BE YOURSELF!

Dedicated to my family and friends❤️

When the best in the world come together to defeat a common enemy, that’s when it’s necessary to bury the war axe in the ground and support each other. If, on the other hand, young people ask me who I am and why I do what I do successfully, I answer them like this.

BE YOURSELF!

„For me, morality is indispensable in literature. Without morality there is no literature. Morality is like the sex appeal of a writer.” ~ Witold Gombrowicz

„This is no ordinary love, no ordinary love.” ~ Sade

„So we want peace. But that does not mean that we want peace at any cost. Ladies and gentlemen, it was not and is not my intention to devote this lecture to the problem of nuclear weapons. There is a great deal of talk about this issue in England; and although Bertrand Russell is adored and loved, he has almost completely failed to start a real discourse on these issues. My students, for example, invited him to give a lecture on the subject, and they received him with an ovation.(…) then the subject fell.” ~ Karl Rajmund Popper

As a result of years of research on urban creativity, Richard Florida found that the factor that enhances and accelerates the economic, scientific and cultural development of a community is tolerance in the broadest sense, that is respect for people regardless of their sexual preferences, gender, views or colour of skin. What drives creative people away from certain places is moral conservatism. Conservatism that is lined with cowardice, irrational fear, that cultivates parochial ancestral traditions.

As is well known, traditionalists are extremely averse to the independently thinking and differently loving. They mummify and cultivate an aggressive ideology based on harsh restrictions against people who in some way deviate from their recognized pattern. It is not only arrogance that speaks through them, but also a lack of feeling for human dignity.

Unconventional, creative people who bring meaningful innovations to society avoid conservatives and places where moral conservatism is an established attitude of the community.

As Isaac Newton noted, if he had walked the beaten paths of his ancestors, he would never have made so many astounding discoveries in physics. He was succored by Bertrand Russell, who was absolutely aware that exuberant scientific and artistic creativity is possible only if society allows creative individuals to express their abilities unhindered. Unification of social life harms creativity. In the book entitled „Authority and the Individual”, which is a compilation of his lectures to BBC radio, he said:

„We know too much, feel too little, or at least experience too little of the creative emotions that constitute a successful life. In matters of real importance we are passive, we become active in the realm of trivial matters. If life is to be saved from boredom, in which the only variety is sometimes misery, it is essential to find ways to revive individual initiative, not only in the realm of trivialities, but also in matters of real importance. I do not mean to say that we should destroy those aspects of the modern organization of society on which the existence of large populations depends. What I mean is that organization should be more flexible, more tempered by local autonomy and less crushing to the human spirit by its impersonal enormity.”

Bertrand Russell was absolutely right when he said that one of the fundamental duties of a liberal democracy should be to guarantee people freedom of intellectual and artistic expression.

As is well known, the basis of liberalism is individualism, and its opposite is conservatism and the associated collective organization of society. It is worth answering the question: what is to beware of, and what is worth preserving?

The ability to cooperate in a herd is one of the more sophisticated inventions of evolution, which enables animals to survive in a dangerous and soulless environment (explaining how collective behavior evolved in animals became possible through the application of game theory in evolutionary psychology)[1]. Natural selection favors individuals that are best adapted to the environment, and condemns to oblivion organic forms that lack the right adaptive characteristics. From the point of view of evolutionary theory, the development of adaptive traits that enable a species to survive is a value of the highest priority. One of the ways to survive and pass on the genotype, is the ability to cooperate, therefore to collaborate between individuals of a species.

The organization of tasks in a bee hive is one of the many examples of specialized cooperation in the animal kingdom. The division of duties in the family or the organization of work in large manufacturing plants and educational institutions – this is not the exception, but the rule in the human world.

According to Karl R. Popper, author of „The Open Society and Its Enemies”, collective feelings are fundamental emotions related to the need to belong to a community, which cannot be completely abandoned. It is difficult to imagine that people can develop properly to the exclusion of family, friends and social ties. The real problem begins when these feelings are put into the service of dangerous ideologies, the side effect of which is the devaluation of the persons and the negation of the value of individualism.

Collectivist theories assume that society is a whole organized like an anthill, which interests are more important than those of individuals. This is the basis of the doctrine that proclaims the omnipotence of the state and the nothingness of individuals. To see how dangerous this ideology is, one only needs to recall communism, which is not yet completely dead in the world.

Totalitarianism is a degenerate form of organization of society, in which unification, enslavement and mindlessness imposed by force – on the principle that „innovation comes only from the state” – leads to collective apathy and intellectual stagnation. The goal of liberalism is to establish the relationship between the state and the individuals in such a way that allows not only a decent and safe, but also a creative life. The means to this end is to limit the role of state officials in economic and moral matters.

My belief in the creative potential of the individuals is the basis for the successful development of society. One of the precursors of liberalism, the excellent economist and psychologist Adam Smith noted that a man who focuses on the realization of his own goals will improve society more than a man who dedicates his activities to the abstract idea of the common good. Progress, innovation, great visions are shared by individuals whose wings have not been clipped by the state in advance. It’s a cliché that needs to be brought up again and again, but perhaps the art of life lies in not forgetting what is important.

Being yourself means challenging human abilities, and having the courage to pursue your own dreams is a value of significant importance. Many people you encounter in life will claim that conformity is the best path to take. They will tell you that it is worthwhile to be a flag-waver who succumbs to the power of political forces, propaganda and the prejudices of the crowd.

My advice: don’t be deceived, be yourself in spite of history, sick tradition and herd instincts. Let the blind lead the blind – you remain yourself and don’t be afraid of novelty, don’t be frightened by hearing words like progress, knowledge and tolerance.

For centuries, conservatives have equated individualism with selfishness, exemplum: Plato’s dialogues. They have told people that only obedient and subservient to the interests of the ruling caste sheep are capable of altruism and showing mercy. This is a lie that has resulted and continues to result in the banishment of all individualists.

It is worth saying in the end that putting one’s interests above those of the state is alluring, good and rational. For it is precisely the man who is aware of his desires and has the courage to pursue them that deserves to be called a real man. Not a blowhard, not a conformist, not an indifferent and miserable fool, but to be called a man par exellence!

I know hundreds of spiders and apologists for tradition who nurture in you a helpless and obedient child. They do this only to manipulate you more easily, to throw you into mediocrity and the endless boredom of being a dullard, a brainless bastard or an externally controlled baby child.

One writer who managed to brilliantly and profoundly describe this phenomenon was Witold Gombrowicz, hated by the Polish conservatives.

This perceptive intellectual knew perfectly well that a culture based on universal „upupienie”[2] would knock the nation into the boundless abyss of stupidity and servility.

„Wake up the child inside you” – isn’t this the slogan of conservative groups? „Yes son, I will show the way” – this is the mantra of the American conservatives. So once again, against parochial tradition and conservative politicos: Be yourself! Because does anything else make any sense in life?

[1] Matt Ridley, The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation. 

[2] From the novel „Ferdydurke” come the famous Witold Gombrowicz terms that have entered the Polish language permanently, such as „upupienie” (referring to the imposition on an individual of the role of someone inferior, immature) or „gęba” (an inauthentic personality or role imposed on someone). The title „Ferdydurke,” translated as „the key to the thirty doors” , would speak of the novel as a certain key, a way to enable unhindered and authentic development of the individuals.

The End.