Andrei Cornea, Dilema: The Daydream from the Night

People like to believe in myths – whether they are political or not. It’s like having a beautiful daydream or being wide awake. It’s refreshing, a source of hope in troubled times. It compensates for the fear they feel, the worries that weigh them down, the contempt with which they are treated by others, stronger, the resentments they have accumulated recently; moreover, it brings them together: each myth reinvents a community. That’s why, even for the most skeptical, the sharpest, the most subtle among them, it is sometimes hard to oppose the daydream. Or, more precisely, at first they send anchors into reality that they believe to be solid: they believe and do not believe; they believe just a little, maybe a quarter: "I know it’s not possible, but still, maybe just a tiny bit...". Then, gradually, the percentage increases to half, then to three-quarters; the anchors break one after another; oh, how pleasant is the feeling of liberation, like when a vessel prepares to take off into the wide and bright sea, freed from everything that kept it moored to the dark shore! And so, a person begins to forget that they were only dreaming or, let’s say, that they only had a working hypothesis.

Now the apostle enters the scene: there are accusations against those who still do not believe, reproaches that their disbelief is out of place, that it could lead to failure. (I heard this argument long ago, during the time of Caritas: those who did not invest and spoke against the "scheme" were accused that, due to their fault, the game could collapse. Of course, regardless of the skeptics, the game had to collapse sooner or later.) They invent arguments based on analogy and historical models. How could they not? Reason is capable of inventing anything to support utopia: it tells you, for example, that humanity could not advance without myths, it shows you that dreams and utopia have mobilized history. Naturally – we would say – that they have often mobilized it, but that does not make them more true: it’s like when someone would argue that we must believe in astrology because great people have believed in it over time. But some utopias have come true! – we are reminded. Of course, Columbus crossed the Ocean, but not because he was daydreaming about India, but because he was a good navigator, had good ships, a prepared crew, and so on. And the sails were not rotten.

Now it’s the moralist’s turn: he invokes his own example to convince us that we are obliged to vote for the "green goats" or "with our eyes closed" in the name of the values that the character at the center of his interest embodies. Of course, these are metaphors for the advice not to take into account or to "put aside" the consequences, adhering to a pure and bright ethics of conviction. But isn’t politics, after all, the preferred place for calculating consequences? Isn’t it, by definition, the sublunary realm, where the clear outlines of great moral principles must admit semitones and penumbra?

In the end, it won’t be long before the inversion occurs: expelling the critical eye from within, the believer considers himself an authentic realist, while sending the realism of the critic into quotation marks: this, so to speak, is no longer just "realistic". The vessel – behold – has set sail. At least does it have a crew?

Unfortunately, no. Because, in such cases, the simple believer is not the main problem, but the central character. He tends to become infected with his own mythology, especially since around him there are enough who, for various reasons (some unclean), confirm it, and the faithful people amplify it. He is told that things are going unexpectedly well, that his chances of crossing the Ocean are skyrocketing. He is provided with arguments – incomplete, however. If he still has doubts, he is immediately assured that the inconvenient information is produced by the enemies of the faith, that the critical evaluations are harmful. Gradually, he comes to believe only in good news. Worse: the absurdity of some information presented to him as real from multiple sources no longer surprises him. The damage is done, the intoxication has reached its peak, the critical eye has died. In the past, around any Messiah, there would be a false prophet. Now, the sycophants are called analysts and sociologists. But replacing ecstatic visions with numbers does not change the folly of dreamers.

...The vessel is now in the open sea; but soon it drifts, takes on water, and sinks – which was to be expected in the perspective of the proposed utopia. But who is to blame? Ah, not the lack of good sailors, the crooked keel, false prophets, or lack of supplies! No, the blame lies with the "realist"! He discouraged the crew. He prevented more dreamers from boarding. He interrupted the daydream of the believers. He faltered. Instead of believing, he measured latitude and longitude...

And, to be fair, the believer still naively says from the daydream, the shipwreck was not even a complete shipwreck, but an authentic "moral victory"!

Indeed, with so many daydreamers, night has come in the meantime...

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