Tribal tendencies
A hundred years will pass before the first Pole will consider: "Here in Sicily, there was an earthquake," and will thus grieve. Poland possesses an awareness which is essentially tribal in nature. We have this ingrained habit of sharply distinguishing our identity and interests from those of people who surround us. The absence of national sovereignty for almost 300 years (allowing for the short interval of the Second Republic) exerted a major influence on this tribal insecurity. Our contemporary political elites now deceive society and, in turn, society deceives itself that by voting to join the European Union there will be no limits imposed on the sovereignty of Poland. Our politicians do not mention the reality that if, in future, the EU will take upon itself the vestments of a federal continental state, the sovereignty of individual countries must surely vanish.
The majority of Poles are pro-EU accession because they treat it like an access certificate to a club of wealthy and happy countries ready to share their possessions with us. But in truth, the average citizen does not want to liberate himself from his restrictive provincial state corset, as well as from our tribal mentality, in order to adopt the European continent as its motherland. Of course, we demonstrate a clear basis to our demands: to siphon off money, advance technology, enjoy the benefits of better laws and common organisation and to take advantage of the opening of the overall continental space for our manufacturers and labour migration. And yet, to take profits from these desirable things, and remain both a national fortress and impenetrable nation. The fear of the potential dissolution of unique Polish separateness in the wider Europe is admitted and exploited by extreme nationalists - those perpetual antagonists of admission to the EU. But, on the other side of the coin, our arrant Euroenthusiasts elbow aside all discussion about the dilution of sovereignty, the mixing of nations and the weakening of the basic concept of the nation-state.
There is no school of ideas in Poland which suggests that the nation-state as a dominant organisation of people is already an anachronism, and which might courageously proclaim the advantages of a federalised Europe. True Europeans would lose every election and would be ostracised as cosmopolitans disloyal to our tribal obsessions.
Our future European "landlords" are not themselves entirely free from striking nationalistic postures which are uncannily similar to some adopted by our own political inspirationists. It means, frankly, that so-called bilateral negotiations are pursued on the basis of untruths. The government induces us to regard the EU as a huge bucket which contains nothing but wonderful presents. Not even the shadow of pan-European thought about overcoming national superstitions, egoisms and chauvinistic emotions, which in the 20th century led to wars, persecutions and crimes, is allowed to intrude. The pan-European political concepts, legal ethics, the standard western liberal European lifestyle and standards of civilisation which Poles must eventually adopt are regarded by the authorities set over us as costs which have to be carried, and not as goals equally as profitable and valuable incentives as, say, EU vitamin supplements to our agriculture and environment protection policies.
Western European citizens recognise that Poland will in all circumstances join the EU thoroughly unprepared to adapt to their prevailing level and expectations of life values, labour efficiency, the general organisation of political and democratic society, down to the basic standards of enforcing the myriad of technical and law standards. However, those difficulties display what I might describe as a "temporary and secondary character." The main difficulty which I most identify is that we present ourselves as a client and not as a participant within a genuinely united Europe.
Western Europe was assembled slowly and occasionally rather painfully over an extended span. Within the supposedly international communistic politics, military and economic union in which Poland was perforce enclosed at that co-incidental time, the composite nations in reality lived and existed quite separately from one another. All of them, apart from, of course, the central empirical power, sought any chance it was given to distinguish its own life from that of the centre. Poles developed their own distinctive attitudes of demonstrating and maintaining their patriotism against that centralised union. The bigger the distinction, the better. We may be following the same course again, but for quite different reasons, and this time with uncertain objectives.
The majority of Poles are pro-EU accession because they treat it like an access certificate to a club of wealthy and happy countries ready to share their possessions with us. But in truth, the average citizen does not want to liberate himself from his restrictive provincial state corset, as well as from our tribal mentality, in order to adopt the European continent as its motherland. Of course, we demonstrate a clear basis to our demands: to siphon off money, advance technology, enjoy the benefits of better laws and common organisation and to take advantage of the opening of the overall continental space for our manufacturers and labour migration. And yet, to take profits from these desirable things, and remain both a national fortress and impenetrable nation. The fear of the potential dissolution of unique Polish separateness in the wider Europe is admitted and exploited by extreme nationalists - those perpetual antagonists of admission to the EU. But, on the other side of the coin, our arrant Euroenthusiasts elbow aside all discussion about the dilution of sovereignty, the mixing of nations and the weakening of the basic concept of the nation-state.
There is no school of ideas in Poland which suggests that the nation-state as a dominant organisation of people is already an anachronism, and which might courageously proclaim the advantages of a federalised Europe. True Europeans would lose every election and would be ostracised as cosmopolitans disloyal to our tribal obsessions.
Our future European "landlords" are not themselves entirely free from striking nationalistic postures which are uncannily similar to some adopted by our own political inspirationists. It means, frankly, that so-called bilateral negotiations are pursued on the basis of untruths. The government induces us to regard the EU as a huge bucket which contains nothing but wonderful presents. Not even the shadow of pan-European thought about overcoming national superstitions, egoisms and chauvinistic emotions, which in the 20th century led to wars, persecutions and crimes, is allowed to intrude. The pan-European political concepts, legal ethics, the standard western liberal European lifestyle and standards of civilisation which Poles must eventually adopt are regarded by the authorities set over us as costs which have to be carried, and not as goals equally as profitable and valuable incentives as, say, EU vitamin supplements to our agriculture and environment protection policies.
Western European citizens recognise that Poland will in all circumstances join the EU thoroughly unprepared to adapt to their prevailing level and expectations of life values, labour efficiency, the general organisation of political and democratic society, down to the basic standards of enforcing the myriad of technical and law standards. However, those difficulties display what I might describe as a "temporary and secondary character." The main difficulty which I most identify is that we present ourselves as a client and not as a participant within a genuinely united Europe.
Western Europe was assembled slowly and occasionally rather painfully over an extended span. Within the supposedly international communistic politics, military and economic union in which Poland was perforce enclosed at that co-incidental time, the composite nations in reality lived and existed quite separately from one another. All of them, apart from, of course, the central empirical power, sought any chance it was given to distinguish its own life from that of the centre. Poles developed their own distinctive attitudes of demonstrating and maintaining their patriotism against that centralised union. The bigger the distinction, the better. We may be following the same course again, but for quite different reasons, and this time with uncertain objectives.
