By Sam Vaknin
Author of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited"
Or, so say many of the readers who react vehemently - not to say
minaciously - to my articles. They insist that I demonize, chastise,
disparage, deride and hold in contempt groups of people simply and
solely because they are born in a given geographical area or are of
a given genetic stock. Few stop sufficiently long to notice that the
above two accusations contravene each other. A territory as vast as
Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) cannot and is not inhabited by
one "race". It is an historical cocktail of colours and origins and
languages and bloodlines. Disregarding the pan-Slavic myth for a
minute, a racist would find the CEE a very discouraging
neighbourhood.
Am I a racist? If this is taken to mean "do I believe in the
inherent inferiority or malevolence or impurity of any group of
people (however arbitrarily defined or capriciously delimited) just
because of their common origin or habitation" - then of course I am
not. I am not an adherent of genetic predetermination and I think
that there is very little point in discussing fictitious entities
such as "pure races". That people are what they are made out to be
by their up-bringing, society, history and by the reactions of other
humans to them - is what I subscribe to.
Yet I do believe in the temporary inferiority, malevolence and
impurity of groups of people who experienced and were subjected to
prolonged corrupting and pathologizing influences. Historical
processes exact an exorbitant toll. Ideologies, indoctrination,
totalitarianism, authoritarianism, command economies, statism,
militarism, malignant nationalism, occupation - all carry a hefty
price tag. And the currency is the mind of the people: their mental
health, their socialization processes and, ultimately, the social
fabric. Beneath a thin veneer of kultur - the masses were savaged,
the individual was crushed into a moral pulp. I do believe in mass
pathology: mass hysteria, mass personality disorders, mass
psychoses. I do believe in common depravity, all-pervasive venality
and inescapable subornation of whole societies and of each of the
individuals who comprise them. I do believe in the osmosis of evil,
in the diffusion of villainy, in the corruption of the soul. In
short: I do believe in terminally sick societies, whose prospects of
recovery are nil. The only hope lies in their demise. Not in the
abstract sense of the word - but in the actual death and
decomposition of each and every individual until the
whole "generation of the desert" is done with and a new, less
contaminated one, emerges to take its place.
This is why I believe that the future of Africa, the Middle East and
the countries of the CEE and NIS (New Independent tates of the
former USSR) is, for the time being, behind them. Their horizon is
dim and empty. They are looking forward to the past. They are the
zombies of the international arena, the walking dead and it is death
that they multiply. Their growth is stunted, their speech is
stifled, their leaders a vicious lot, the states that they inhabit
are dens of barbarous criminality and lawlessness. Their
institutions are a travesty, their parties nests of avarice and
vile. Their media prostituted and defiled. The farce of elections
and the newspeak of democracy and human rights and freemarketry are
props to hide the vast wilderness of moral bankruptcy. These are
Potemkin states run by Chicago mobs. Instruments of extortion and
coercion no different to their predecessors - only they provide less
security, both physical and economic. They know no different. They
think no different. They swear by their malaise and by their malaise
they shall die.
And die they shall. The signs are auspicious. Biology, the West and
international financial institutions all conspire to retire the
beast. New blood, new ideas, new hopes and aspirations are in
evidence. Still overwhelmed by the abrupt and cruel exposure of
their elders, still taken aback by the enormity of the project of
rehabilitating the very psyche of their people, still torn between
illegal self enrichment and service to their fellow citizens - but
there they are, the young ones. The battle is on. The consensus of
the baksheesh and the political assassination is replaced, ever so
gradually, by the dissension of the market place. Wars are fought
with spreadsheets, experience imported from afar, new knowledge
craved, corruption decried. It is a refreshing, gargantuan, change.
And it will consume yet one more generation. But it has started and
it is irreversible. And it is in the eyes of the youth, a flickering
flame, so ephemeral, so vulnerable and yet, so irresistible. This
flame is called the future.
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AUTHOR BIO (must be included with the article)
Sam Vaknin ( http://samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant
Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West
Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Global Politician,
Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a
United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and
the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in
The Open Directory and Suite101.
Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government
of Macedonia.
Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com