (If it comes, write failed.)
That is why great politicians (reformers) are most often called visionaries or statesmen.
Whatever they call themselves, visionaries "move" the spirit of a society from one "point" to another, from one level of consciousness to another.
But already at the “start” - when it comes to a vision or a desirable horizon for the development and growth of a society - it is important to note that there is no vision without a thorough knowledge of history, tradition, ethics, customs, circumstances, and even a deep knowledge of the psychology of a society. Only such a vision can be useful (usable) in society. Only such a vision can be “received” in society without causing discord.
(Such a vision flowchart in a society is what experienced Englishmen call the need to create necessary political conservatism. So, politics is tied to the past.)
On the other, external side, there is no vision of a society without studying and knowing the broader, even the broadest, future (global) social movements. They significantly influence the direction of development of the spirit of a society.
Let us also point out or add that the vision is not the same in every society and in every time. Some people "see" the vision (perception) only in the past, in revenge and the like. Others orient the social vision towards utopias. Still others use it as a form of current populism for the purpose of conquering and remaining in power, etc.
Let us briefly add here - the ruling policy in every society and state - including in Montenegro - is compromise between the desirable future of society, on the one hand, and the understanding of the inertia of the past and its strength, on the other. Whoever violates this "axiom of life" has paid and will pay dearly for the mistake.
Because even a compromise is better than having nothing.
(Aleksandrovna - "first" and Tito's - the "other" Yugoslavia are typical examples of selectivity, i.e. one-sided application of social visions, which led to bloody consequences throughout the 20th century in the "western" Balkans.)
Therefore, social compromise is inevitable and indispensable, because it is the appearance of the form of life of a society in the present.
But compromise is not easy to come to. Quite the opposite. Because every individual or political group (party) sees society in their own way. They even interpret facts in their own way and adapt them to their often personal and party interests, material or spiritual. (Like in the films “Rashamon” or “Karasko”, for example.)
And the field of political manipulation and malicious intent in compromises is huge in our country. Montenegro is full of anti-compromise “champions.” Because their “visions” are different.
The elite articulates the political spirit
Let's return to the elite and its key role.
Every vision of Montenegro is different from one elite to another. And that is quite natural. A desirable diversity of understanding of different individual spiritualities and cultures.
But it is not natural that different views of Montenegro are sources of conflicts, hatred or the like. This kind of social and political pathology in Montenegro is “solved” - with identity freedoms. Because the time of freedom is “masterfully sifted” (Njegos).
Although, even with the use of freedom, one must be extremely careful, cautious, and above all, gradual. (Just as a patient is given medicine by the spoonful. If he is given too much medicine, he can choke, suffocate, and have the opposite effect.)
Especially in the Balkan circumstances of human exclusivity and exaggeration, both the deficit and the surplus of freedom are dangerous. Because freedom can be a double-edged sword. In that sense, the elite plays - as has been said many times - a first-class role. And Mihnjik - let's get back to him - warns his own and every society.
And yet, pessimism is closer to us in this sense. Our elite could not articulate the political spirit or, more precisely, our political identity spirits and synthesize them in a liberal, but rather exclusive way.
Admittedly, that is easy to say, but difficult to implement. Because the spirit of multi-partyism is also an expression of the culture of a society and the state of mind of a society. And the legal system (only) “graphically” codifies (formalizes) its spirit into the constitution and laws according to which people must behave. (We have not reached that level, we have not risen. And the “path” is also questionable.)
Here is a “synthesizing” and liberal (non-ideological) example and the consequences of not applying it.
Let's remember visionary thinking Charles de Gaulle and his pacifist vision of a united Europe ”od Atlantika do Urala”.
The political and even cultural "elites" in Europe did not hear De Gaulle nor did they want to hear him. And perhaps they did not even have the courage to hear him. The result is today's war in Ukraine and the fundamental instability of Europe (EU) on all sides. Primarily geopolitical and sovereign.
Tendency to moral corruption
And today's Montenegro? Hm, hm, hm...
Because "multi-party" Montenegro has a cultural and primarily political "elite" of only daily visions and continuous manipulations. These manipulations are usually called systemic reforms and the production of sets of new laws. (Their goal and purpose is that nothing changes in society and that the dug visionary trenches remain forever open.)
Our elite is being destroyed by various ideologies, political programs, party congresses, religious depression, ambition, greed, a tendency towards moral corruption, etc.
The populist spirit of our elite has successfully adhered to or grown out of the traditional breadth of popular beliefs and convictions.
We have not created an elite that is above both the government and the opposition, but also the people, and that is critical of both and - especially - of third parties. (In a way, the task of politics is to know how to oppose "the people" and populist destruction.)
So, it is not easy to have an elite that is up to the challenge of time and geo-space.
Let us remember that in Montenegro, during the collapse of communism, we did not even have an elite. At that time, the people were left stranded, i.e. on the streets. They (the elite) elevated themselves materially on civilizational neglect and manipulation of their own people on a national basis.
By the nature of their dogma, church elites are even more problematic than secular elites. Because dogma is an unquestioning belief in one's faith and its truth in the struggle for greater power and church prestige.
In such circumstances, i.e. in turbulent times, large nations have always used and will use small nations as a bargaining chip. Sovereignty then becomes a folkloric symbol.
Before concluding, let's consider the experience of a famous Polish general Vojćeha Jaruzelskog who tried to solve the elite "deficit" in his society in the mid-70s by introducing the army as a stabilizing factor and introducing a state of emergency.
He failed. Because freedom is impossible to arrest. Naturally, if the elite educated their society in a liberal direction.
Social and political problems have proven to be much more complex in every society, including Montenegrin, than the generals and their military might could solve in a long-term and stable manner.
Let us conclude: when an elite "deficit" occurs, then "crude things are born, which time cannot correct," as one lawyer and wise man said.
Bonus video:
