Message-ID: <ADO02MtWsK@mb.sorostm.ro> Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 18:51:04 +0400 From: Florin Jurcovici <mailto:fljurcovici@MB.SOROSTM.RO> Subject: Re: Summary of some boring ideas - reply to reply To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
cherbert wrote: > Maybe one ray of hope is what I saw in Uganda in East Africa this
> summer. There the people went through revolution after revolution,
> vicious or useless dictators in succession destroying the country and
> the people, til even all the 10 year olds were armed and in somebody's
> army.
You see, I don't want to make things in Eastern Europe look worse than they are, but I have to explain something. I am convinced that the things that happened in Uganda are bad for the moral health of the people, but in Eastern Europe it was different. Not only that powerty and bad leadership caused unnecesarry suffering, but everything was done very systematically. While this systematic doing was (intentionally) no good in economy and politics, in morality it was highly efficient - - this means, in destroying morality. A part of Romania was governed some hundred years ago by a duke very eager on thieves. In his time, you could let your purse in the middle of the street and come and pick it up after a week, nobody would have touched it. Some fewer hundreds of years after, you could still be sure that you would never be cheated by some state emplyees, regarding no matter what. This is what was distroyed by the comunist leadership. Everywhere in this world school, among other functions, has to teach respect to authorities. Comunist school, however, teached irresponsible respect for authority. If a policeman beats somebody in the street in USA, he probably will go to jail. In Eastern Europe, however, he gets only a light punishment. Besides, legal systems are underdeveloped in eastern countries. Those are differences that scare away most of western people.> They have had 10 years of peace now, and the slogan for their elections
> was Peace, Unity, Democracy. Every where I went, the people always
> talked about not having any more wars, how they never want to return to
> war. They have a very clear understanding of the damage of war to
> people, economies and environments, and this has made many of them
> staunch defenders of peace and unity.
Some studies on psychology (performed in USA) found out that if you impose a slight presure on people, they will not even notice it as something unusual. But if you really harm them, they will take measures against the source of this pressure. During the comunist times, the governing people new this very well, so they really did a perfect job: damaging of moral structure of individuals was done gradually, but very consequent. This is a major difference to Uganda. Since in Uganda there are people which have the courrage to say their opinions, in Eastern Europe there are people used to let just everything roll over them without doing anything.> Perhaps ultimately Eastern Europe will similarly become the staunchest
> defenders of participative democracy and individual responsibility.
I think this will happen, but not very soon. There are some generations to pass. Best regards,-- Jurcovici Florin mailto:fljurcovici@mb.sorostm.ro