Andrei Pleșu, Dilemma: What Separates Us from Normality

I repeat. As well as the local situation. Sorry!

“Normality” seems to be a concept within reach. Its understanding is, for everyone, implicit. We all believe we know what is “normal” and what is not, what is “natural” humanly and socially and what is deviant, alongside the road, possibly scandalous. But, precisely because we think we know, we no longer reflect enough on the normality of the “normal.” It no longer troubles us, it no longer irritates us the daily absurdity, the suspension of elementary rules, the dizzying atmosphere in which we breathe spasmodically. In fact, we have even come to take the “situation” as “normal.” That’s the situation! That’s life! Let’s not be idealistic! Let’s think positively, even if we live in darkness and unhealthiness.

I don’t intend to build, in a newspaper article, a complex theory of normality. That wouldn’t be normal. But I can at least try to signal a few symptoms (evident, in my opinion) of disorder, extracted from daily experience.

1) The inflation of politics. In a civilized, democratic, well-ordered country, in short “normal,” politics does not noisily invade the public interest. It is not, day by day, on the screen. After elections, a responsible government enters into the “routine” of efficiency, while the Opposition – in the routine of critical oversight. But the ordinary citizen goes about their business. Of course, they do not become blind and deaf to what happens “at the top,” but the emphasis of their current interest falls on profession, career, family, leisure, friends. They do not constantly keep an eye on such and such minister, on such and such parliamentarian, on the party squabbles on the public stage and in the media. Because there is no need! Because “normal” politicians do their job in their field, competently, without fuss, the mechanism of good governance, of good material and community arrangements of the country. The fact that we live, effervescently, the events in the power arena is proof that we have lost the sense of truly important things, that we no longer focus on our own issues, on our own destiny, but on the external nonsense of the leading “celebrities.” The “normal” citizen is not a “zoon politikon,” except at moments of civil crossroads: elections, referendums, protests linked to the possible jeopardy of the general interest. Otherwise, they have other concerns. That’s why they have delegated the decision to the “elected ones”: so they can take care of their own! When, however, the “elected ones” do not take care of their own properly, then citizens find themselves sabotaged in their natural mobilization towards self-fulfillment and live confiscated by the dysfunction of the “system.” Politics becomes the axis of our biographies, instead of working discreetly and efficiently to provide the optimal context for our existential journey.

2) Politics is too present not only because it prefers to function on the stadium of public squabbles, instead of remaining in the workshop of administration. It is too present also due to the poor quality of its representatives. The selection of the cadres who reach the top of the pyramid has become pathetic. They speak in a weedy, distorted, and incorrect manner. The competition of ideas has long been replaced by a boorish, pub-like manner, plebeian content – in short, vulgarity. It is clear that we are dealing with “ladies” and “gentlemen” of the third hand, uneducated, poorly raised, disgraceful. They wouldn’t be in their place even in more modest, marginal, anonymous functions, let alone at the head of affairs. “Patriots” of the occasion, who shame the country and its decent inhabitants. Champions of pompous mediocrity. They do not know how to be servants, but always, bosses. Not to mention technical incompetence, empty CVs, shady businesses, gang alliances, shameless ambition, arrivism. Their main success is to have slipped into the spotlight, without leaving a trace of real personality. Real personality attracts effortlessly, stirs and absorbs public interest through verifiable professional achievements and spontaneously coagulates community spirit, allowing it to prevail over their own vanities. False personality only serves to pour egolatry over others, to suffocate, to intoxicate the environment, in its unrelenting race towards the counterfeit affirmation of its own self and its petty interests.

3) A nefarious role in the overabundance of political “entertainment” is inevitably played by the press. It decides, in an interested manner (and, up to a point, justifiable, since it lives off ratings), the hierarchy of the “news” that must be put on the market to manipulate and deform the psyche of readers. Not information and calm commentary, not productive debate, not intelligent analysis seem to dominate the current journalistic “strategies” (with some exceptions). But scandal, partisanship, the ridiculous sold as “breaking.” In newspapers and in television studios, the same “specialists” have been installed for decades, regimented and therefore predictable, or passionate about their own “craft.” In any case, you pretty much know in advance what they will say, in what histrionic space they will move. Some always say the same thing, others always say the opposite of what everyone else says, just to show that they are ingenious and independent. Otherwise, a plethora of fake news, sadomasochistic: deaths, agonies, crimes, trials, kidnappings, adulteries, gossip, thefts, weather disasters, prophetic witches, parapsychologists hooked to cosmic energies, etc. Rich material for the local gossip, so they have something to chatter about over a coffee or a drink.

It may be time to deepen things, to seek more subtle and diverse sources of our unending crises of normality. That wouldn’t be bad. But also to smooth out the cracks mentioned above would still be something! Or to ask ourselves from time to time how we circumvent, consciously or not, the benchmarks of common sense, of decency, of good taste. That would be a start…

https://www.dilema.ro/situatiunea/ce-ne-desparte-de-normalitate