The Pete Quiñones Show - Václav Havel's 'The Power of the Powerless' - Complete

Episode Date: September 24, 2026

5 Hours and 58 MinutesPG-13This is Pete's complete reading of Václav Havel's dissident essay, "The Power of the Powerless."The Power of the PowerlessPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete's SubscribestarPete's PaypalPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

Good evening, everyone. I'm back by myself. And I was going to record with George Bagby, but George Bagby was having some serious internet issues. I recorded twice today, and the issues we had, Thomas and I basically recorded something that was unusable. And then Mr. Bagby couldn't even connect. So as I'm, I'm going to be. I'm going to be busy over the next 24 hours. I don't really think I'm going to have a chance to talk to anybody about anything. So there is a document that I've wanted to read for a while. I mentioned it on Pony Express Radio the other night, live stream, the OGC live stream.

And it's something that I haven't read in about six years. I read it during COVID, and I wanted to revisit it. So I'm going to start reading it. This will be the episode for Sunday. night. I'll try to get it done over the next couple weeks, or I might throw it on, um, throw it on sub stacker for a while. Yeah, I'll, I'll read it in public. Um, but, you know, the question is raised all the time. If nothing is going to be changed, what do you do? How do you live? Do you give up hope? Do you, you know, if,

if the system can't be changed, how do you live? And this was recommended to me years ago, and I read it back then, and I'm going to read it now, and we'll just go through it and see what we can get out of it together, because honestly, the time I read it was, COVID was a very hectic time, and I think I'm going to get more out of it this second time. so it will almost be like me reading it again.

So let's go through it together and see what we can get out of this because it has been recommended for years. This was written by Baclav Havel in 1978. So give you a brief, some of you may recognize the name, but just give you a, you know, I'll share this, share this tab with you just went to go to Wikipedia um born in 36 died in 2011 Czech statesman author poet playwright and dissident I've all served as the last president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until 1992 prior to the dissolution of Czechoslovakia on

December 31st before he became the first president of the Czech Republic from 93 to 2003 He was the first democratically elected president of either country after the fall of communism. As a writer of Czech literature, is known for his plays, essays, and memoirs. His educational opportunities have been limited by his bourgeois background under the Czech Socialist Republic. First rose to prominence as a playwright. So, okay, but, blah, ba, havel used an absurdist in works such as a work such as a playwright. is the Garden Party and the memorandum. I will use an absurdist style to criticize the communist system after participating in the Prague

Spring and being blacklisted after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. He became more politically active and helped found several dissident initiatives, including Chapter 77, and the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly persecuted. His political activities brought him under the surveillance of the STB secret police, spent several periods as a political prisoner, the longest of his imprisoned terms. being nearly four years between 79 and 83. Haville Civic Forum Party played a major role in the Velvet Revolution that toppled the communist system in Czechoslovakia in 1989,

assumed presidency shortly thereafter was re-elected in a landslide. So, yeah, a dissident during communism. Let's see what he has to say about being powerless and what power the powerless have. Starting, section one. A specter is haunting eastern Europe. The specter of what in the West is called descent. This specter has not appeared out of thin air.

It is a natural and inevitable consequence of the present historical phase of the system it is haunting. It was born at a time when this system, for a thousand reasons, can no longer base itself on the unadulterated, brutal and arbitrary application of power, eliminating all expressions of nonconformity. What is more, the system has become so ossified politically that there is practically no way for such nonconformity to be implemented within its official structures. What's he saying? It can't be fixed from inside. Who are these so-called dissidents? Where does their point of view come from and what? What importance does it have? What is the significance of the independent initiatives in which dissidents collaborate and what real chances do such initiatives have of success? Is it appropriate to

refer to dissidents as an opposition? If so, what exactly is such an opposition within the framework of this system? What does it do? What role does it play in society? What are its hopes and on what are they based? Is it within the power of the dissidents as a category of sub-citizen outside the power establishment to have any influence at all on society and the social system, can they actually change anything? I think that an examination of these questions, questions, an examination of the potential of the powerless can only begin with an examination of the nature of power in the circumstances in which these powerless people operate. Two. Our system is most frequently characterizes a dictatorship, or, more precisely, as the dictatorship of a political bureaucracy

over a society which has undergone economic and social leveling. I'm afraid that the term dictatorship, regardless of how intelligible it may otherwise be, tends to obscure rather than clarify the real nature of power in this system. We usually associate the term with the notion of a small group of people who take over the government of a given country by force. Their power is wielded openly, using the direct instruments of power at their disposal, and they're easily distinguished socially from the majority over whom they rule. One of the essential aspects of this traditional or classical notion of dictatorship is the assumption that it is temporary, ephemeral, lacking historical roots. Its existence seems to be bound up with the lives of those who

established it. It is usually local and extent and significance, and regardless of the ideology, it utilizes to grant itself legitimacy, its power derives ultimately from the numbers and armed might of its soldiers and police. The principal threat to its existence is felt to be the possibility that someone better equipped in this sense might appear and overthrow it. Even this very superficial overview should make it clear that the system in which we live has very little in common with a classical dictatorship. In the first place, our system is not limited in a local geographical sense. Rather, it holds sway over a huge power block controlled by one of the two superpowers. And although it quite naturally exhibits a number of local and historical variations,

the range of these variations is fundamentally circumscribed by a single unifying framework throughout the power block. Not only is a dictatorship everywhere based on the same principles and structured in the same way, that is, in the way evolved by the ruling superpower, but each country has been completely penetrated by a network of manipulatory instruments controlled by the superpower center and totally subordinate to its interests. Think of our states. In the stalemated world of nuclear parity, of course, this circumstance endows the system with an unprecedented degree of external stability compared with classical dictatorships. Many local crises, which in an isolated state would lead to a change in the system,

can be resolved through direct intervention by the armed forces of the rest of the block. In the second place, if a feature of classical dictatorships is their lack of historical roots. Frequently, they appear to be no more than historical freaks to fortuitous consequences of fortuitous social processes or of human and mob tendencies. the same cannot be said so facially about our system. For even though our dictatorship has long since alienated itself completely from the social movements that gave birth to it, the authenticity of these movements, and I'm thinking of the proletarian and socialist movements of the 19th century, give it undeniable historicity. These origins provided a solid foundation of sorts on which it could build until it became

the utterly new social and political reality it is, today, which has become so inextricably a part of the structure of the modern world. Think of managerialism. Remember, when it came to managerialism, Burnham said there was little difference between what the Soviet Union, what Hitler's Germany, and what the United States was doing. Managerial Revolution. Good book.

He makes some predictions and they don't come true, but still, since he wrote it in 1940, it's kind of hard to read without thinking, was this written yesterday? A feature of those historical origins was the correct understanding of social conflicts in the period from which those original movements emerged. The fact that at the very core of this correct misunderstanding, there was a genetic disposition toward the monstrous alienation characteristic of its subsequent to, of its subsequent development is not essential here. And in any case, this element also grew organically from the climate at that time, and therefore can be said to have its origin there as well. Very true.

I mean, people fall into the fallacy of presentism when they think about the term socialism, but at the time he's talking about basically everything was being referred to as socialism, and pretty much socialism was in vote. One legacy of that original correct understanding is a third peculiarity that makes our systems different from other modern dictatorships. It commands an incomparable, more precise, logically structured, generally comprehensible,

and, in essence, extremely flexible ideology that in its elaborateness and completeness is almost a secularized religion. it fears a ready answer to any question whatsoever. It can scarcely be accepted only in part, and accepting it has profound implications for human life. In an era when metaphysical and existential certainties are in a state of crisis, when people are being uprooted and alienated and are losing their sense of what this world means, this ideology inevitably has a certain hypnotic charm. To wandering humankind, it offers an immediately available home.

All one has to do is accept it. And suddenly everything becomes clear once more. Life takes on new meaning and all mysteries, unanswered questions, anxiety, and loneliness vanish. Of course, one pays dearly for this low-rent home. The price is abdication of one's own reason, conscience, and responsibility for an essential aspect of this ideology is the consignment of reason and conscience to a higher authority. This works in populism too. The principle involved here is that the center of power is identical with the center of truth.

In our case, the connection with Byzantine theocracy is direct. The highest secular authority is identical with the highest spiritual authority. It is true, of course, that, all this aside, ideology no longer has any great influence on people, at least within our block, with the possible exception of Russia where the surf mentality, with its blind, fatalistic respect for rulers and its automatic acceptance of all their claims is still dominant and combined with the superpower patriotism, which traditionally places the interests of empire higher than the interests of humanity. But this is not important because ideology plays its role in our system very well, an issue to which

I will return, precisely because it is what it is. People don't understand how Russia's victory in World War II, how hypnotic that was to the people. They still talk about the Great War of Independence. Fourth, the technique of exercising power in traditional dictatorships contains a necessary element of improvisation. The mechanisms for wielding power are for the most part not established firmly, and there is considerable room for accident and for the arbitrary and unregulated application of power. Socially, psychologically, and physically, conditions still exist for the expression of some form of opposition. In short, there are many seams on the surface which can split apart before the entire power structure has managed to stabilize. Our system,

on the other hand, has been developed in the Soviet Union for over 60 years and for approximately 30 years in Eastern Europe. Moreover, several of its long-established structural features are derived from Tsarist absolutism. In terms of the physical aspects of power, this has led to the creation of such intricate and well-developed mechanisms for the direct and indirect manipulation of the entire population that, as a physical power base, it represents something radically new. At the same time, let us not forget that the system is made significantly more effective by a state ownership and central direction of all the means of production. This gives the power structure an unprecedented and uncontrollable capacity to invest itself

in the areas of the bureaucracy and the police, for example, and makes it easier for that structure as a sole employer to manipulate the day-to-day existence of all citizens. How would that relate to us? How many people in this country are getting some form of aid? from the government, or living off of it completely. Sully. Finally, if an atmosphere of revolutionary excitement, heroism, dedication, and boisterous violence on all sides characterizes classical dictatorships,

then the last traces of such an atmosphere have vanished from the Soviet bloc. For some time now, this block has ceased to be a kind of enclave, isolated from the rest of the developed world, and immune to processes occurring in it. To the contrary, the Soviet bloc is an integral part of that large, your world and its shares and shapes the world's destiny. This means, in concrete terms, that the hierarchy of values existing in the developed countries of the West has, in essence, appeared in our society. The long period of coexistence with the West has only hastened this process. In other

words, what we have here is simply another form of the consumer and industrial society, with all its concomitant, social, intellectual, and psychological consequences. It is impossible to understand the nature of power in our system properly without taking this into account. Again, they could, as much as the Soviet bloc wanted to be communist, I think Dr. Johnson has talked a lot about this where it was like they relied upon the West to build factories and plants for them and teach them how to build things. That's before the war. Take a sip.

The profound difference between our system in terms of the nature of power and what we traditionally understand by dictatorship, a difference I hope is clear even from this quite superficial comparison. It's caused me to search for some term appropriate for our system purely for the purposes of this essay. If I refer to it henceforth as a post-totalitarian system, I am fully aware that this is perhaps, not the most precise term, but I am unable to think of a better one. I do not wish to imply by the prefix post that the system is no longer the totalitarian. On the contrary, I mean that it is totalitarian in a way fundamentally different from classical dictatorships, different from totalitarianism, as we usually understand it.

The circumstances I have mentioned, however, form only a circle of conditional factors in a kind of phenomenal framework for the actual composition of power in the post-telitarian system. Several aspects of which I shall now attempt to identify. Basically, you could call our system post-Republic because it's no longer a republic. And let's remember, you know, you will have people who are still boomers especially, but people who still hold to the civic religion who will be like, we're not a democracy, we're a representative republic or we're republic. Yeah, that's a democracy.

It's part of the democratic system. People vote. I'm sure you have an electoral college. Okay. Yeah, that's one office. And I think it's become very clear to us that that one office is not the most powerful. in the country. And we have not been a representative republic since 1913 when a lot of stuff happened in 1913, didn't it?

When senators were no longer appointed by their state's representatives, but they were elected. Your republic went out the window with that. It's one of the ways it went out the window, but that's a clear sign that you no longer have a republic. Three. The manager of a fruit and vegetable shop places in his window among the onions and carrots to sign the slogan, Workers of the world unite. Why does he do it? What is he trying to communicate to the world? Is he genuinely enthusiastic about the idea of unity among the workers of the world? Is his enthusiasm so great that he feels an irrepressible impulse to acquaint the public with his ideals? Has he really given more than a moment's thought to how such

unification might occur and what it would mean? I think it can safely be assumed that the overwhelming majority of shopkeepers never think about the slogans they put in their windows, nor do they use them to express their real opinions. That poster was delivered to our green grocer from the Enterprise headquarters along with the onions and carrots. He put them all into the window simply because it has been done that way for years, because everyone does it, and because that is the way it has to,

to be. Yes, please start applying this to your situation. Our situation. If he were to refuse, there could be trouble. He could be reproached for not having the proper decoration in his window. Someone might even accuse him of disloyalty. He does it because these things must be done if one is to get along in life. It is one of the thousands of details that guarantee him a relatively tranquil life in harmony with society, as they say. Obviously, the green grocers is indifference of the semantic content of the slogan on an exhibit. He does not put the slogan in his window for any personal desire to appoint the public with the ideal it expresses. This, of course, does not mean that his action has no motive or significance at all,

or that the slogan communicates nothing to anyone. The slogan is really a sign, and as such, it contains a subliminal but very definite message. verbally it might be expressed this way. Quote, I, the green grocer, X, Y, live here, and I know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be dependent upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace. End quote.

This message, of course, has an addressee. It is directed above to the green grocer's superiors, and at the same time it is a shield that protects a green grocer from potential informers. The slogans, the slogan's real meaning, therefore, is rooted firmly in the green grocers' existence. It reflects his vital interests, but what are those vital interests? Is it worse for the green grocer to put that slogan up in his window for survival? Or is it worse for somebody to keep repeating slogans, enchanting slogans that they actually that they actually want to and believe in that have no meaning anymore to the situation.

We just need to follow the Constitution, right? Let us take note. If the Green Grocer had been instructed to display the slogan, I am afraid and therefore unquestionably obedient, he would not be nearly as indifferent to its semantics, even though the statement would reflect the truth. the green grocer would be embarrassed and ashamed to put such an unequivocal statement of his own degradation in the shop window and quite naturally so where he is a human being and thus has a sense of his own dignity. How much of that has been lost.

To overcome this complication, I mean, I see so many people who have just completely lost their dignity out of fear or just not understanding. the situation that they're in, not understanding that you can't name the person who's coming to save you. To overcome this complication, his expression of loyalty must take the form of a sign which, at least on its textual surface, indicates a level of disinterested conviction. It must allow the Green Grocer to say, what's wrong with the workers of the world uniting? Thus, the sign helps the Greengrocer to conceal from himself the low foundations of his obedience. At the same time, concealing the low foundations of power, it hides them behind the facade of something high, and that something is ideology. Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers

human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them. That is an amazing I mean, Sam Francis level and James Burnham level right there. Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality, while making it easier for them to part with them. as a repository of something super personal and objective, it enables people to deceive their conscience and conceal their true position and their inglorious modus vivendi, both from the

world and from themselves. It is a very pragmatic, but at the same time, an apparently dignified way of legitimizing what is above, below, and on either side. It is directed toward people and toward God. It is a veil behind which human beings can hide their own fallen existence, their trivialization, and their adaptation to the status quo. It is an excuse that everyone can use from the green grocery who conceals his fear of losing his job behind an alleged interest in the unification of the workers of the world to the highest functionary whose interest in staying in power can be cloaked in phrases about service to the working class. The primary excusatory function of ideology, therefore, is to provide people, both as victims and pillars of the post-Sotelitarian system, with the illusion that the system is in harmony with the human order and the order of the universe. The smaller a dictatorship and the less stratified by modernization the society under it, the more directly the will of the dictator can be exercised.

In other words, the dictator can employ more or less naked discipline, avoiding the complex processes of relating to the world and of self-justification, which I just realized I hadn't switched over to the tab for reading this. So sorry about that. It's the second time I've done that in three or four readings. So sorry. The smaller dictatorship, let me make sure. the smaller dictatorship and the less stratified by modernization the society under it, the more directly the will the dictator can be exercised. In other words, the dictator can employ more or less naked discipline, avoiding the complex processes of relating to the world

and of self-justification which ideology involves. But the more complex the mechanisms of power become, the larger and more stratified the society they embrace, and the longer they have operated operated historically, the more individuals must be connected to them from outside, the greater the importance attached to the ideological excuse. They have to get you to embrace the ideology and ideology while they're not, but they're forced to. It acts as a kind of bridge between the regime and the people, across which the regime approaches the people and the people approach the regime. This explains why ideology plays such an important role in the post-sotelitarian system, that complex machinery of units, hierarchies, transmission belts, and the indirect instruments of

manipulation which ensure in countless ways the integrity of the regime, leaving nothing to chance would be quite simply unthinkable without ideology acting as its all-embracing excuse and as the excuse for each of its parts. 4. Between the aims of the post-satilitarian system and the aims of life, there is a yawning abyss. While life in its essence moves towards plurality, diversity, independent self-constitution, and self-organization, in short, toward the fulfillment of its own freedom, the post-titalitarian system demands conformity, uniformity, and discipline. While life ever strives to create new and improbable structures, the post-totelitarian system contrives to force life into its most probable states.

When you realize what he's saying here, you realize that no matter what the kind of totalitarianism that they were living under, people have this tendency to believe that, you know, oh, this was a totalitarian state. Everyone was living in fear all the time. It's really a myth. I mean, what state can enforce,

all its laws. Now you could get, you know, technology can certainly help with that. But at this time, no. The laws, you even saw it in Germany in the 30s. There were laws that were passed that were just looked over. I mean, they were, I mean, especially when it came to the war. You just can't enforce all of the laws. You know this. We know this. Allegedly we, you know, there was a book written about three felonies a day that basically our system is set up that you commit three felonies a day, but people don't get persecuted for it. But something else I'm reading here is, is that if you look at this totalitarian system, I think what we're going through being overrun with over 100 million illegals and people and mess being inserted, whole cultures being inserted, is probably worse.

Because even if you go to work every day and you have to watch what you say and, you know, in the shadows you can still say stuff, there's nothing the average person can do to stop this invasion. You're not going to vote harder. The aims of the system reveal its most essential characteristic to be introversion, a movement toward being ever more completely and unreservedly itself, which means that the radius of its influence is continually widening as well. This system serves people only to the extent necessary to ensure that people will serve it. Anything beyond this, that is to say, anything which leads people to overstep their predetermined role, is regarded by the system as an attack upon itself,

and in this respect, it is correct. Every instance of such transgression is a genuine denial of the system. At least people did it in their minds. So many people we know or their minds can't get out of the system. It can be said, therefore, that the inner aim of the post-totelitarian system is not mere preservation of power in the hands of a ruling click. as appears to be the case at first sight. Rather, the social phenomenon of self-preservation is subordinated to something higher

to a kind of blind automatism which drives a system. No matter what position individuals hold in the hierarchy of power, they are not considered by the system to be worth anything in themselves, but only as things intended to fuel and serve this automatism. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. For this reason, an individual's desire for power is admissible only insofar as this direction coincides with the direction of the automatism of the system. What, I mean, is he not describing our system? I'm going to get elected, I'm going to get elected senator, and I'm going to go up there, and I'm going to change everything.

Are you? Huh. Yeah. I don't think you are. It's meant to be on automatic pilot. You're just going up there to steer the ship. You're just going up there to keep the ship steering in the same direction. And if you don't do that, you're going to get run out.

Don't try to steer it off course. We'll spend $35 million in an election to get rid of you. That wasn't even what they spent that for, but kind of was. It actually was. ideology and creating a bridge of excuses between the system and the individual spans the abyss between the aims of the system and the aims of life. It pretends that the requirements of the system derive from the requirements of life. It is a world of appearances trying to pass for reality. The post-Sotelitarian system touches people at every step, but it does so with its ideological

gloves on. That is why life in the system is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies. government by bureaucracy is called popular government. The working class is enslaved in the name of the working class. The complete degradation of the individual is presented as his ultimate liberation. Depriving people of information is called making it available. The use of power to manipulate is called the public control of power. And the arbitrary abuse of power is called observing the legal code. The repression of culture is called its development. The expansion of imperial information. The expansion of imperial influence is presented as support for the oppressed. The lack of free expression becomes the highest form of freedom. Farsical elections become the highest form of democracy. Banning

independent thought becomes the most scientific of world views. Military occupation becomes fraternal assistance. Because the regime is captive to its own lives, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present. It falsifies the present. And it falsifies. the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to prosecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing. Maybe that sounds familiar to some people. Individuals need not believe all these mystifications, but they must behave as though they did, or they must at least tolerate them in silence or get along well with their.

those who work with them. For this reason, however, they must live within a lie. They need not accept the lie. It is enough for them to have accepted their life within and in it. For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the system. This especially goes for people who want to become a part of that system. We have seen the real meaning of the Green Grocer's slogan has nothing to do with what the text of the slogan actually says. Even so, this real meaning is quite clear and generally comprehensible because the code is so familiar. The Green Grocer declares his loyalty, and he can do no other if his declaration is to be accepted in the only way the regime is capable of hearing. That is, by accepting the prescribed ritual,

by accepting appearances as reality, by accepting the given rules of the game. In doing so, however, he has himself become a player in the game, thus making it possible for the game to go on, for it to exist in the first place. If ideology was originally a bridge between the system and the individual as an individual, then the moment he steps on to this bridge, it becomes at the same time a bridge between the system and the individual as a component of the system. That is, if ideology originally facilitated by acting outwardly, the constitution of power by serving as a psychological excuse, then from the moment that excuse is accepted, it constitutes power inwardly, becoming an active component of that power. It begins to function as the principal instrument of ritual communication within the system of power.

The whole power structure, and we have already discussed its physical articulation, could not exist at all if it were not a certain metaphysical order, binding all its components together, interconnecting them and subordinating them to a uniform method of accountability, supplying the combined operation of all these components with rules of the game. That is, with certain regulations, limitations, and legalities. This metaphysical order is fundamental to, and standard throughout the entire power structure.

It integrates its communication system and makes possible the internal exchange and transfer of information and instructions. It is rather like a collection of traffic signals and directional signs, giving the process shape and structure. This metaphysical order guarantees the intercoherence of its totalitarian power structure. It is a glue holding it together, its binding principle, the instrument of its discipline. Without this glue, the structure as a totalitarian structure would vanish. Without this glue, the structure as a totalitarian structure would vanish.

It would disintegrate into individual atoms, chaotically colliding with one another in their unregulated particular interest and inclinations. The entire pyramid of totalitarian power deprived of the element that binds it together would collapse in upon itself, as it were, in a kind of material implosion. As the interpretation of reality by the power structure, ideology is always subordinated ultimately to the interest of the structure. Therefore, it has a natural tendency to disengage itself from reality, to create a world of appearances, to become ritual. In societies where there is public competition for power, and therefore public control of that power, there also

exists quite natural public control of the way that power legitimates itself ideologically. Consequently, in such conditions, there are always certain correctives that effectively prevent ideology from abandoning reality altogether. Under totalitarian, is that even possible anymore? Under totalitarianism, however, these correctives disappear, and thus, there is nothing to prevent ideology from becoming more and more removed from reality, gradually turning into what it has already become in the post-totelitarian system. A world of appearances, a mere ritual, a formalized language derived a semantic contact with reality and transformed into a system of ritual signs

that replaced reality with pseudo-reality, which is why you turn your back on it. It's literally fantasy land. Yet as we have seen, ideology becomes at the same time an increasingly important component of power, a pillar providing it with both excusatory legitimacy and an intercoherence. As this aspect grows in importance and as it gradually loses touch with a reality. It acquires a peculiar but very real strength. It becomes reality itself, albeit a reality altogether is self-contained, one that on certain levels, chiefly inside the power structure, may have even greater weight than reality as such. Increasingly, the virtuosity of the ritual becomes more important than the reality hidden behind it. The significance of phenomenon

no longer derives from the phenomena themselves, but from their locus as concepts in the ideological context. Reality does not shape theory, but rather the reverse. Thus, power gradually draws closer to ideology than it does to reality. It draws its strength from theory and becomes entirely dependent on it. This inevitably leads, of course, to a paradoxical result. Rather than theory or rather than ideology serving power, power begins to serve ideological. It is as though ideology has appropriated power from power as though it has become dictator itself. It then appears that theory itself, ritual itself, ideology itself, makes decisions that affect people and not the other way around. And I can hear people say, well, then I just want my ideology to rule.

To which I ask, how are you going to do that? How are you going to do that? the system already has an ideology and what what makes you believe that this system can make you can use this system to make your ideology work if ideology is the principle guarantee of the interconsistency of power it becomes at the same time an increasingly important guarantee of its continuity whereas succession to power in classical dictatorships is always a rather complicated affair the pretenders have nothing to give their claims reasonable legitimacy, thereby forcing them always to resort to confrontations and naked power. In the post-totilitarian system, power is passed on from person

to person, from click to click, and from generation to generation, in an essentially more regular fashion. In the selection of pretenders, a new kingmaker takes part. It is ritual legitimation, the ability to rely on ritual, to fulfill it and use it, to allow oneself, as it were, to be borne aloft by it. Naturally, power struggles exist in the post-tetalitarian system as well, and most of them are far more brutal than in an open society, for the struggle is not open, regulated by democratic rules and subjects in public control, but hidden behind the scenes. sorry to say, Edvachlov, open society. I mean, I know that you would have been much better off living in an open society.

But we're there, man. We're there. It is difficult to recall a single instance in which the First Secretary of the Rural and Communist Party has been replaced without the various military and security forces being placed at least on alert. This struggle, however, can never, as it can in classical dictation. dictatorships threaten the very essence of the system and its continuity. At most it will shake up the power structure, which will recover quickly precisely because the binding substance ideology remains undisturbed.

No matter who is replaced by whom, succession is only possible against the backdrop and within the framework of a common ritual. It can never take place by denying that ritual. Because of this dictatorship of its ritual, however, power becomes clearly anonymous. individuals are almost dissolved in the ritual. They allow themselves to be swept along by it, and frequently it seems as though ritual alone carries people from obscurity into the light of power. It is not characteristic of the post-telitarian system that, on all levels of the power hierarchy,

individuals are increasingly being pushed aside by faceless people, puppets, those uniform flunkies of the rituals and routines of power. The automatic operation of a power structure thus dehumanized and made anonymous is a feature of the fundamental automatism of the system. It would seem that it is precisely the dictates of this automatism which select people lacking individual will for the power structure. That it is precisely the dictat of the empty phrase which summons to power people who use empty phrases as the best guarantee that the, automatism of the post-tetalitarian system will continue. Western Sovietologists often exaggerate the role of individuals in the post-Satilitarian system and overlook the fact that the ruling figures, despite the immense power they

possessed through the centralized structure of power, are often no more than blind executors of the system's own internal laws they themselves can never and never do reflect upon. In any case, experience has taught us again and again that this automatism is far more powerful than the will of any individual, and should someone possess a more independent will, he must conceal it behind a ritually anonymous mask in order to have an opportunity to enter the power hierarchy at all. And when the individual finally gains a place there and tries to make his will felt within it, that automatism, with its enormous inertia, will try and sooner or later, and either the individual will be ejected by the power structure like a foreign

organism, or he will be compelled to resign his individuality gradually, once again blending with the automatism and becoming its servant, almost indistinguishable from those who preceded him and those who will follow. Let us recall, for instance, the development of Husk or Gomukkah. I don't know what those are. The necessity of continually hiding behind and relating to ritual means that even the more enlightened members of the power structure are often obsessed with ideology. They are never able to plunge straight to the bottom of naked reality, and they always confuse it in the final analysis with ideological pseudo-reality. In my opinion, one of the reasons that Dubik leadership lost control the situation in 1968 was precisely because, in extreme situations and in final questions,

its members were never capable of extricating themselves completely from the world of appearances. It can be said, therefore, that ideology, as that instrument of internal communication, which assures the power of structure of intercohesion is in the post-detalitarian system, something that transcends the physical aspects of power, something that dominates it to a considerable degree, and, therefore, tends to assure its community as well. It is one of the pillars of the system's external stability. This pillar, however, is built on a very unstable foundation. It is built on lies. It works only as long as people are willing to live within the lie. And that was the end of part five. And I will leave part six for the next time we get together.

So thank you. Hope you're getting something out of this. And go download it. I will link to a copy of this PDF in the show notes. Go download it. read along. This is only 80 pages. Definitely worth a read. 80 pages. Most people should be able to read that in an afternoon. No problem. So that's it. Sorry about missing some of the, for those of you, you're going to look at the video. Sorry about missing the first seven or eight pages, maybe nine.

But you know, I've done that before. But yeah, that's it. Be back in a couple days. Thomas and I have to start doing the start doing the younger event, the younger series again, he and I both went out of town at the same time, different places, and we haven't been able to catch up since.

So, um, be back for that. More Mr. Bagby and, um, who knows who else. Thank you. Have a good weekend or have a good week. Talk to you later. Bye.

Bye. This is take two. I want to welcome everyone back to my reading of the Power of the Powerless by Vaclav Havel. I'm going to jump right in where I left off in the first episode. Glad to be back to this one. All right. Here we go. Part six.

Why, in fact, did our green grocer have to put his loyalty on display in the shop window? Had he not already displayed it sufficiently in various internal and semi-public ways? At trade union meetings, after all, he had always voted as he should. He had always taken part in various competitions. He voted in elections like a good citizen. He even signed the anti-charter. Why, on top of all that, should he have to declare his loyalty publicly?

After all, the people who walk past his window will certainly not stop to read that. In the Green Grocer's opinion, the workers of the world ought to unite. The fact of the matter is, they don't read the slogan at all, and it can be fairly assumed they don't even see it. If you were to ask a woman who had stopped in front of his shop what she saw in the window, she could certainly tell you whether or not they had tomatoes today, but it is highly unlikely that she noticed a slogan at all, let alone what it said.

It seems senseless to require the green grocery to declare his loyalty publicly, but it makes sense nevertheless. People ignore his slogan, but they do so because such slogans are also found, in other shop windows, on lamp posts, bulletin boards, and apartment windows, and on buildings. They are everywhere, in fact. They form part of the panorama of everyday life. Of course, while they ignore the details, people are very aware of the panorama as a whole. And what else is a greengrocer's slogan, but a small component in the huge backdrop to daily life? The propaganda just starts to fade into the background.

The only question is, is, has it faded into the background because you just don't notice it anymore because you've absorbed it? Or are you just at the point where you're unconsciously just ignoring it? The green grocer adds to put the slogan in his window, therefore, not in the hope that someone might read it or be persuaded by it, but to contribute, along with thousands of other slogans to the panorama that everyone is very much aware of. This panorama, of course, has a subliminal meaning as well. It reminds people where they are living and what is expected of them.

It tells them what everyone else is doing. It indicates to them what they must do as well, if they don't want to be excluded, to fall into isolation, alienate themselves from society, break the rules of the game, and risk the loss of their peace and tranquility and insecurity. One of the biggest problems that you're going to have in a society as such, is, so Czechoslovakia, Soviet Czechoslovakia, is if you start speaking up against the regime, even privately, people will wonder, okay, well, is he trying to, is this person trying to set me up, trying to see if I agree with the subversives, or are they really trying to do something?

So it's not only difficult for the person who is hearing somebody saying something that might be subversive, but also the person who's saying something that's subversive, they have to be 100% sure that that person would be on their side. So you don't want to break the rules of the game, but you also don't want to alienate yourself from society. if you start speaking subversively and the other person is just scared to death, they're going to, if they don't turn you in, they will ignore you. They will shun you.

And you do that to enough people and now you're all alone. So, instead of being all alone, people just keep playing the game. Think about the post-war consensus and the things that we know to be untrue. but you can't say them out loud. Why? Because you will be shunned. You will be considered a bad person. You'll be considered immoral. Or worse, things can happen, depending where you're living, countries, certain countries you live in, you say the wrong thing about what happened, you know, the post-war consensus, and you go to jail. The woman who ignored the Greengrocer's slogan may well have hung a similar slogan just an hour before in the corridor of the office where she works. She did it more or less

without thinking, just as our green grocery did, and she could do so precisely because she was doing it against the background of the general panorama with some awareness of it, that is, against the background of the panorama of which the green grocer's shop window forms apart. When the green grocer visits her office, he will notice her slogan, he will not notice her slogan either, just as she failed to notice his. Nevertheless, their slogans are mutually dependent. Both were displayed with some awareness of the general panorama, and we might say under its diktot. Both, however, assist in the creation of that panorama, and therefore they assist in the creation of that dictat as well. The green grocer and the office worker have both adapted to

the conditions in which they live, but in doing so, they help to create the conditions. So as long as you're going along with what you know is wrong, you're perpetuating it. And as I said before, it's scary to step out of that. You are perpetuating it. When you're around your family, people you love, the people that you really should be able to be honest with by going along with it, you're perpetuating it. and you're helping them to perpetuate it. They do what is done, what is to be done, what must be done, but at the same time, by that very token, they confirm that it must be done in fact.

They conform to a particular requirement, and in so doing, they themselves perpetuate that requirement. Metaphysically speaking, without the green grocer's slogan, the office worker slogan could not exist and vice versa. Each proposes to the other that something be repeated and each accepts the other's proposal. Their mutual indifference to each other's slogans is only an illusion. In reality, by exhibiting their slogans, each compels the other to accept the rules of the game and to confirm thereby the power that requires the slogans in the first place.

Quite simply, each helps the other to be obedient. Both are objects in a system of control, but at the same time, they are its subjects as well. They are both victims of the system and its instruments. That is, you know, if you want to call it the normie that you know, they are a victim. But as long as they're doing everything they can to perpetuate the system as it works, to perpetuate the myth, to perpetuate the narrative, to perpetuate the power structure, also an instrument. If an entire district town is plastered with slogans that no one reads, it is on the one hand a message from the district secretary to the regional secretary, but it is also something more, a small example of the principle of social autotototality at work.

Part of the essence of the post-totelitarian system is that it draws everyone into its sphere of power, not so they may realize themselves as human beings, but so they may surrender their human identity and favor the identity of the system. That is, so they may become agents of the system's general automatism and servants of its self-determined goals, so they may participate in the common responsibility for it, so they may be pulled into it and ensnared by it, like Faust by Mephistopheles. More than this, so they may create, through their involvement, a general norm, and thus bring pressure to bear on their fellow citizens. And further, so they may learn to be comfortable with their involvement, to identify with it as though it were something natural and inevitable, and ultimately, so they may, with no external urging, come to treat any non-involvement as an abnormality, as arrogance, as an attack on themselves, as a form of dropping out of society. By pulling everyone into its power structure, the post-totelitarian system makes everyone an instrument of mutual totality, the auto-totality of society. I'm sure every single one of you, if you're actually listening to this and you're absorbing it,

you, I don't even have to make a comment, you're commenting to yourself. You know exactly what this is. You know exactly what we've been pulled into. Whether it be vicious propaganda, where you're forced to cheerlead things that are against your morality, against your being or whether it's something small. You know exactly what he's talking about. And you should, if you listen to this show and listen to others, you should recognize this for what it is,

what he's talking about. Everyone, however, is in fact involved and enslaved, not only the green grocers, but also the prime ministers. Differing positions in the hierarchy merely established differing degrees of involvement The green grocer is involved only to a minor extent, but he also has very little power. The prime minister naturally has greater power, but in return he is far more deeply involved. Both, however, are unfree, each merely in a somewhat different way. The real accomplice in this involvement, therefore, is not another person, but the system itself.

I don't even have to quote it, but the purpose of a system is what it does. So if your boomer aunt or your boomer parents are quoting Fox News, if they've never talked about Iran in their life, but now they're saying that Iran's been at war with us for 47 years, you know what we're talking about here. You know what he's talking about here. And I'm just using that as a modern example, because it's something that we're dealing with right now.

But it's much more dangerous when you think about the last hundreds, 150 years. Position in the power hierarchy determines the degree of responsibility and guilt, but it gives no one unlimited responsibility and guilt, nor does it completely absolve anyone. Thus, the conflict between the aims of life and the aims of the system is not a conflict between two socially defined and separate communities, and only a very generalized view, and even that only approximative, permits us to divide society into the rulers and the ruled.

Here, by the way, is one of the most important differences between the post-Sotelitarian system and classical dictatorships, in which this line of conflict can still be drawn according to social class. In the post-totelitarian system, this line runs de facto through each person, for everyone in his own way is both a victim and supporter of the same, system. What we understand by the system is not, therefore, a social order imposed by one group upon another, but rather something that permeates the entire system and is a factor in shaping it, something which may seem impossible to grasp or define for it is in the nature of a mere

principle, but which is expressed by the entire society as an important feature of its life. if we don't if if we take the system down what'll happen to us if we change the system what'll happen to us shouldn't we be trying to take over the system and fight against the system by using the system that's oppressed wait what this is something i disagree with with people who are close to me the system has been designed to do this if you consider it Wouldn't it be a moral to use it for your own ends even if you consider them to be moral? And even if they are moral, there's a question for you. Sorry, I had to take a sip.

The fact that human beings have created and daily create the self-directed system through which they divest themselves of their innermost identity is not therefore the results of some incomprehensible misunderstanding of history, nor is it history somehow gone off the rails. Neither is it the product of some diabolical higher will, which has, has decided, for reasons unknown, to torment a portion of humanity in this way. It can happen and did happen only because there is obviously in modern humanity a certain tendency toward the creation, or at least a toleration of such a system. There is obviously something in human beings which responds to this system, something they reflect and accommodate, something within them which paralyzes every effort of their better selves to revolt. human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so only because

they are in fact capable of living in this way. Therefore, not only does the system alienate humanity, but at the same time alienated humanity supports this system as its own involuntary master plan, as a degenerate image of its own degeneration as a record of people's own failure as individuals. The system only works because of our own failures. The case can be made that, you know, a social engineering regime that is 100 years old, yeah, people are victims.

We've already said that. We've already gone over it. But, yeah, it's also our failing. You know, we have had for, you know, a few decades now access to, the internet where there's a lot of information that people have used to free themselves of this mind virus and not everybody's going to do it unfortunately so how do we move forward i probably said this in the first part of this in part one but you know when when bernum

when james bernam wrote the manager of revolution in 1940 he spoke of hitler's germany and Stalin's Russia or Stalin's Soviet Union, sorry, and the United States. And when it came to the way they were run, when it came to the managerialism of all of them, he really didn't see a lot of difference. Now, some may have, I don't know that anybody listening to this has any affinity for Stalin's Soviet Union, but there may be some, there are some. who have affinity for the United States, and there are some that are going to

see Hitler's Germany in a way that the mainstream doesn't. But they were managerial. They were run by managers. It's undeniable. I'm sure many of you listen to just can name the managers. You can name the people who were ahead of this department, that department, this department, that department.

They are managing top down. It's just a matter of where, I guess we'll never know where Germany's version of managerialism would have led to, but I'm fully convinced it would have led to managerialism had they won the war. Because that's, that was the zeitgeist, just as everybody in the 20s was calling themselves a socialist. That was where it was headed. The essential aims of life are present naturally in every person.

In everyone, there is some longing for humanity's rightful. dignity, for moral integrity, for free expression of being, and a sense of transcendence over the world of existence. Yet, at the same time, each person is capable to a greater or lesser degree of coming to terms with living within the lie. Each person somehow succumbs to a profane trivialization of his inherent humanity and to utilitarianism. In everyone, there is some willingness to merge with the anonymous crowd and to flow comfortably along with it down the river of pseudo-life. This is much worse than a simple conflict between two identities. It is something far worse. It is a challenge to the very notion of identity itself. Upon my reading of Havel in the past,

he, because I guess of the hyper-collectivism that he was living under, he embraced individualism. When we hear this, we should probably think more along the lines of how living historically has been destroyed. I get to understand his reaction and I understand the reaction of others because I've been there. But once you understand that you come from a tribe and you come from a line and that that goes forward and that goes back, then you understand that one of the ways to get you, one of the immediate ways to get past, this and to start breaking out of it, especially in your mind, is to embrace who you are and where you came from. And who you are and where you came from is not solely individualistic. It can't be. You can't win that way. In highly simplified terms, it could be said that the post-totelitarian system

has been built on foundations laid by the historical encounter between dictatorship and the consumer society. It is not true that the far-reaching adaptability to living a lie and the effortless spread of social autototality have some connection within with the general unwillingness of consumption-oriented people to sacrifice some material certainties for the sake of their own spiritual and moral integrity, with their willingness to surrender higher values when faced with the trivializing temptations of modern civilization, with their vulnerability to the attractions of mass indifference. And in the end, it is not the grayness and the emptiness of life in the post-Sotelitarian system, only an inflated character of modern day life in general. And do we not,

in fact, stand, although in the external measures of civilization we are far behind, as a kind of warning to the West, revealing to its, revealing to its own latent tendons. C. Part 6. Let us now imagine that one day something in our green grocer snaps and he stops putting up the slogans merely to ingratiate himself. He stops voting in elections, he knows a farce. He begins to say what he really thinks in political meetings. And he even finds a strength in himself to express solidarity with those whom his conscience commands him to support. In this revolt, the green grocer steps out of living within a lie. He rejects a ritual and breaks the rules of the game. He discovers once more his suppressed identity and dignity. He gives

his freedom a concrete significance. His revolt is an attempt to live within the truth. The bill is not long in coming. He will be relieved of his post as manager of the shop and transferred to the warehouse. His pay will be reduced. His hopes for a holiday in Bulgaria will evaporate. His children's access to higher education will be threatened. His superiors will harass him and his fellow workers will wonder about him. Most of those who apply these sanctions, however, will not do so from any authentic inner conviction, but simply under pressure from conditions. The same conditions that once pressured the green grocer to display the official slogans. They will persecute the green grocer either because it is expected of them or to demonstrate

their loyalty or simply as part of the general panorama to which belongs an awareness that this is how the situations of this sort are dealt with, that this, in fact, is how things are always done, particularly if one is not to become suspect oneself, what I was saying earlier. The executors, therefore, behave essentially like everyone else to a greater or lesser degree as components of the post-totelitarian system, as agents of his automatism, as petty instruments of the social autototality. So basically, by not speaking the truth and hiding, you know, hiding certain things, hiding your opinions, you're contributing. You're a part of the system.

But once you step out, well, you have to be able to take what's going to come after you, which could be the whole weight of the state. It could be isolation. And, you know, one thing that people never talk about is, is that, you know, the green grocer of his wife is living better than some other women that she knows. And all of a sudden now her standard of living goes down. Historically, women do not feel well with that. Sorry, ladies, you just don't. As a whole.

So there's that. there's more than people think about. There's more to it. And books have been written about what happens when you step out of line and you start speaking your mind. And you've seen it. We've seen it. I mean, if you were online for the last 15 years, you saw the cancellations. You saw what was it.

what speaking out and saying the wrong thing would get you. You don't even have to be, you could come at it from an academic standpoint, but still, you're rocking the boat. The most, I would say, if you wanted to look in our system, and figure out, like, see the pinnacle of the kind of person who doesn't really have any power.

They do have power, but they don't have political power per se. They don't have sovereign power. But they do have power when it comes to political speech and political talk. Just look at con ink. Look at con ink. Anyone they're associated with or anyone they notice that is starting to get popular on the quote unquote right. If they're to the right of them,

they're not towing the line. They're not pulling their weight anymore. They're not following the, they're not promoting the narrative. They're trying to destroy the myth. Now you're no different, now you're woke right because the left seeks to destroy myths.

And now because you're trying to destroy myths, you're just like them. Perfect example. But, you know, a lot of you, if you started speaking your opinions, maybe not so much anymore, God, hopefully, to people around you. You may see that they don't come around as much anymore, or not so quick to return a text or answer a call. Thus, the power structure, through the agency of those who carry out the sanctions, those anonymous components of the system will spew the green grocer from its mouth. There, that's the right. That's like con-ink at this point.

The system, through its alienating presence on people, will punish him for his rebellion. It must do so because the logic of its automatism and self-defense dictated. The green grocer has not committed a simple individual offense, isolated in its own uniqueness, but something incomparably more serious. by breaking the rules of the game, he has disrupted the game as such. He has exposed it as a mere game.

He has shattered the world of appearances, the fundamental pillar of the system. He has upset the power structure by tearing apart what holds it together. He has demonstrated that living a lie is living a lie. He has broken through the exalted facade of the system and exposed the real base foundations of power. He has said that the emperor is naked. And because the emperor is, in fact, naked, something extremely. extremely dangerous has happened. By his action, the green grocer has addressed the world. He has enabled everyone to appear behind the curtain. He has shown everyone that it is possible to live

within the truth. Living within the law can constitute the system only if it's universal. The principle must embrace and permeate everything. There are no terms whatsoever on which it can coexist with living within the truth. And therefore, everyone who steps out of line denies it in principle and threatens it in its entirety. The thing I love about this section here is that I really don't have to comment on it. Some of you people are probably pissed off. I'm commenting so much about it, but venting too. This is years of frustration.

So please allow me. I apologize. This is understandable. As long as appearance is not confronted with reality, it does not seem to be appearance. As long as living a lie is not confronted with living the truth, the perspective needed to expose its mendacity is lacking. As soon as the alternative appears, however, it threatens the very existence of appearance and living a lie in terms of what they are, both their essence and their all-inclusiveness. And at the same time, it is utterly unimportant how large a space this alternative occupies. Its power does not consist in its physical attributes, but in the light it casts on those pillars of the system.

and on its unstable foundations. After all, the Greengrocer was a threat to the system, not because of any physical or actual power he had, but because his action went beyond itself, because it illuminated its surroundings, and, of course, because of the incalculable consequences of that illumination. In the post-totalitarian system, therefore, living within the truth has more than a mere existential dimension returning humanity to its inherent nature, or a noetic dimension revealing reality as it is or a moral dimension setting an example for others. It also has an unambiguous political dimension. If the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living the truth. This is why it

must be suppressed more severely than anything else. And I will once again mention living historically. Thomas, obviously, talks about it since the very first time I ever interviewed him. Darryl Cooper uses, you know, has picked up on that, used the same language on Tucker. And Darrell went on Tom Woods, Tom Woods' most recent episode. And they talked about living historically. This is how you break containment on it. this is how it gets out there that you if you're living within this system and promoting this system

and allowing this system to dominate you to be a part of you that you're defending it then you can't live historically by living historically this is the way you fight against it by looking at the values of the system and looking at the values that you know deep down inside you have, hopefully, and seeking to live those, that you're a threat to the system. But not only are you a threat to the system, but the more people that do it, the more people expose the system, and the more that the system becomes exposed, the faster it's destroyed. In the post-totalitarian system, truth in the wildest sense of the word has a very special import, one unknown in other contexts. In this system,

truth plays a far greater and above all a far different role as a factor of power or as an outright political force. How does the power of truth operate? How does truth as a factor of power work? How can its power as power be realized? Part 8. Individuals can be alienated from themselves only because there is something in them to alienate. I'm going to read that sentence again. individuals can be alienated from themselves only because there is something in them to alienate when we talk about deracination from who we are this is what mr hovel is talking about the terrain of this violation is their authentic existence living the truth is thus woven directly into the texture of living a lie it is repressed alternative the authentic aim to which

living a lie is an inauthentic response Only against this background does living a lie make any sense. It exists because of that background. In its excusatory, chimerical rooted, let me start that sentence again. I wasn't ready for for chimerical. In its excusatory chimerical rootedness in the human order, it is a response to nothing other than the human predisposition to truth. Under the orderly surface of the life of lies, therefore there slumbers to hidden space of life and its real aims of its hidden openness to truth. The singular explosive incalcable political power of living within the truth resides in the fact that living openly within the truth has an ally, invisible to be sure, but omnipresent,

this hidden sphere. It is from this sphere that life lived openly in the truth grows. It is to this that it speaks, and in it that it finds understanding. This is where the potential for communication exists. But this place is hidden, and therefore from the perspective of power very dangerous. The complex ferment that takes place within it goes on in semi-darkness, and by the time it finally surfaces in the light of day as an assortment of shocking surprises to the system, it is usually too late to cover them up in the usual fashion. Thus they create a situation in which the regime is confounded.

invariably causing panic and driving it to react in inappropriate ways. Let's take a sip real quick. It seems that the primary breeding ground for what might, in the wildest possible sense of the word, be understood as an opposition in the post-Satelitarian system, is living within the truth. The confrontation between these opposition forces and the powers that be, of course, will obviously take a form essentially different from the typical, from that, typical of an open society or a classical dictatorship. Initially, this confrontation does not take place on the level of real institutionalized quantifiable power, which relies on the various

instruments of power, but on a different level altogether. The level of human consciousness and conscience, the existential level. The effective range of this special power cannot be measured in terms of disciples, voters, or soldiers, because it lies spread out in the fifth column of social consciousness in the hidden names of life and human beings repressed longing for dignity and fundamental rights for the realization that their real social and political interests. Its power, therefore, does not reside in the strength of definable political or social groups, but chiefly in the strength of a potential, which is hidden throughout the whole of society, including the official power structures of that society. Therefore, this power does not rely on soldiers of its own, but

but on the soldiers of the enemy, as it were. That is to say, on everyone who is living within the lie and who may be struck at any moment, in theory at least, by the force of truth, or who, out of an instinctive desire to protect their position, may at least adapt to that force. It is a bacteriological weapon, so to speak, utilized when conditions are right by a single civilian to disarm an entire division. This power does not participate in any direct struggle for power. Rather, it makes its influence felt in the obscure arena of being itself. The hidden movements that it gives rise to there, however, can issue forth when, where, under what circumstances, and to what extent are difficult to predict, in something visible, a real political

act or event, a social movement, a sudden explosion of civil unrest, a sharp conflict inside an apparently monolithic power structure, or simply an irrepressible transformation in the the social and intellectual climate. And since all genuine problems and matters of critical importance are hidden beneath a thick crust of lies, it is never quite clear where the proverbial last straw will fall or what that straw will be. This, too, is why the regime prosecutes almost as a reflex action preventatively, even the most modest attempts to live within the truth.

That was a lot. But if you listen to this show, I think you get everything that he's saying. you have to start living within truth. You have to start living historically. And even if you're doing it in secret and you're not telling anybody, it will permeate. This is exactly what Dr. Johnson and I are talking about in on resistance to evil by force by Ivan Aline. if you have a town that's become so poor that 10% of the women are secretly prostituting themselves, that is going to have an effect on the town.

And like I said, and they're doing it in secret. Can we explain this? Sure, if you're a Christian, if you have a metaphysics, you can explain this. But you can't get past the fact that whenever, that things like this can't stay hidden. Evil can't stay hidden. And if evil can't stay hidden, good cannot stay hidden. And if people are living historically, if they're living truth,

not what this regime puts out, not what this regime sells us, not what this regime tells us they will persecute us for if we don't live as they want us to live. But if we live within the truth of who we are and where we came from and where we're going, which has nothing to do with some other group that was persecuted for however long and who cares, that has nothing to do with you. The reason we study them is because we need to know everything we can about them. We need to see what they've done in the past so we can see what they're going to do in the future.

Because history may not repeat itself, but damn, if there isn't, aren't something, things that are just used over and over and over again. But it's up to you to start living, I mean, it sounds fucking woo-woo leftist, living your truth. But you're not living your truth, you're living be truth. And when people start to do that, that's when you're going to see things move. That's when the myths fall apart. That's when the narrative is no longer taken seriously. That's when plain lip service to it just becomes intolerable for people. Continuing.

Why was Solzhenycin-Driven out of his own country? Certainly not because he represented a unit of real power, that is. Not because any of the regime's representatives felt he might unseat them and take their place in government. Solzhenyzen's expulsion was something. else, a desperate attempt to plug up the dreadful wellspring of truth, a truth which might cause incalculable transformations in social consciousness, which in turn might one day produce political debacles unpredictable in their consequences. And so the post-totalitarian system behaved in a characteristic way. It defended the integrity of the world of appearances in order to defend itself,

for the crust presented by the life of lies is made of strange stuff. As long as it seals off her medically the entire society, it appears to be made of stone. By the moment someone breaks through in one place, when one person cries out, the emperor is naked. When a single person breaks the rules of the game, thus exposing it as a game, everything suddenly appears in another light, and the whole crust seems then to be made of a tissue on the point of tearing and disintegrating uncontrollably. When I speak of living within the truth, I naturally do not have in mind only products of conceptual thoughts such as a protest or a letter written by a group of intellectuals. It can be any means by which a person or group revolts against manipulation,

anything from a letter by intellectuals to a worker's strike, from a rock concert to a student demonstration, from refusing to vote in the farcical elections to making an open speech at some official Congress, or even a hunger strike, for instance. If this suppression of the aims of life is a complex process, and if it is based on the multifaceted manipulation of all expressions of life, then, by the same token, every free expression of life indirectly threatens the post-totelitarian system politically, including forms of expression to which, in other social systems, no one would attribute any potential political significance, not to mention explosive power. That whole list he went down. It may not even, it's not going to apply.

to all societies or all cultures. You have to figure out what that is. And you have to, or if you can't figure it out, you look for people who figured it out. Moving on. The Prague Spring is usually understood as a clash between two groups on the level of real power. Those who wanted to maintain the system as it was

and those who wanted to reform it. It is frequently forgotten, however, that this encounter was merely the final act and the inevitable consequence of a long drama originally played out chiefly in the theater of the spirit and the conscience of society. And that somewhere at the beginning of this drama, there were individuals who were willing to live within the truth,

even when things were at their worst. These people had no access to real power, nor did they aspire to it. These people had no access to real power, nor did they aspire to it. The sphere in which they were living, their truth was not necessarily even that a political thought. They could equally have been poets, painters, musicians, or simply ordinary citizens who were

able to maintain their human dignity. Today it is naturally difficult to pinpoint when and through which hidden winding channel a certain action or attitude influence a given milieu and to those, and to trace the virus of truth as it slowly spread through the tissue of the life of lives, gradually causing it to disintegrate. One thing, however, seems clear. The attempt that political reform was not the cause of society's reawakening, but rather the final outcome of that reawakening. Political reform didn't happen because, oh, people woke up one day and oh, we need political reform. It has to start long before that. I think the present also can be better understood in the light of this

experience. The confrontation between a thousand chartists and the post-satilitarian system would appear to be politically hopeless. This is true, of course, if we look at it through the traditional lens of the open political system in which, quite naturally, every political force is measured chiefly in terms of the positions that holds on the level of real power. Given that perspective, a mini-party like the charter would certainly not stand the chance. If, however, this confrontation is seen against the backdrop of what we know about power in the post-Sotilitarian system, it appears in a fundamentally different light. For the time being, it is impossible to say with any precision what impact the appearance

of Charter 77 its existence and its work has had in the hidden sphere and how the Charter's attempt to rekindle civic self-awareness and confidence is regarded there. Whether, when, and how this investment will eventually produce. reduce dividends in the form of specific political changes is even less possible to predict. But that, of course, is all part of living within the truth. As an existential solution, it takes individuals back to the solid ground of their own identity. As politics, it throws them into a game of chance where the stakes are all or nothing. For this reason, it is undertaken only by those for whom the former is worth risking the latter

or who have come to the conclusion that there is no other way to conduct real politics in Czechoslovakia today. Which, by the way, is the same thing. This conclusion can be reached only by someone who is unwilling to sacrifice his own human identity to politics, or rather, who does not believe in politics that requires such a sacrifice. The more thoroughly the post-totelitarian system frustrates any rival alternative on the level of real power, as well as any form of politics independent of the laws of its own automatism, the more definitively the center of gravity of any potential political threat shifts to the area of the existential and the pre-political.

Usually without any conscious effort, living within the truth becomes the one natural point of departure for all activities that work against the automatism of the system. It can't start with politics. it starts with something much deeper. Politics can eventually become the mechanism by which you can protect yourself so that you can live in a true way. But you have to, there has to be a truth there in the beginning, or else it all falls apart. What are you fighting for?

And even if such systems ultimately grow beyond the area of living within the truth, which means they are transformed into various pariah structure, movements, institutions, they begin to be regarded as political activity. They bring real pressure to bear on the official structures and begin, in fact, to have a certain influence on the level of real power. They always carry with them the specific hallmark of their origins. Therefore, it seems to me that not even the so-called dissident movements can be properly understood without constantly bearing in mind this special background from which they emerge. That's it. I'm up to part nine and I'm going to leave it right there. I've already recorded with Dr. Johnson today, so I've been doing a lot of talking and my voice is starting to take a little

bit of a toll. But I hope the, I know that the last section that we read on, in the first episode, hit a lot of people. And I hope that things that we've read now, especially, these last three sections are beginning to, maybe a different language, someone else's language, and seeing it from afar, seeing it happens to someone afar, can help you to understand a little more clearly of exactly what we're going through. People ask, you know, well, you, you know, you talk about, you need, you know, it's a vanguard and it's really only a small group and everything like that.

It's like, yeah, but I still care about people and I want people to live in the most true way possible. I know that once you don't have to be part of a movement, you don't have to be part of a group, you don't have to be part of an organization to help to create the kind of change that's actually needed at this point in time. but just you out there living historically and living in a true way helps to create the real kind of power that's going to be needed for the future. And that real kind of power is stronger than any political system or political power. The politician can order someone to kill your body. That's not what we're talking about.

here. We're talking about a power that's stronger than that, more powerful than that, and that's eternal. So I'll leave it at that. All right? See on the next reading. Thank you so much for tuning in. Take care. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekingana show. I am going to continue my reading of Baclav Havels, The Power of the Powerless. We are up to part nine. and I'm just going to pick right up from where I left off last time. Here we go. The profound crisis of human identity brought on by living within a lie. A crisis which in turn makes such a life possible,

certainly possesses a moral dimension as well. It appears, among other things, as a deep moral crisis in society. A person who has been seduced by the consumer value system whose identity is dissolved in an amalgam of the accoutrema, of mass civilization and who has no roots in the order of being, no sense of responsibility for anything higher than his own personal survival, is a demoralized person. The system depends on this demoralization, deepens it, is in fact a projection of it into

society. He's talking about deracination. Living within the truth, as humanity's revolts against an enforced position is, an enforced position is, on the contrary, an attempt to regain control over one's own sense of responsibility. It all starts with a you. In other words, it is clearly a moral act, not only because one must pay so dearly for it, but principally because it is not self-serving. The risk may bring rewards in the form of a general amelioration in the situation, or it may not. In this regard, as I stated previously,

it is an all or nothing gamble, and it is difficult to imagine a reasonable person embarking on such a course merely because he reckons its sacrifice today will bring rewards tomorrow, be it only in the form of general gratitude. By the way, the representatives of power invariably come to terms with those who live within the truth by persistently ascribing utilitarian motives to them, a lust for power or fame or wealth, and thus they try, at least to implicate them in their own world, the world of general demoralization. You're just blackpilling.

You're a grifter. Havel heard all of this. He knew this. He saw this. Oh, you just want to rule over people. You just want to be famous. You're a grifter. You're blackpilling because you're lying.

You're knowingly lying about Trump. Trump's a hero. Trump's defeating my enemies. And if you don't agree with me, you're knowingly lying. If living within the truth in the post-totelitarian system becomes a chief breeding ground for independent alternative political ideas, then all considerations about the nature and future prospects of these ideas must necessarily reflect this moral dimension as a political phenomenon. This is in parentheses. And if the revolutionary Marxist belief about morality as a product of the superstructure inhibits any of our friends from realizing the full significance of this dimension

and, in one way or another, from including it in their view of the world, it is to their own detriment. An anxious fidelity to the postulates of that worldview prevents them from properly understanding the mechanisms of their own political influence, thus paradoxically making them precisely what they are as Marxists, so often suspect of others being victims of false consciousness. The very special political significance of morality in the post-tetalitarian system is a phenomenon that is, at the very least unusual in modern political history, a phenomenon that might well have, as soon as I shall soon attempt to show, far-reaching consequences.

Section 10. Undeniably, the most important political event in Czechoslovakia after the advent of the Husk leadership in 1968 was the appearance of chartered 77. The spiritual and intellectual climate surrounding its appearance, however, was not the product of any immediate political event. That climate was created by the trial of some young musicians associated with a rock group called the Plastic People of the Universe. Their trial was not a confrontation of two differing political forces or conceptions, but two differing conceptions of life. On the one hand, there was the sterile puritanism of the post-Sotelitarian establishment, and, on the other, unknown young people who wanted no more than to be able to live within the truth,

to play the music they enjoyed, to sing songs that were relevant to their lives, and to live freely in dignity and partnership. These people had no past history of political activity. They were not highly motivated members of the opposition with political ambitions, nor were they former politicians expelled from the power structures. They had been given every opportunity to adapt to this status quo to accept the principles of living within a lie, and thus to enjoy life undisturbed by the authorities. Yet they decided on a different course.

Despite this, or perhaps precisely because of it, their case had a very special impact on everyone who had not yet given up hope. Moreover, when the trial took place, a new mood had begun to surface after the years of waiting, of apathy and of skepticism toward various forms of resistance. People were tired of being tired. They were fed up with the stagnation, the inactivity, barely hanging on the hope that things might improve after all. In some ways, the trial was the final straw.

Many groups of differing tendencies, which until then had remained isolated from each other, reluctant to cooperate, or which were committed to forms of action that made cooperation difficult, were suddenly struck with the power realization, that freedom is indivisible. Everyone understood that an attack on the Czech musical underground was an attack on the most elementary and important thing,

something that in fact bound everyone together. It was an attack on the very notion of living within the truth on the real aims of life. The freedom to play rock music was understood as a human freedom and thus as essential the same as the freedom to engage in philosophical and political reflection, the freedom to write, the freedom to express, and defend various social and political interests of society.

People were inspired to feel a genuine sense of solidarity with the young musicians, and they came to realize that not standing up for the freedom of others, regardless of how remote their means of creativity or their attitude to life, meant surrendering one's own freedom. This is in parentheses again. There is no freedom without equality before the law, and there is no equality before the law without freedom. Trader 77 has given the ancient notion a new and characteristic dimension, which has immensely

important implications for modern Czech history. What Slidec, the author of the book 68, in a brilliant analysis, calls the principle of exclusion, lies at the root of all our present-day moral and political misery. This principle was born at the end of the Second World War in this strange collusion of Democrats and communists and was subsequently developed further and further right to the bitter end. For the first time in decades, this principle had been overcome by Charter 77. All those united in the Charter have for the first time become equal partners. Charter 77 is not merely a coalition of communists and non-communists.

That would be nothing historically new and from the moral and political point of view, nothing revolutionary, but it is a community that is a priori open to anyone, and no one in it is a priori assigned an inferior position. That was the climate then in which Charter 77 was created, who could have foreseen that the prosecution of one or two obscure rock groups would have such a far-reaching consequences. So where we see in our, in our, in our system that there's certain groups that are basically pets of the system that was under the check system that wasn't seen as much. So most people would look at our system and say, well, those who are quote unquote on the left

are lined up with the system. corporations are in line with them, and then there's a narco tyranny against others. Well, this is pretty much just tyranny against everyone. So in a way, basically, the starting place that they're having to start from is, is that, yeah, we have factions. Yeah, we probably don't like each other,

but yeah, we're probably going to have to get along. So this can't be, this can't be, you know, this isn't saying, oh, you have to go and, you have to go and team up with somebody who wants you dead. No, those people are on the side of the system. You know, the way it looks like what was happening in Czechoslovakia was, is that everybody was just, you know, So you could find common cause with people who you probably weren't, you probably wouldn't like normally in like an open society. And then, you know, when they did finally get their freedom, quote unquote, they split.

From what I understand, the Czech Republic is more liberal. And Slovakia is more, is more traditional. Put it that way. This is from what I understand. People can correct me. If I'm completely wrong, correct me. If you're going to hit me with nuance,

please just save it. I'm not going to read the comment. Continuing. I think the origins of Charter 77 illustrate very well what I have already suggested above. That in the post-totalitarian system, the real background to the movements that gradually assume political significance does not usually consist of overtly political events or confrontations between different forces or concepts that are

openly political. These movements, for the most part, originate elsewhere in the far broader area of the pre-political, where living within a lie confronts living within the truth, that is, where the demands of the post-totelitarian system conflict with the real aims of life. These real aims can naturally assume a great many forms. Sometimes they appear as the basic material or social interests of a group or an individual. At other times, they may appear as certain intellectual and spiritual interests. At still other times, they may be the most fundamental and existential demands, such as the simple longing of people to live their own lives in dignity. Such a conflict acquires a political character, then, not because of the elementary political nature of the aims demanding to be heard, but simply because

because given the complex system of manipulation on which the post-totelitarian system is founded and on which it is also dependent, every free human act or expression, every attempt to live within the truth must necessarily appear as a threat to the system and thus as something which is political par excellence. In our system, people can, groups can live, can adopt the system. and the system is more than willing to make them their patrons. Because they've decided that there is a section of the population that is the absolute enemy. So they're willing to side with people who they probably hate and want dead as well. Because they can use them as a battering ram.

It's high, low, middle kind of thing. So any eventual political articulation of the movements that grow out of this pre-political hinterland is secondary. It develops and matures as a result of a subsequent confrontation within the system, and not because it started off as a political program, project, or impulse. Once again, the events of 1968 confirmed this. The communist politicians who were trying to reform the system came forward with their program, not because they had suddenly experienced a mystical enlightenment, but because they were led to do so by continued and increasing pressure from areas of life

that had nothing to do with politics in the traditional sense of the word. In fact, they were trying in political ways to solve the social conflicts, which in fact were confrontations between the aims of the system and the aims of life, that almost every level of society it had been experiencing daily and had been thinking about with increasing openness for years. Back by this living residence throughout society, scholars and artists had defined the problem, in a wide variety of ways and students were demanding solutions. This is basic elite theory.

You have elites and the last thing they want is revolution. They want to be able to rule over the ashes of whatever they burn down. And they have to take the pulse of the people every once in a while. Now, the problem is, is when you have a few elites, it's very easy to do that. you have many elites or an overproduction of elites as we seem to have, well, people start to think, well, everything's fine for me, or there are those who go and buy islands or start building bunkers, as we've seen recently. The Genesis of Charter 77 also illustrates the special political significance of the moral

aspect of the things that I have mentioned. Charter 77 would have been unimaginable without that powerful sense of solidarity among widely differing groups and without the sudden realization that it was impossible to go on waiting any longer and that the truth had to be spoken loudly and collectively, regardless of the virtual certainty of sanctions and the uncertainty of any tangible results in the immediate future. There are some things worth suffering for, Jan Patoka wrote shortly before his death. I think that chartists understand that not only as Patakas' legacy, but also as the best explanation of why they do what they do.

Seen from the outside and chiefly from the vantage point of the system and its power structure, Charter 77 came as a surprise as a bolt out of the blue. It was not a bolt out of the blue, of course, but that impression is understandable since the ferment that led to it took place in the hidden sphere, in the semi-darkness, where things are difficult to charter analyze. The chances of predicting the appearance of the charter were just as slight as the chances are now of predicting where it will lead. Once again, it was at shock, so typical of moments when something from the hidden sphere suddenly burst through the more abundant surface of living within a lie. The more one is trapped in the world of appearances, the more

surprising it is when something like that happens. Hidden sphere in that semi-darkness where things are difficult to charter analyze. Well, well, I'm doing this. What are you doing? None of your fucking business. None of your business. Oh, well, you won't tell me what you're doing, so that means you're not doing anything. Sure, run with that. You hear this kind of bullshit all the time. Part 11. In societies under the post-telitarian system, all political life in the traditional sense has been eliminated. People have no opportunity to express themselves politically in public, let alone to organize politically. The gap that results is filled by ideological ritual. In such a situation, people's interest in political matters naturally dwindles in an independent political

thought, insofar as it exists at all, is seen by the majority as unrealistic, far-fetched, a kind of self-indulgent game, hopelessly distant from their everyday concerns. concerns, something admirable, perhaps, but quite pointless, because it is on the one hand entirely utopian, and on the other hand, extraordinarily dangerous in view of the unusual vigor with which any move in that direction is persecuted by the regime. Oh, well, if I do this, they'll just drone strike me. Oh, well, you know, I like the ideas you have, but they're far-fetched. I mean, that's not worth in the past. Oh, really? Yeah, these are people who are, they're, they're, they're, they're have regime brain. There's no helping them. And if you love them, these are people you love,

of course you're going to keep trying. But I mean, you know, as Thomas says, we're not Jehovah's witnesses. Yet even in such societies, individuals and groups of people exist who do not abandon politics as a vocation and who, in one way or another, strive to think independently to express themselves and in some cases even to organize politically, because that is a part of their attempt to live within the truth. The fact that these people exist and work in it in itself, work, let me start that over again. The fact that these people exist and work is in itself immensely important and worthwhile. Even in the worst of times, they maintain the continuity of political thought. In some genuine political impulse, if some genuine political impulse

emerges from this or that pre-political confrontation and is properly articulated early enough, thus increasing its chances of relative success, then this is frequently due to those isolated generals without an army who, because they have maintained the continuity of political thought in the face of enormous difficulties, can at the right moment enriches a new impulse with the fruits of their own political thinking. Once again, there is ample evidence for this in the process of, for this process in Czechoslovakia. Almost all those who were political prisoners in the early 1970s who had apparently been made to suffer in vain because of their exotic efforts to work politically among an utterly pathetic and demoralized society belong today, inevitably, among the most active

charters. In Charter 77, the moral legacy of their earlier sacrifice is valued, and they have enrich this movement with their experience and that element of political thinking. Some political, some people who are working in politics are going to drop out and work outside of politics. Oh no, but you're just abandoning the system, Joe Kent and Marjorie Taylor Green and Tulsi Gabbard. Well, is there, could, were they changing anything? Were they being locked out of meetings?

because they weren't yes men, because, oh, you can criticize Trump, but you have to remain loyal no matter what he does. People who say stuff like that, they're, I mean, I'm, that actually sounds like a straw man to some of you. But that's literally a tweet. And that person has no future at all. maybe they'll get a job in a think tank and, you know, I don't, and what, get caught up in that ideology, not be able to speak out? Continuing. And yet it seems to me that the thought and activity of those friends who had never given up direct political work and who are always ready to assume direct political responsibility very often suffer from one chronic fault, an insufficient understanding of the historical

uniqueness of the post-totelitarian system as a social and political reality. This is how often I have to tell the people closest to me that you can't change the system from within side. Oh, we're going to take over the system and you... Okay. They have little understanding of the specific nature of power that is typical for this system and therefore they overestimate the importance of direct political work in the traditional sense. Moreover, they fail to appreciate the political significance of those pre-political events and processes that provide the living humus from which genuine political change usually springs. As political actors, or rather as people with political ambitions, they frequently tried to pick

up where natural political life left off. They maintain models of behavior that may have been appropriate and more normal political circumstances, and thus, without really being aware of it, they bring an outmoded way of thinking, old habits, conceptions, categories, and notions to bear on circumstances that are quite new and radically different without first giving adequate thoughts of the meaning and substance of such things in the new circumstances, to which politics as such means now, to what sort of thing can have political impact and potential, and in what way? Because such people have been excluded from the structures of power and are no longer able to influence those structures directly, and because they remain faithful to the traditional notions

of politics established in more or less democratic societies or in classical dictatorships, they frequently, in a sense, lose touch with reality. I don't want to name names, but a lot of you listening to this know what I'm talking about. I know who I'm talking about. Why make compromises with reality? they say when none of our proposals will ever be accepted anyway. Thus they find themselves in a world of genuine utopian thinking. You're never going to have the perfect people.

You're never going to have the perfect. Even a marriage is between two fallen creatures and you wonder why being married is so hard. You take a sip. Going on. As I have already tried to indicate, however, genuinely far-reaching political events do not emerge from the same sources and in the same way in the post-sotelitarian system as they do in a democracy. And if a large portion of the public is indifferent to, even skeptical of, alternative political models and programs and the private establishment of opposition political parties,

this is not merely because there is a general feeling of apathy toward public affairs and a loss of that sense of higher responsibility. In other words, it is not just a consequence of the general demoralism. There is also a bit of healthy social instinct at work in this attitude. It is as if people sensed intuitively that nothing is what it seems any longer. As the saying goes, and that from now on, therefore, things must be done entirely differently as well. So glad I read this. I forgot this existed until recently. In some of the most important political impulses in Soviet bloc countries in recent years have come initially, that is,

before being felt on the level of actual power, from mathematicians, philosophers, physicians, writers, historians, ordinary workers, and so on, more frequently than from politicians, and if the driving force behind the various dissonant movements comes from so many people in non-political professions, this is not because these people are more clever than those who see themselves primarily as politicians.

It is because those who are not politicians are also not so bound by traditional political thinking in political habits and therefore, paradoxically, they are more aware of genuine political reality and more sensitive to what can and should be done under the circumstances. I feel like I don't even have to comment in most of this. There is no way around it. No matter how beautiful an alternative political model can be, it can no longer speak to the hidden sphere, inspire people in society, call for real political ferment.

The real sphere of potential politics in the post-Satilitarian system is elsewhere. In the continuing and cruel tension between the complex demands of that system and the aims of life, that is, the elementary need of human beings to live, to a certain extent at least in harmony with themselves. That is, to live in a bearable way, not to be humiliated by their superiors and officials, not to be continually watched by the police, to be able to express themselves freely, to find an outlet for their creativity, to enjoy legal security, and so on. Think about how much weaponized migration affects that. He can talk about that in his society because his society is Czechoslovakian.

When you apply that here, when you hear that here, it's immediately like, yeah, but, I mean, we can't do that for everyone. you know, shit. That's kind of the whole thinking outside the box thing, isn't it? Anything that touches this field concretely, anything that relates to this fundamental omnipresent and living tension will inevitably speak to people. Abstract projects for an ideal political or economic order

do not interest them to anything like the same extent. And rightly so, not only because everyone knows how little chance they have of succeeding, but also because today people feel that the less political policies are derived from the concrete and human here and now, and the more they fix their sights on an abstract someday, the more easily they can degenerate into new forms of human enslavement. People who live in the post-totelitarian system know only too well that the question of whether one or several political parties are in power and how these parties define and label themselves is of far less importance than the question of whether or not it is possible to live like a human being.

It's the Democrats. It's the Republicans. Can I live historically? Both of them, no. One might get out of your way a little more, but still, no. To shed the burden of traditional political categories and habits and open oneself up fully to the world of human existence and then to draw political conclusions only after having analyzed it, This is not only politically more realistic, but at the same time, from the point of view of an ideal state of affairs, politically more promising as well. A genuine profound and lasting chance for the better, as I shall attempt to show, can no longer result from the victory, where such a victory possible, of any particular traditional political conception, which can ultimately be only external, that is, a structural or systematic conception.

More than ever before, such a change will have to derive from human existence, from the fundamental reconstitution of the position of the people in the world, their relationships to themselves and to each other, and to the universe. You're going to have to feel an existential dread before you're willing to really make the kind of change that can affect the outside world. If a better economic and political model is to be created, then perhaps more than ever, before it must derive from profound existential and moral changes in society. I didn't even look ahead.

This is not something that can be designed and introduced like a new car. If it is to be more than just a new variation of the old degeneration, it must above all be an expression of life and the process of transforming itself. A better system will not automatically ensure a better life. In fact, the opposite is true. Only by creating a better life can a better system be developed. We say this. This is something we say all the time. All the time.

You're going to have the most perfect system. But if you haven't fixed you, what are you going to benefit from? Once more, I repeat that I am not underestimating the importance of political thought and conceptual political work. On the contrary, I think that Jay, genuine political thought and genuine political work is precisely what we continually fail to achieve. If I say genuine, however, I have in mind the kind of thought and conceptual work that has freed itself of all traditional political schemata that have been imported into our circumstances from a world that will never return. And whose return, even were it possible, would provide no permanent solution to the most important problems. We're moving forward, people.

The only way out is through and what's on the other side is going to be new. I didn't mean for that to run. Thinking that we're going back, show me. Show me where that happened. The second and fourth internationals, like many other political powers and organizations, may naturally provide significant political support for various efforts of ours, but neither of them can solve our problems for us. They operate in a different world and are a product of different circumstances.

Their theoretical concepts can be interesting and instructive to us, but one thing is certain. We cannot solve our problems simply by identifying with these organizations, MAGA, America First, the organization I'm a part of that's not just identifying with them is not going to solve your problem. Throwing up a vote is not going to solve a problem. And the attempt in our country to place what we do in the context of some of the discussions that dominate political life in democratic societies often seems like sheer folly. For example, is it possible to talk seriously about whether we want to change the system or merely reform it? In the circumstances under which we live, this is a pseudo-problem, since for the time being, there is simply no way we can accomplish either

goal. We are not even clear about where reform ends and change begins. We know from a number of harsh experiences that neither reform nor changes in itself a guarantee of anything. We know that ultimately it is all the same to us whether or not the system in which we live in the light of a particular doctrine appears changed or reformed. Our concern is whether we can live with dignity in such a system, whether it serves people rather than people serving it. I think that it can be both. But, you know, that's my opinion. We are struggling to achieve. this with the means available to us and the means it makes sense to employ. Western journalists submerged in the political banalities in which they live may label our approach as overly legalistic,

as overly legalistic, as too risky, revisionist, counter-revolutionary, bourgeois, communist, or as two right-wing or left-wing. He hit everything, didn't he? But this is the very last thing interests us. One concept that is a constant source of confusion chiefly because it has been imported into our circumstances from circumstances that are entirely different is the concept of an opposition. What exactly is an opposition in the post-Sotelitarian system? In democratic societies with the traditional parliamentary system of government, political opposition is understood as a political force on the level of actual power, most frequently a party or coalition of parties. which is not a part of the government.

It offers an alternative political program. It has ambitions to govern, and it is recognized and respected by the government and power as a natural element in the political life of the country. It seeks to spread its influence by political means and competes for power on the basis of agreed upon legal regulations. In addition to this form of opposition, there exists the phenomenon of the extra-parliamentary opposition,

which again consists of forces organized more or less on the level of actual power, but which operate outside the rules created by the system and which employ different means than are usual within the framework. In classical dictatorships, the term opposition is understood to mean the political forces, which have also come out with an alternative political program. They operate either legally or on the outer limits of legality, but in any case, they cannot compete for power within the limits of some agreed upon regulations, or the term opposition may be applied to forces preparing for violent confrontation

with the ruling power, or who feel themselves to be in the state of confrontation already, such as various guerrilla groups or liberation movements. An opposition in the post-Satilitarian system does not exist in any of these senses. In what way, then, can the term be used? One. Occasionally the term opposition is applied, mainly by Western journalists, to persons or groups inside the power structure who find themselves in a state of hidden conflict with the highest authorities.

The reason for this conflict may be certain differences, not very sharp differences, naturally, of a conceptual nature, but more frequently it is quite simply a longing for power or a personal antipathy to others who represent that power. That almost sounds like controlled opposition. Two, opposition here can also be understood as everything that does or can have an indirect political effect in the sense already mentioned. That is, everything the post-Sotelitarian system feels threatened by, which in fact means everything it is threatened by.

In this sense, the opposition is every attempt to live within the truth from the Green Grocer's refusal to put the slogan in his window to a freely written poem. In other words, everything in which the genuine aims of life go beyond the limits placed on them by the aims of the system. That's the war that we've been at for 100 years. as to war that's been waged upon us for 100 years. And we've lost. So far.

More frequently, however, the opposition is usually understood, again largely by Western journalists, as groups of people who make public their non-conformist stances in critical opinions, who make no secret of their independent thinking and who, to a greater or lesser degree, consider themselves a political force. In this sense, the notion of an opposition, more or less, less overlaps with the notion of dissent, although, of course, there are great differences in the degree to which that label is accepted or rejected. It depends not only on the extent to which these people understand their power as a direct political force and on whether they have ambitions to participate

in actual power, but also on how each of them understands the notion of an opposition. Again, here is an example. In its original declaration, Charter 77 emphasized that it was not an opposition because it had no intention of presenting an alternative political program. It sees its mission as something quite different, for it has not presented such programs. In fact, if the presenting of an alternative program defines the nature of an opposition in post-Italitarian states, then the Charter cannot be considered an opposition. The Czechoslovak government, however, had considered Charter 77 as an expressly oppositional association from the very beginning and has treated it accordingly.

This means that the government, and this is only natural, understands the term opposition more or less as I defined it in point Z, which that is, as everything that manages to avoid total manipulation, and which therefore denies the principle that the system has an absolute claim on the individual. If we accept this definition of opposition, then of course we must, along with the government, consider the Charter a genuine opposition because it represents a serious challenge to the integrity of the post-Satilitarian system, founded as it is on the universality of living within a lie. The Charter 77 is basically, you know, we're not going to live a lie anymore. We're going to live how we want. And from what it sounds like, it sounds like there are people who were going to live their truth, quote unquote. There were people who were going to be religious and tread and they were going to be basically everyone was like if you had a grievance, if you were like, I want to live. I want to live like I want to live historically, it sounds like, or, you know, I want to live in the presence or, you know, it. At this point in their history, any of that is a rebellion because they can only live their lives as the green grocer.

It is a different matter, however, when we look at the extent to which individual... Yeah, let me see if we accept. Okay. I'm sorry, trying to make sure. There we go. It is a different matter, however, when we look at the extent to which individual significant of Charter 77 think of themselves as an opposition. Okay, here we go. My impression is that most based their understanding on the term opposition on the traditional meaning of the word as it

became established in democratic societies or in classical dictatorships. Therefore, they understand opposition, even in Czechoslovakia, as a politically defined force, which, although it does not operate on the level of actual power and even less within the framework of certain rules respected by the government would still not reject the opportunity to participate in actual power, because it has, in a sense, an alternative political program whose proponents are prepared to accept direct political responsibility for it. Very important. Given this notion of an opposition, some charterist, the great majority, do not see themselves in this way. Others, a minority, do, even though they fully respect the fact that there is no room within Charter 77 for

oppositional activity in this sense. At the same time, however, perhaps every chartist is familiar enough with the specific nature of conditions in the post-Satilitarian system to realize it is not only the struggle for human rights that has its own peculiar political power, but incomparably more innocent activities as well, and therefore they can be understood as an aspect of opposition. No chartists can really object to being considered in opposition in this case. There is another circumstance, however, that considerably complicates matters. For many decades, the power-ruling society in the Soviet bloc has used to label opposition as the blackest of indictments as synonymous with the word enemy.

To brand someone a member of the opposition is tantamount to saying he is trying to overthrow the government and put an end to socialism, naturally in the pay of the imperialists. See that? It's like whenever you'll hear, oh, you know, we need to break Zionist power and, you know, Iran should get to live. Third worldist. Oh, you're a Putin stooge. It's no different. This is, nothing changes.

It's the same. The reason to study history is because these people use the same tactics over and over again. There have been times when this label led straight to the gallows, and of course this does not encourage people to apply the same label to themselves. Moreover, it is only a word, and what is actually done is more important than how it is labeled. The final reason why many rejects such a term is because there is something negative about the notion of an opposition. People who so define themselves do so in relation to a prior position. In other words, they relate themselves specifically to the power that rules society and through it, define themselves deriving their own position from the position of the regime.

For people who have simply decided to live within the truth, to say aloud what they think, to express their solidarity with their fellow citizens, to create as they want and simply to live in harmony with their better self, it is naturally disagreeable to feel required to define their own original and positive position negatively in terms of something else, and to think of themselves primarily as people who are against something, not simply as people who are what they are. I think that that's something that a lot of people fall into. A lot of people who would call themselves dissidents fall into that, where they're primarily

identifying themselves as what they're against. I'm an anti-insert word there. Instead of I'm just a man. I'm a Catholic. I'm a Presbyterian. I'm Orthodox. I'm a father. I'm a husband.

It's always what they're against. And that's negativity. And negativity, you know, people say, oh, that's blackpilling. That's blackpilling. To be seen as some, to see your identity as just being against something. I don't see myself that way at all.

You do have an enemy, but I don't let that define me. Do I talk about the enemy? Sure. I'm not going to sleep at night thinking about them and waking up first thing in the morning and thinking about them. the overwhelming majority of my day has spent living my life doing what i want to do spending it spending

time with people i want to spend time with reading what i want to read saying what i want to say and genuinely enjoying my life i i want more people to live like that anger you know i tried to speak out about anger and hate. Not because, oh, it's, it's rude to hate people from like a regime standpoint, but it's detrimental to you. It definitely clouds your thinking. One last paragraph here. Obviously, the only way to avoid misunderstanding is to say clearly, before one starts using

them, in what sense the terms opposition and members of the opposition are being used. and how they are in fact to be understood in our circumstances. You don't even have to use the term opposition. You can call yourself something. You can say, this is what I am, this is what I stand for. And as long as it's against what the regime pushes, you're the opposition. They know it.

They'll feel it. It's just that you have to get to the point where you literally don't give a shit what they think or what anyone else thinks. That's it. We are up to part 13. We will start part 13 on the next reading of this, and we're about halfway done. So, yeah. Thank you for listening and, yeah, comment, especially supporters who will get this early.

Love to hear your comments on this because I think it, although it's not, although he's living in Czechoslovakia in the Soviet block, I think there's so much, so much here that we can use and apply. And there's just some universal truths. So that's it. Talk to you on the next episode. Take care. All right. I want to welcome everyone back to the Peking.

Yon-No show, we're going to pick up where we left off on part three of Fakhlavals, the power of the powerless. We finished part 12, and we were going to jump right into part 13. So picking up where we left off. If the term opposition has been imported from democratic societies into the post-totelitarian system without general agreement on what the world means in conditions that are so different, then the term dissident was, on the contrary, chosen by Western journalists and is now generally accepted as the label for a phenomenon peculiar to the post-totelitarian system and almost never

occurring, at least not in that form, in democratic societies. Yeah, I mean, this is a term we just picked up from them. It's true, the Western press came up with that term for, it's a cold, war term. So if you want to leave Cold War thinking behind, you know, maybe the term dissident is one to be left behind. But you can't really tell people what to do. You know, they're going to call themselves or call other people what they want to call them. You know, it's just a matter of, is it a slur or is it, you know, just a description? So anyway, he's talking, of course, in terms of what he calls a post-totelitarian society, a post-sotelitarian system, which I hope this is proving to,

proving to you that there are many similarities and possibly solutions. So he asked the question, who are these dissidents? It seems that the term is applied primarily to citizens of the Soviet bloc who have decided to live within the truth and who, in addition, meet the following criteria. 1. They express their nonconformist positions and critical opinions publicly and systematically, within the very strict limits available to them, and because of this, they are known in the West.

2. Despite being unable to publish at home, and despite every possible form of persecution by their governments, they have, by virtue of their attitudes, managed to win a certain esteem, both from the public and from their government, and thus they actually enjoy a very limited and very strange degree of indirect actual power in their own milieu as well. This either protects them from the worst forms of persecution, or at least it ensures that if they are persecuted,

it will mean certain political complications for their government. The most immediate thing that I can think of here is the lotus eaters in England. they say things that are, well, get other people visits. And I think it has something to do with the fact that they are very high profile. To crack down upon them is not the best optics. It's easier to crack down on somebody who just posted something mean on Twitter or Facebook. But they're high profile. And you would have to assume at this point, and we've seen it with certain people in parliament, that they have friends on the inside.

So it's the closest thing that I could think of when I read this. The horizon of their critical, this is part three, three of this list. The horizon of their critical attention and their commitment reaches beyond the narrow context. of their immediate surroundings or special interest to embrace more general causes, and thus, their work becomes political in nature, although the degree to which they think of themselves as a direct political force may vary in a great deal. Remember, this is a very, this is a diverse group. They're not all right or far left or center or just artists or artisans.

all of these people came together in some form of solidarity. They are people who lean toward, which leads you to, you know, wonder if the, you know, the elites studying how they were able to do that and be able to remain cohesive is how they had to, in this country, at least, turn up the heat on on race wars and anarcho tyranny and just so that the idea that there are people who have opposing beliefs to you but still want to may have a similar end goal well enough people have been brandwashed especially on what they call the left culturally that they just want to kill anybody who's to the right of Bernie Sanders. It makes it kind of impossible. And then you throw in the diaspora politics of Jews and Somalis and Central Americans

and especially Indians now. And really there are very few groups that are there are. And then you look at what would be called, quote, unquote, the right, and anything that Connink sees to their right. You know, this is the pro-Israel, the Christian Zionists, anything that they see to their right, or especially anybody who isn't on the Israel bandwagon, they need to cancel. so they're not going to putting together a coalition on at least people who would nominally or nominally on the right with people who are actually on the right makes it impossible because the nominal people are going to cancel are going to seek to cancel the people because they have power the people who are on the right and the people who are on the right aren't going to trust them because they have a history of canceling. people on the right. So yeah, you kind of get the idea that because this could work in Czech, in Czechoslovakia at the time, it's not going to, they've designed it or at least engineered it. It's a better word to use, one that we use all the time, engineered it so that,

um, disparate left groups, quote unquote, left groups will align with each other. against anyone that they see as being to the right of whoever their leftist poll star is. Four, they are people who lean toward intellectual pursuits, that is, they are writing people, people for whom the written word is the primary and often the only political medium they command, and that can gain them attention, particularly from abroad. Other ways in which they seek to live within the truth are either lost to the foreign observer in the elusive local milieu or if they reach beyond this local framework, they appear to be only somewhat less visible, by only somewhat less visible, compliments to what they have written.

So there's a lot in that sentence that you can pull into the modern day. So writing, sure, we have guys that write. I mean, I miss Eman every day. The guy was a prolific writer, probably wrote five articles a week. But also we'd be talking about podcasters, people like that. Apparently a lot of people who think that this administration is there to save them don't really like podcasters. And there's always that one group that has decided that they're going to align with the regime and power that whenever somebody is critical or says that they,

they're not doing enough, well, they're going to go on the attack. Also, seek to live within truth, foreign observers. So one of the things that you had in check, and obviously from what I've read so far, is that they're relying upon support from the West, the quote-unquote West. I mean, the West is dead at this point, but there's still a cold war going on. So if, if you're you have people behind enemy lines who are saying, yeah, we don't like what's going on here. We don't like the Soviet rule. We don't like this communism. They can appeal to people in other, you know, in the quote unquote West who will give them support.

If not monetarily or materially, they'll tell their story publicly. Again, I'm sure some of the engineers learned from that. And we pretty much hear because also America is the quote-unquote superpower, no one from the outside is coming to save us. And then you have people in like Great Britain or England, say, who blame the United States and say the United States is the ultimate enemy because we're responsible for doing this to them. the Russia-Ukraine war, backing Israel, all of it, trade tariffs, all this stuff.

But, and sure, the argument can be made. Even Yaki made that argument after the war. But we're not doing that. We don't want to do it. We want to see Europe thrive as most of the population. up until a certain point were of people who came here were derived from European extraction.

So, I think there's something inside that wants us to see them thrive. We also know that things are more peaceful when Europe is thriving. We would see, we would just see if, if Germany became German again and France became French again and England became English again,

while that that hidden hand of power they're not going to be able to pull the strings that they do like they've been doing in Europe since what they've been doing to the allied allies forces after

from World War II and basically what they've done to us so while they're you know begging for people to tell their story from the outside, we don't have that option. No one's going to, no one's coming to save us from somewhere else. No one's going to shine a light on, no other country is going to shine a light on what's going on. Sure, there are groups out there that are fighting our enemy, but we are not allowed to cheer them on because, well, I mean,

you can't back the terrorists, you know. Remember, one man's terrorist, another man's freedom fighter. I'm sure the English considered the colonist terrorist, you know, during the revolution. But, yeah. So just a couple things from that one, that one paragraph there. Yeah, the, um, there's no reaching out to, no one's coming to save us from the outside. And the whole writing thing and how they, if they would have had podcasting,

it would have been interesting to see what kind of means that the communist leadership would have done to make sure that none of that got out. Basically, if the internet was available, they would have most likely had to cut it. So, we've seen that, and that could be coming in other areas, too. Five, regardless of their actual vocations, these people are talked about in the West more frequently in terms of their activities as committed citizens or in terms of the critical political aspects for their work than in terms of the real work they do in their own fields. From personal experience, I know that there is an invisible line you cross without even wanting

to or becoming aware of it, beyond which they cease to treat you as a writer who happens to a concerned citizen and begin talking of you as a dissident, who almost incidentally in his spare time perhaps happens to write plays as well. There are definitely lines that are crossed in our society when you have a public voice, no matter how small or how large, there are lines that if you cross them that you have become a dissident, not only a dissident, you've basically become an enemy. So unquestionably, there are people who meet all of these criteria. What is debatable is whether we should be using a special term for a group defined in such an essentially accidental way, and specifically whether they should be called dissidents.

It does happen, however, and there is clearly nothing we can do about it. It does happen, however, and there is clearly nothing we can do about it. Sometimes to facilitate communication, we even use the label ourselves, although it is done with distaste, rather ironically, and almost always in quotation marks. Aphelia. Perhaps it is now appropriate to outline some of the reasons why dissidents themselves are not very happy to refer to in this way. In the first place, the word is problematic from an etymological point of view. A dissident, we are told in our press, means something like renegade or backslider.

But dissidents do not consider themselves renegades for the simple reason that they are not primarily denying or rejecting anything. On the contrary, they have tried to affirm their own human identity, and if they reject anything at all, then it is merely what was false and alienating in their lives, that aspect of living within a lie. Let's take a sip. Once again, we go back to the fact that you can call yourself an activist, you can call yourself a community organized or you can call yourself whatever you want but if you're not first

seeking to live historically or what he says to not live the lie then you're what are you doing your your motive what are your motivations for doing what you're doing if somebody asks why you're doing what you're doing what's your answer somebody who's actually now living as such that they're not willing to live the lie, they're not willing to put the sign in the window. Well, now they're starting to live exactly what they believe and who they are. Continuing. But that is not the most important thing. The term dissident frequently implies a special profession as if, along with the more normal vocations,

there were another special one grumbling about the state of things. In fact, the dissident is simply a physical. a sociologist, a worker, a poet, individuals who are doing what they feel they must, and, consequently, who find themselves in open conflict with the regime. The conflict has not come about through any conscious intention on their part, but simply through the inner logic of their thinking, behavior, or work, often confronted with external circumstances more or less beyond their control. They have not, in other words, consciously decided to be professional malcontent, rather as one decides to be a tailor or a blacksmith.

In fact, of course, they do not usually discover they are dissidents until long after they have actually become one. Descent springs from motivations far different from the desire for titles or fame. In short, they do not decide to become dissidents, and even if they were to devote 24 hours a day to it, it would still not be a profession but primarily an existential attitude. Moreover, it is an attitude that is in no way the exclusive property of those who have earned themselves the title of dissident just because they happen to fulfill those accidental external conditions already mentioned. There are thousands of nameless people who try to live within the truth and millions who

want to but cannot, perhaps only because to do so in the circumstances in which they live, they would need ten times the courage of those who have already taken the first step. If several dozen are randomly chosen from among all these people and put into a special category, this can utterly distort the general picture. It does so in two different ways. Either it suggests dissidents or a group of prominent people, a protected species who are permitted to do things, others are not, and whom the government may even be cultivating as living proof of its generosity, or it lends support to the illusion that since there is no more than a handful of malcontents to whom not very much is really being done,

done, all the rest are therefore content. For were they not so, they would be dissidents too. Oh, there's so much right there. So much right there. I mean, either it suggested dissidents or a group of prominent people and protected species who were permitted to do these things. Others are not in whom the government may even be cultivating as living proof of its generosity.

the paid influencer comes to mind. The person who is paid to act as a dissident, but they're telling you not to go against the regime. There are many of those. There are always those, as a matter of fact. It doesn't matter if Joe Biden is president or if Donald Trump is president. It doesn't matter who's president. There are many of those.

And then, of course, it supports the illusion that since there is no more than a handful of these, then you don't have to worry too much about it because, you know, everybody would be coming a dissident. Well, I mean, I guess the great, I guess if you brought up the great noticing, does that mean that people are becoming dissidents? No, it means that people are starting to realize what their ancestors realized. But of course, what do they do? They just say, oh, it's just this guy over here. And they just name a few people.

I say, it's just them. They're stirring up people. The rest of the people commenting on social media are just bots. You know, ignore what you're hearing at gatherings. You know, that people are making jokes that they weren't making five, ten years ago. Yeah, this is very important. This is, that is very, that last part of this paragraph is very pertinent to what's going on today. And what will always go on while this regime is in power for sure.

And all regimes. Let's face it, you're always going to have some people that are not happy, but I think that it reaches a tipping point often. and they pull you back into another war. And, you know, if you're not cheerleading the war, then you're against the president or you're un-American or you just hate Jews. Well, it's what they do. That's how they do it.

He continues, but that is not it at all. This categorization also unintentionally supports the impression that the primary concern of these dissidents is some vested interests that they share as a group, as though their entire argument with the government were no more than a rather abstruse conflict between two opposed groups, a conflict that leaves society out of it altogether. But such an impression profoundly contradicts the real importance of dissident attitude, which stands or falls on its interest in others, in what ill society as a whole. In other words, on an interest in all the way.

those who do not speak up. If dissidents have any kind of authority at all, and if they have not been exterminated long ago like exotic insects, they have appeared where they have no business being, then this is not because the government holds this exclusive group and their exclusive ideas in such awe, but because it is perfectly aware of the potential political power of living within the truth rooted in the hidden spheres, and well aware, too, of the kind of world dissent grows out of, and the world it addresses, the everyday human world, the world of daily tension between the aims of life and the aims of the system. Can there be any better evidence to this than the government actions after Charter 77 appeared when it launched a campaign to compel the entire

nation to declare that Charter 77 was wrong? those millions of signatures proved, among other things, that just the opposite was true. The political organs and the police do not lavish such enormous attention on dissidents, which may give the impression that the government fears them as they might fear an alternative power click, because they actually are such a power click, but because they are ordinary people with ordinary cares, differing from the rest only in that they say aloud what the rest cannot say or are afraid to say. I have already mentioned Solcheneason's political influence. It does not reside in some exclusive political power he possesses as an individual,

but in the experience of those millions of gulag victims, which he simply amplified and communicated to millions of other people of goodwill. When it comes down to it, the person who is going to be most influential in moving society as somebody who is speaking for them to. It can't be that. That doesn't mean that you're expecting them to rise up with you, but you suspect that they no longer want to put the sign in the window as well. And there are distinct metaphysical advantages to that

when you're fighting against an oppressive regime. I know a lot of people don't want to believe that. A lot of people don't have a metaphysics. A lot of people don't believe in anything, spiritual, religious, Christian. But then you still can see how the spirit of the age overtakes somebody. And then you have to explain that away if you don't believe in spiritual or metaphysical things. how do you explain the trans how that the trans thing just takes off as anything other than a mind virus anything other than a spiritual a spiritual matter how do you explain the French Revolution

the Bolshevik the Bolshevik takeover. How do you get so many people to fall in line with that? Well, when you have, if those people, instead of deciding that they were going to become murderous demons,

decided they were going to live as Christians and live as Orthodox Christians and be damned, let this small group of people. Who knows how, how much faster that could have been stopped.

I don't think it could have been stopped because I think that just this is what happens. This is how history marches on. But you don't need to be a Jehovah's Witness and being out there trying to recruit as many people as possible to start a movement. You just have to get people to start living the ideas behind it in their personal lives. That's why people ask me all the time.

They're like, well, why do you, you know, if you believe in like a vanguard and a small group and a lot of the things you talk about aren't for everyone, it's like, well, I mean, I do believe that the truth I talk about is for everyone. I just don't expect everyone to be able to participate in it actively. But if you start living the truths of it, if we can get people, convince people to start living the truths of it, to start living the truths of it, to start. start living historically, that will change. It can't help it change society. It can't help but change, you know, get us out of this deracinated open-air, open-air strip mall, oligarchy, and just everything is about the zip code you live in and how many, how many commas you have in, in your bank account. People have to start living that. They don't have to do the things that we do. You don't have to put yourself on the line like a lot of us do talking about who rules over us.

Just live. Live historically. Live true. Don't live like the regime has engineered you to for the last 100, 150 years. To institutionalize a select category of well-known or prominent dissonance means, in fact, to deny the most intrinsic moral aspect of their activity. As we have seen, the dissident movement grows out of the principle of equality, found that on the notion that human rights and freedoms are indivisible. After all, did no well-known dissidents unite in KOR to defend unknown workers? And was it not precisely for this reason that they became well-known dissidents? And did not the well-known dissidents unite in Charter 77 after they had been brought together in

defense of those unknown musicians. And did they not unite in the charter precisely with them? And did they not become well-known dissidents precisely because of that? It is truly a cruel paradox that the more some citizens stand up in defense of other citizens, the more they are labeled with a word that in effect separates them from those other citizens. Yeah. Yeah.

You're, you also have to accept that some people are never going to wake up. but they're always going to be regime and toadies. This explanation, I hope, will make clear the significance of the quotation marks I put around the word dissident throughout this essay. Part 14, let me get a sip real quick. At the time when the Czech lands and Slovakia were an integral part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and when there existed neither the historical nor the political, psychological, nor social conditions that have been enabled by the Czechs and Slovak's to seek their identity. identity outside the framework of this empire.

Garag Mouserik established a Czechoslovak national program based on the notion of small-scale work. By that, he meant honest and responsible work in widely different areas of life, but within the existing social order, work that would stimulate national creativity and national self-confidence. Naturally, he placed particular emphasis on intelligent and enlightened upbringing and education and on the moral and humanitarian aspects of life. Maserick believed that the only possible starting point for a more dignified national destiny was humanity itself. Humanity's first task was to create the conditions for a more human life,

and in Maserick's view, the task of transforming the stature of the nation began with the transformation of human beings. Here we go. This notion of working for the good of the nation took root in Czechoslovak society, and in many ways it was successful and is still alive today. Along with those who exploit the notion as a sophisticated excuse for collaborating with the regime, there are still many even today who genuinely upheld the ideal and in some areas, at least, can point to indisputable achievements.

It is hard to say how much worse things would be if there were not so many hardworking people who simply refused to give up and try constantly to do the best they can, paying an unavoidable minimum to living within a lie so that they might give that utmost to the authentic needs of society. These people assume correctly that every piece of good work is an indirect criticism of bad politics and that there are situations where it is worthwhile going this route, even though it means surrendering one's natural rights to make direct criticisms. Today, however, there are very clear limitations to this attitude, even compared to the situation in the 1960s. More and more frequently, those who attempt to practice the principle of small-scale

work come up against the post-totelitarian system and find themselves facing a dilemma. Either one retreats from that position, dilutes the honesty, responsibility, and consistency on which it is based, and simply adapts to circumstances, the approach taken by the majority, or one continues on the way begun and inevitably comes into conflict with the regime, the approach taken by the minority. Not only do they come into conflict with the regime nowadays, they come into conflict with the regime toadies, the ones who have decided that they are going to,

because they think that their guy is in charge, they are going to do everything they can to destroy anyone, anyone who talks about that guy why because most of the time they don't want to take the time to live the truth a lot of times it's just a time preference thing where it's like you know they have low time preference we have to we have to do this now we it's no it all can't be if it took a hundred if it took 150 years to build it's going to take a long time to tear it down unless something dramatic happens all at once. That was the point I was making in January and February of 2025.

If the notion of small-scale work was never intended as an imperative to survive in the existing social and political structure at any cost, in which case individuals who allow themselves to be excluded from that structure would necessarily appear to have given up working for the nation, and today it is even less significant. There is no general model of behavior, that is, no neat, universally valid way of determining a point at which small-scale work ceases to be for the good of the nation and becomes detrimental to the nation. It is more than clear, however, that the danger of such a reversal is becoming more and more acute, and that small-scale work with increasing frequency is coming up against the limit beyond which avoiding conflict means compromising its very essence. If I start ranting on this, I won't be able to read anymore. But, I mean, just read that. Get this.

It's easy to find. I link to the, I link to it. Read it. It's 80 pages. You could read it in an afternoon easily. In 1974, when I was employed in a brewery, my immediate superior was a certain, was a certain, a person well versed in the art of making beer. He was proud of his profession and he wanted our brewery to brew good beer.

He spent almost all his time at work continually thinking up improvements and he frequently made the rest of us feel uncomfortable because he assumed that we loved brewing as much as he did. In the midst of the slovenly indifference to work that socialism encourages, a more constructive worker would be difficult to imagine. The brewery itself was managed by people who understood their work less and were less fond of it, but who were politically more influential. They were bringing the brewery to ruin, and not only did they fail to react to any of his suggestions, but they actually became increasingly hostile toward him and tried in every way to thwart his efforts to do a good job. This is exactly what happens when people get a little taste of power, and that they don't have the character of wanting real change. I'm in good with, I mean, they may be waging war on behalf of another country and

inflating the dollar into, you know, nothing and gases is ridiculously only more expensive and it's harder to live, but hey, I mean, they're nice to me. They retweet me. I even, they even give me money sometimes. Yeah, that's not going to work. Sorry. Eventually, the situation became so bad that he felt compelled to write a lengthy letter to the manager's superior in which he attempted to analyze the brewery's difficulties. He explained why it was the worst in the district and pointed to those responsible.

His voice might have been heard. The manager who was politically powerful but otherwise ignorant of beer, a man who loathe workers and was given to intrigue might have been replaced in conditions and the brewery might have been improved on the basis of his suggestions. Had this happened, it would have been a perfect example of small-scale work and action. Unfortunately, the precise opposite occurred. The manager of the brewery, who was a member of the Communist Party's district committee, had friends in higher places and he saw to it that the situation was resolved in his favor. The man's analysis was as a defamatory document, and he himself was labeled a political saboteur.

He was thrown out of the brewery and shifted to another one where he was given a job requiring no skill. Here the notion of small-scale work had come up against the wall of the post-sotilitarian system. By speaking the truth, he had stepped out of line, broken the rules, cast himself out, and he ended up as a sub-citizen, stigmatized as an enemy. He could now, say anything he wanted, but he could never, as a matter of principle, expect to be heard. He had become the dissident of the Eastern Bohemian Brewery. He expected more. He wasn't satisfied with just good.

I don't think he expected perfect, but he expected more. A lot of people expect more when they're promised more. Continuing. I think this is a model case, which, from from another point of view illustrates what I have already said in the preceding section. You do not become a dissident just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position

of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well and ends with being branded an enemy of society. This is why our situation is not comparable to the Austro-Hungarian Empire when the Czech nation in the worst period of box absolutism had only one real dissident, Carl Havidic, who was imprisoned in Brixton. Today, if we are not to be snobbish about it, we must admit that dissidents can be found on every street corner. To rebuke dissidents for having abandons, that's funny when some people complain.

about the message that some of us put out sometimes and we're just like, you know, if you weren't so concerned about pleasing those in power, you would realize our message is the mainstream. If not the mainstream, it's becoming the mainstream. But some people. To rebuke dissidents for having abandoned small-scale work is simply absurd. Descense is not an alternative to Messerick's name. notion. It is frequently its one possible outcome. I say frequently in order to emphasize that this is not always the case. I am far from believing that the only decent and responsible people are those

who find themselves at odds with the existing social and political structure. After all, the Brewmasters might have won his battle. To condemn those who kept their position simply because they have kept them, in other words, for not being dissidents, would be just as absurd to hold them up as an example to the dissidents. In any case, it contradicts the whole dissident attitude seen as an attempt to live within the truth if one judges human behavior, not according to what it is and whether it is good or not,

but according to the personal circumstances, such as an attempt has brought one to, such as, I really want that job. And I think if I get the job in the administration, But you can't say that. Stop saying that. People know that I know you.

Uh-huh. Check something right here. There we go. All right. Part 15. Let's take a sip first. Our green grocers attempt to live within the truth may be confined to not doing certain things.

He decides not to put flags in his window when his only motive for putting them there in the first place would have been to avoid being reported by the House Warden. He does not vote in elections that he considers false. He does not hide his opinions from his superiors. In other words, he may go no further than merely refusing to comply with certain demands made on him by the system, which of course is not an insignificant step to take. This may, however, grow into something more. The green grocer may begin to do something concrete, something that goes beyond an

immediately personal self-defensive reaction against manipulation, something that will manifest his newfound sense of higher responsibility. He may, for example, organize his fellow green grocers to act together in defense of their interests. He may write letters to various institutions, drawing their attention to instances of disorder and injustice around him. He may seek out unofficial literature, copy it, and lend it to his friends. If what I have called living within the truth is a basic existential and, of course, potentially political starting point for all those independent citizens' initiatives in dissident or opposition movements, this does not mean that every attempt to live within the truth automatically belongs in this category. On the contrary,

in its most original and broad a sense living within the truth covers a vast territory whose outer limits are vague and difficult to map, a territory full of modest expressions of human volition, the vast majority of which will remain anonymous and whose political impact will probably never be felt are described any more concretely than simply as a part of a social climate or mood. Most of these expressions remain elementary revolts against manipulation. You simply strengthen your backbone and live in greater dignity as an individual. Here and there, thanks to the nature, the assumptions and the professions of some people, but also thanks to a number of accidental circumstances,

such as a specific nature of the local milieu, friends, and so on, a more coherent and visible initiative may emerge from this wide and a wide and anonymous hinterland, an initiative that transcends merely individual revolt and is transformed into more conscious, structured, and purposeful work. The point where a living within the truth ceases to be a mere negation of living with a lie and becomes articulate in a particular way is the point at which something is born that might be called the independent spiritual, social, and political life of society. This is the person who, um, when you, when you, um, when you, when you, um, when you say something and they say and you go yeah that won't work and you go well what are you doing

I'm doing something I might be doing something right now that um you know is behind the scenes and may work in the future may but my whole life is not just complaining on social media my whole life is not just chimping out on social media actually doing things whether they're significant enough to make a change. It's questionable. But at least I think there's a plan. And my plan is not to spend 12 hours a day on Twitter or Facebook. Still go on there. Still comment. Less important to me. Less important. Because I'm beginning to understand more the concept of having to live this, then just talk about it. You have to start somewhere.

Sometimes the start does happen on social media, but eventually you're going to have to get off social media. Because it becomes what Ted Kaczynski called a surrogate activity where you think you need to accomplish something and you think you're accomplishing something, but you're actually not. It's surrogate. It's a replacement for actual action. And that's important to remember too. This independent life is not separated from the rest of life, which is he calls dependent life, by some sharply defined line. Both types frequently coexist in the same people. Nevertheless,

its most important focus is marked by a relatively high degree of inner emancipation. It sails upon the vast ocean of the manipulated life like little boats, tossed by the waves, but always bobbing back as visible messengers of living within the truth, articulating the suppressed aims of life. Evidence. It's talking about evidence. What is this independent life of society? The spectrum of its expressions and activities is naturally very wide.

It includes everything from self-education and thinking about the world through free creative activity and its communication to others to the most varied free civic attitudes, including instances of independent social self-organization. In short, it is an area in which living within the truth becomes articulate and materializes in a visible way. Thus what will later be referred to as citizens' initiatives, dissident movements, or even oppositions emerge, like the proverbial one-tenth of the iceberg visible above the water, from that area from the independent life of society. In other words, just as the independent life of society develops out of living within the truth in the widest sense of the word, as a distinct articulated expression of that life, so dissident gradually emerges from the independent life of society. society. Yet there is a marked difference. If the independent life of society externally at least can be understood as a higher form of living within the truth, it is far less certain that the dissonant

movements are necessarily a higher form of the independent life of society. They are simply one manifestation of it, and though they may be the most visible and at first glance the most political and most clearly articulated expression of it, they are far from necessarily being the most mature, the most important, not only in the general social sense, but even in terms of direct political influence. In other words, by the people who are not doing the things that I'm doing and that my friends are doing by living historically and living the truth, you are actually, you can't point, you won't be able to point to us and, you know, when we win, when we eventually, when our, the way we think takes over, which will be, I'll probably be gone. I'm fine with that. You won't be able to just

point to us. It'll be you. As a matter of fact, most of that energy, most of that spiritual energy, most of that metaphysical energy will have come from you because you've made a decision to change the spirit. And now the age turns. After all, dissent has after all dissent has been artificially removed from its place of birth by having been given a special name. In fact, however, it is not possible to think of it's separated from the whole background out of which it develops, of which it is an integral part, and from which it draws all its vital strength. In any case, it follows from what has already been said about the peculiarities of the post-Satilitarian system, that what appears to be the most political of forces in a given moment,

and what thinks of itself in such terms need not necessarily, in fact, be such a force. The extent to which it is a real political force is due exclusively to its pre-political context. What follows from this description? Nothing more and nothing less than this. It is impossible to talk about what, in fact, dissidents do and the effect of their work without first talking about the work of all those who, in one way or another, or another, take part in the independent life of society and who are not necessarily dissidents at all. They may be writers who write as they wish without regard for censorship or official demands

and who issue their work when official publishers refuse to print it as Samistad. They may be philosophers, historians, sociologists, and all those who practice independent scholarship and if it is impossible through official or semi-official channels who also circulate their work in Samistat or who organized the private discussions, lectures, and seminars. They may be teachers who privately teach young people things that are kept from them in the state schools. Clergymen who either in office or if they are deprived of their charges outside it try to carry on a free religious life, painters, musicians and singers who practice their work regardless of how it is looked upon by official institutions. Everyone who shares this

independent culture and helps to spread it. People who, using the means available to them, try to express and defend the actual social interests of workers to put real meaning back into trade unions or to form independent ones. People who are not afraid to call to the attention of officials to cases of injustice and who strive to see that the laws are observed, and the different groups of young people who try to extricate themselves from manipulation, and live in their own way, in the spirit of their own hierarchy of values. The list could go on. Very few would think of calling all these people dissidents, and yet are not the well-known dissidents, simply people like them? Are not all these activities, in fact, what dissidents do as well?

Do they not produce scholarly works and publish it in Somistat? Do they not write plays and novels and poems? Do they not lecture to students in private universities? Do they not struggle against various forms of injustice and attempt to ascertain and express the genuine social interests of various sectors of the population? After having tried to indicate the sources, the inner structure, and some aspects of the dissonant attitude as such, I have clearly shifted my viewpoint from outside, as it were, to an investigation of what these dissidents actually do, how their initiatives are manifested, and where they lead. It's talking about all of you, talking about everyone. The first conclusion to be drawn then is that the original and most important sphere of activity,

one that predetermines all the others, is simply an attempt to create and support the independent life of society as an articulated expression of living within the truth. In other words, serving truth consistently, purposefully, and articulately, and organizing this service. This is only natural, after all, if living within the truth is an elementary starting point for every attempt made by people to oppose the alienating pressure of the system for if if it is the only meaningful basis of any independent act of political import and if ultimately it is also the most intrinsic existential source of the dissident attitude, then it is difficult to imagine that even manifest dissident could have any other basis than the service of truth, the truthful life, and the attempt to

make room for the genuine aims of life. if you don't like, if the term truth has been just so co-opted by, you know, I need to live my truth. And, you know, just the shittiest people replace it with live historically, as Thomas talks about. That's it. This is what we've gotten to. How do we change? How are we going to win? people need to start living historically.

It will just manifest itself in reality. People ask me all the time, what can I do? This is it. This isn't difficult. Not asking you to leave your house. You're going to have to leave your house, but I mean, I'm not asking you, just live historically. Ignore the engineering that's been put into us by this regime. by the Nuremberg system that just wants us to be a cog in the machine for the benefit of somebody

else and to just absolutely destroy us. Remember, when you look at Europe, the section of Europe that was under communist control seems to be doing better socially than those who were under the West's control or the West, but Zog's control. Why? Because they've undergone 100 years of social engineering as well. Sure, the communists would kill you, but they didn't tell you they weren't making people not be a check anymore.

Were there some terrible things like the prison experiments in Romania? Yeah. Yeah, but that wasn't the raison d'être of the regime. They didn't tell you you couldn't be Czech anymore. They didn't tell you you couldn't be Romanian anymore. You were just part of the Soviet system. They weren't trying to social engineer you out of who you are for their benefit. To a certain extent that was going to happen because the ideology was more humanistic.

But it was more obvious to people. So they hid their icons and brought them out when they were praying. They fought more against it because they knew they weren't free. where we've had a hundred years here of, hey, you know, if you can afford that house, you could live there. That zip code over there is a great zip code. You want to go on vacation, you can go on vacation. You're just not allowed to live historically. If you start talking about how you're proud of your ancestors, you're going to be shunned.

We're going to make sure that your kids don't. your kids don't adopt that attitude but it was subtle and most people didn't see it and only now people are starting to wake up to it hopefully by reading this and seeing how other people the attitudes of other people and how they did it it gives us some ideas all right be back with part five probably in a week or so and yeah thanks everybody for tuning in and I will see you on the next one. Take care. I want to welcome everyone back to the Piquignano show. This is part five of my reading of Vaclav Havel's Power of the Powerless. We are up to part 16 and I am going to jump in. The post-Sotelitarian system is mounting a total assault on

humans and humans stand against it alone, abandoned and isolated. It is therefore entirely natural that all the dissident movements are explicitly defensive movements. They exist to defend human beings and the genuine aims of life against the aims of the system. Today, the Polish group KOR, is called the Committee for Social Self-Defense. The word defense appears in the names of other similar groups in Poland. But even the Soviet Helsinki monitoring group and our own Charter 77 are clearly, defensive in nature. In terms of traditional politics, this program of defense is understandable, even though it may appear minimal, provisional, and ultimately negative. It offers no new conception,

model, or ideology, and therefore it is not politics in the proper sense of the word, since politics always assumes a positive program and can scarcely limit itself to defending someone against something. Such of you, I think, reveals the limitations of the traditional political way of looking at things. The post-Sotelitarian system, after all, is not the manifestation of a particular political line followed by a particular government. It is something radically different. It is a complex, profound, and long-term violation of society, or rather the self-violation of society. To oppose it merely by establishing a different political line and then striving for a change in government would not only be unrealistic, it would be utterly inadequate, for it would never come need.

to touching the root of the matter. For some time now, the problem has no longer resided in a political liner program. It is a problem of life itself. It is a problem of the system itself. My emphasis there. I added that if you're just listening and not reading along. It is not like, oh, we're going to use this system that is totally against us. to defend ourselves from this system.

No, they live under different, you know, Czechoslovakia lived under different circumstances. I mean, they were basically one whole totalitarian unit. Here we have different ways of operating. We have federalism, we have states, we have cities, we have counties, we have county sheriffs, it's different. You can, in many cases, separate, the system at the local level from the system at the national level. It's been done. It's still

being done through today. Your local system does not have to be the regime, the Nuremberg system, the regime. It can exist outside of it. There's a difference between us and them. Thus, defending the aims of life, defending humanity is not only a more realistic approach, since it can begin right now and is potentially more popular because it concerns people's everyday lives, at the same time, and perhaps precisely because of this, it is also an incomparably more consistent approach because it aims at the very essence of things. It aims at truth, living historically. There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand,

understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight. Sometimes you have to sink to the bottom. Unfortunately, nowadays, when you tell people, we're at the bottom and you're going to have to figure your way out, no one's coming to save you, that's black pill. That's what it's called. It's called blackbilling. Apparently, you know, if you go to the doctor and the doctor says, the doctor says, well, you have cancer, but we have treatments for it. Just telling you you have cancer is black pilling to some people. There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight.

It seems to me that today, this provisional, minimal, and negative program, the simple defense of people is in a particular sense and not merely in the circumstances in which we live, an optimal and most positive program because it forces politics to return to its only proper starting point. Proper, that is, if all the old mistakes are to be avoided, individual people. In the democratic societies where the violence done to human beings is not nearly so obvious and cruel, this fundamental revolution in politics is yet to happen. And some things will probably have to get worse there before the urgent need for that revolution is reflected in politics. It's amazing.

He could see back then what so many of us just close our eyes to now. In our world, precisely because of the misery in which we find ourselves, it would seem that politics has already undergone that transformation. The central concern of political thought is no longer abstract visions of self-reducing. deeming, positive model, and of course the opportunistic political practices that are the reverse of the same coin, but rather the people who have so far merely been enslaved by those models and their practices. Every society, of course, requires some degree of organization. Yet if that organization is to serve people and not the other way around, then people will

have to be liberated and space created so that they may organize themselves in meaningful ways. the depravity of the opposite approach in which people are first organized in one way or another by someone who always knows best what the people need, so they may then allegedly be liberated. It's something we have known on our own skins only too well. To sum up, most people who are too bound to the traditional political way of thinking see the weaknesses of the dissident movements in their purely defensive character. In contrast, I see that as their greatest strength. I believe that this is precisely where these movements supersede the kind of politics from whose point of view their program can seem so inadequate.

So he says up here, blah, blah, blah. Every society, of course, requires some degree of organization. Yet if the organization has served the people, not the other way around, then people will have to be liberal. and space created so that they may organize themselves in meaningful ways. Now, one thing that Czechoslovakia didn't have was they weren't overrun by, you know, subcontinentals and well-funded, well-organized diaspora groups. They were just dealing with a top-down totalitarianism. the people who believe that we all were dealing with is diaspora groups miss the fact that the diaspora groups

control or one of them specifically controls the top down totalitarianism and that's a foreign element whereas you will have you would have had in Czechoslovakia Russian apparatchiks who were there to oversee things it's not as obvious as it is now where you allegedly have liberty and freedom, you can still buy a house, you can still sell it, you could even make a profit on that house. But if you say the wrong thing, there's a group that can, who controls a government that can squash you, make your life unlivable, make you miserable. make you miserable. Even kill you.

But in jail. Which many ways today, when you look at the demographics of jail, is a death sentence. So not all of this corresponds. But what it does show you is that most people don't see the top-down problem. And they don't see the diaspora problem. and they think that if they get somebody at the top who can get elected, like a president, who says that he's fighting for them, but is really answering to the Diaspora group, well, that's even more complicated than what Mr. Havel was dealing with here.

17. In the dissident movements of the Soviet bloc, the defense of human beings usually take the form of a defense of human and civil rights as they are entrenched in various official documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenants on Human Rights, the concluding Act of the Helsinki Agreement, and the constitutions of individual states. These movements set out to defend anyone who is being persecuted for acting in the spirit of those rights, and they in turn act in the same spirit in their work, but insisting over and over again that the regime recognized and respect human rights and civil rights, and by drawing attention

to the areas of life where this is not the case. Their work, therefore, is based on the principle of legality. They operate publicly and openly, insisting not only that their activity is in line with the law, but that achieving respect to the law is one of their main aims. How many times have you heard somebody say, you know, if we just enforced the laws here, things would be much better. If we enforced immigration laws, if we enforced criminal, you know, violent crime law, if we just enforced the law. Yeah. I mean, we can talk about the Constitution and we can talk about all these things. They didn't even have these things. They're just. just invoking them in trying to create almost out of thin air an environment of legality.

We have legality here, but it's not enforced. So what do we do? This principle of legality, which provides both the point of departure and the framework for their activities, is common to all dissident groups in the Soviet bloc, even though individual groups have never worked out any formal agreement on that point. The circumstance raises an important question. Why in conditions where a widespread and arbitrary abuse of power is the rule, is there such a general and spontaneous acceptance of the principle of legality? On the primary level, the stress on legality is a natural expression of specific conditions that exist in the post-totelitarian system and the consequence of an elementary understanding of that specificity. If there are any,

in essence, only two ways to struggle for a free society, that is, through legal means, and through armed and unarmed revolt, then it should be obvious at once how inappropriate the latter alternative is in the post-fetalitarian system. Revolt is appropriate only when conditions are clearly and openly in motion, during a war, for example, or in situations where social or political conflicts are coming to a head. It is appropriate in a classical dictatorship that is either just setting itself up or is in a state of collapse. In other words, it is appropriate where social forces of comparable strength, for example, a government of occupation versus a nation fighting for its freedom, are confronting each other on the level of actual power, or where there is a clear distinction

between the usurpers of power and the subjugated population, or when society finds itself in a state of open crises. Which should, if you're somebody who, doesn't want civil war, that should trigger you. That should trigger something in your brain when he says that where there's a clear distinction between the usurpers of power and the subjugated population. I mean, has anybody noticed anything since October 7th? nobody wants anybody who thinks that they want violence they want like violent civil war

some people may see that as the only way that change is going to happen but I think the only people that actually really wants it are people who unfortunately feel like there is not that this could not be done any other way and they're willing to

push it and you know I've read too much about what happens in countries even modern countries when something like that kicks off and you know we have to be planning for something else or praying for something else conditions in the post-sitalitarian system except in extremely explosive situations like the one in Hungary of course percent are of course precisely the opposite. They are static and stable, and social crises, for the most part, exist only latently, though they run much deeper. Society is not sharply polarized on the level of actual political power, but as we have seen, the fundamental lines of conflict run right through each person. In this situation, no attempt at revolt could ever hope to set up even a

minimum of resonance in the rest of society, because that society is superific, submerged in a consumer rat race and wholly involved in the post-fetalitarian system, that is, participating in it and acting as agents of its automatism, and it would simply find anything like revolts unacceptable. It would interrupt the revolts as an attack upon itself, and rather than supporting the revolt, it would very probably react by intensifying its bias toward the system, since, in its view, the system can at least guarantee a certain quasi-legality. Add to this the fact that the post-Satilitarian system has at its disposal, a complex mechanism of direct and indirect surveillance that has no equal in history, and it is clear that not only would any attempt to revolt come to a dead-end politically,

but it would also be almost technically impossible to carry off. Remember how I mentioned earlier, how, you know, all you have to do is enforce the laws that are on the books. Yeah, I mean, when you, he's here talking about a, you know, a direct surveillance kind of thing. I mean, that's why this whole flock camera thing and people are like, oh, well, because my guy is in office, because my guy is president, we need. to build this system because it'll help to stop crime. I literally see videos every day on the internet of like a hundred people like mobs going into stores and ransacking the stores and I can see everyone's faces. Okay, so how we already have that. And I'm all four flock cameras if you're going to make it

completely illegal and criminal for the enemies of good, of decency, and order, if you're going to make it illegal for them to even be able to exist in this society, but then at that, so that they never get a chance to have control of those flock cameras, but then again, if that happened, we wouldn't need the flock cameras, would we? I mean, I don't get this whole thing about how, well, Trump can use them to, for what? What are you, you, how are you using them that, that, you're telling me the things that are already in place or inadequate? How is this going to help? What was the, I mean, I think they've only been able to point to one incident where a flock camera even helped find someone.

like find like a missing kid. I'm glad that kid is safe. I mean, you're literally building your panopticon if you're not going to destroy your enemy. The only reason to increase the power of the state is if you're going to use it to destroy your enemy. And that's just Machiavellian politics. Left or right. But who do you think is, who do you think will use mass surveillance, beyond what we already have, to destroy their enemy. Do you think it's going to be Republicans, or do you think it's going to be Democrat? And if you believe it's one gigantic, one-party system, then you know that if Republicans aren't going to use it and Democrats are, Republicans are going to do nothing to stop them. The only way you increase your power,

the power of the state is if you don't plan on giving that power up. End the story. I will not hear any other arguments. Anything else is foolish and emotional. Or at worst, you're being paid to do that to push that line. Most probably it would be liquidated before it had a chance to translate its intentions into action. even if revolt were possible, however, it would remain the solitary gesture of a few isolated individuals, and they would be opposed not only by a gigantic apparatus of national and

supernatural power, but also by the very society in whose name they were mounting their revolt in the first place. This, by the way, is another reason why the regime and its propaganda that had been ascribing terrorists to amazes to the dissident movements and accusing them of illegal and conspiratorial methods. Because most people are fucking retards. Most people just go along to get along. Most people are never going to take the sign out of the window. Most people are never going to say World War,

we should have never fought the war in Europe in World War II. What are they going to do? They're just going to be like, yeah, that's the guy over there that took down the flock camera. That's the guy over there who put out those flyers. That's your neighbors. Why? They know you.

And it's better for them to disassociate themselves from you now, then you get caught, and then they start asking them questions about what you were doing and if they knew what you were doing, and then they get in trouble. And let's face it, most people are just cowards. All of this, however, is not the main reason why the dissident movement support the principle of legality. The reason lies deeper in the innermost structure of the dissident attitude. This attitude is and must be fundamentally hostile toward the notion of violent change, simply because it places its faith in violence.

Generally, the dissonant attitude can only accept violence as a necessary evil in extreme situations, when direct violence can only be met by violence and where remaining passive would, in effect, means supporting violence. Let us recall, for example, that the blindness of European pacifism was one of the factors that prepared the ground for Second World War.

Sure, that's what it was. It wasn't the fucking... It was in Bolshevism basically trying to take over all of Europe and murder anyone that ever did the sign of the cross. Sure, that's what it was. Love. Let's remember that you're an artist.

And a normie? As I've already mentioned, dissidents tend to be skeptical about political thought based on the faith that profound social changes can only be achieved by bringing out regardless of the method. Changes in the system or in the government and the belief that such changes because they are considered fundamental justify the sacrifice of a less fundamental thing. In other words, human lives. Respect for a theoretical concept here outweighs respect for human life. Yet this is precisely what threatens to enslave humanity all over again. Dissant movements, as I have tried to indicate, share exactly the opposite view. They understand systematic change of something superficial, something secondary, something that in itself can guarantee nothing.

Thus, an attitude that turns away from abstract political visions of the few, toward concrete human beings and ways of defending them effectively in the here and now is quite naturally accompanied by an intensified antipathy to all forms of violence carried out in the name of a better future and by a profound belief that a future secured by violence might actually be worse than what exists now. In other words, the future would be fatally stigmatized by the very means used to secure it. I can't agree with him here. I mean, there's just maybe in the system that he's talking about,

but he just, he has, he's already proven that he has World War II brain. So, yeah, I, that's just something that you hear post-war consensus enjoyers say. No, I mean, even someone like Paul. Godfried clearly says the only way that this regime gets destroyed is through right-winged totalitarianism. That's it. Because right now it's, I mean, and he's using right-winged totalitarianism knowing what that really right and left are not even applicable anymore, but for shorthand's sake, is these people who are absolutely insane. The people who've controlled the regime for 100 years and the people who are still post-war consensus enjoyers.

They need to be destroyed. I mean, it's just, it's existential. That's what the people who don't understand, like Operation Barbarossa, they don't understand that it's an existential problem. It was an existential crisis. noticed that when Hitler went west into France were they just dropping bodies and burning

I mean no why because they were European because they understood that Europe was going to have to stand united against this threat when they went east well that's where the enemy is and you do what you have to do

he probably saved what what was Western Europe and Eastern Europe I mean genuinely Europe would have been overrun by Bolshevism if it wasn't for Adolf Hitler

if it wasn't for the Spanish win in the Spanish Civil War I think it's in arguable once you look at it when you look at it minus emotion minus the myth, minus even morality. There was an existential crisis.

Europe was going to die. And in many ways, it did anyway, because the quote-unquote standard bearers of the West at that point, which would have been the United States, sided with the barbarians. At the same time, this attitude is not to be, mistaken for political conservatism or political moderation. The dissident movements do not shy away from the idea of violent political overthrow because the idea seems too radical, but on the contrary,

because it does not seem radical enough. For them, the problem lies far too deep to be settled through mere systemic changes, either governmental or technological. Some people, faithful to the classical Marxist doctrines of the 19th century, understand our system as the hegemony of an exploited class over an exploited, over an exploited class, and operating from the postulate that exploiters never surrender their power voluntarily, they see the only solution in a revolution to sweep away the exploiters. Yeah. Naturally, they regard such things as a struggle for human rights or something hopelessly legalistic, illusory, opportunistic, and ultimately misleading, because it makes a doubtful assumption that you can negotiate in good faith with your exploiters.

on the basis of a false legality. Good assumption. The problem is that they are unable to find anyone determined enough to carry out this revolution with the result that they become bitter, skeptical, passive, and ultimately apathetic. In other words, they end up precisely where the system wants them to be. This is one example of how far one can be misled by mechanically applying in post-Satilitarian circumstances, ideological models from another world and another time. Whatever the future is going to be,

it may have echoes of the past, but it's not going to be the past. When, I mean, this was a phrase that was really popular a few years ago, but the only way out is through. We're not going back. There is not going to be a perfect, there is not going to be a based world. If you're a Christian, you know why. Because men are fallen.

Of course, one not need be an advocate of violent revolution to ask whether an appeal to legality makes any sense at all when the laws, and particularly the general laws concerning human rights, are no more than a facade, an aspect of the world of appearances, a mere game behind which lies total manipulation. Quote, they can ratify anything because they will still go ahead and do whatever they want anyway. End quote.

This is an opinion we offer an encounter. It is not true that constantly to take them at their word to appeal to laws every child knows or binding only as long as the government wishes is in the end just a kind of hypocrisy. An obstructionism and finally, just another way of playing

the game, another form of self-delusion. In other words, is the legalistic approach at all compatible with the principle of living within the truth. There is your question. Apply it to today. In other words, is the legalistic approach, is appealing to this regime, or even trying to use the structure of it,

at all compatible with the principle of living within the truth? To me, that's the greatest question that I've asked myself, and I've asked people close to me that I trust. And that's a question that needs to be answered, I think, before we can do the only way out is through thing. This question can only be answered by first looking at the wider implications of how the legal code functions in the post-hotelitarian system. Let's see how it compares to today. In a classical dictatorship, to a far greater extent that in the post-hotel, The will of the ruler is carried out directly in an unregulated fashion.

A dictatorship has no reason to hide its foundations nor to conceal the real workings of power, and therefore it need not encumber itself to any great extent with a legal code. The post-totelitarian system, on the other hand, is utterly obsessed with the need to bind everything in a single order. Life in such a state is thoroughly permeated by a dense network of regulations, proclamations, directives, norms, hooders and rules. You know, I'm starting to answer the question. It is not called the bureaucratic system without good reason. A large proportion of those norms function as direct instruments of the complex

manipulation of life that is intrinsic to the post-totelitarian system. Manipulation of life. What other term do I think? Oh, social engineering. Yeah. Individuals are reduced to little more than tiny cogs in an enormous mechanism and their significance is limited to their function in this mechanism. Their job, housing accommodation, movements, social and cultural expressions, everything, in short, must be cosseted together as

firmly as possible, predetermined, regulated, and controlled. Every aberration from the prescribed course of life is treated as error, license, and anarchy. From the cook in the restaurant who, without hard to get permission from the bureaucratic apparatus, cannot cook something special for his customers, to the singer who cannot perform his new song at a concert without bureaucratic approval, everyone in all aspects of their life is caught in this regulatory tangle of red tape, the inevitable product of the post-Satilitarian system. With ever increasing consistency, it binds all the expressions and aims of life to the spirit of its own aims, the vested interests of its own smooth, automatic operation. In a narrower sense, the legal code serves

to post-Sotelitarian system in this direct way as well. That is, it too forms a part of the world of regulations and prohibitions. At the same time, however, it performs the same service in another indirect way, one that brings it remarkably closer, depending on which level the law is involved, to ideology, and in some cases makes it a direct component of that ideology. Like ideology, the legal code functions as an excuse. It wraps the basis. It wraps the basis, exercise of power in the noble apparel of the letter of the law. It creates the pleasing illusion that justice is done, society protected, and the exercise of power objectively regulated. Have you ever thought about the fact that the rule of law

is just another myth? I mean, it's a legal code. They can be changed. It's not gospel. It's not truth. If something is ever changing, it's not Logos. All this is done to conceal the real essence of post-totelitarian legal practice, the total manipulation of society. If an outside observer who knew nothing at all about life in Czechoslovakia were to study only its laws, he would be utterly incapable of understanding what we were complaining about. The hidden political manipulation of the courts and of public prosecutors.

The limitations placed on lawyers' ability to defend their client. The closed nature de facto of trials. The arbitrary actions of the security forces, their position of authority over the judiciary, the absurdly broad application of several deliberately vague sections of that code, and of course the state's utter disregard for the positive sections of that code, the right to the citizens. All of this would remain hidden from our outside observer. The only thing he would take away would be the impression that our legal code is not much worse than the legal code of other civilized nations and not much different either,

except perhaps for certain curiosities such as the entrenchment and the Constitution of a single political party's eternal rule and the state's love for a neighboring superpower. Wow. Just wow. So if anybody looked at ours or just looked over our, I mean, all they have to do is look at the way we operate. I mean, it's much more out there. It's on TV. It's NBC and everywhere. You have two political parties instead of one. But when it comes to really, really important stuff like war and, oh, the state's love.

for a neighboring superpower. Well, not a neighboring superpower. But doesn't neighboring superpower make more sense than a country that's 6,000 miles away? And they basically are a shithole. They're basically a shithole where Christians get spit on. They use human beings as target practice. they celebrate the fact that one of their cities is the gayest city in the world. I mean, you could almost understand, or you could understand,

if you had a neighboring state that was a superpower that, and you weren't as powerful, that you'd want to be aligned with it or even, you know, align yourself with it strongly. but something that's halfway around the world and doesn't do anything for you? And it's like the girlfriend that like when you go out, she starts fights with dudes knowing that she's not going to be able to win,

you're going to have to jump in, you're going to have to fight her fights for her. Oh, wow. But that is not all. If our observer had the opportunity to study the formal side of the policing and judicial procedures and practices, how they look on paper, he would discover that for the most part, the common rules of criminal procedure are observed. Charges are laid within the prescribed period following arrest, and it is the same with detention orders. Indictments are properly delivered. The accused as a lawyer, and so on. In other words, everyone has an excuse. They have all observed the law. In reality, however, they have cruelly and pointlessly ruined a young person's life,

perhaps for no other reason than because he made Samistak copies of a novel written by a banned writer, or because the police deliberately falsified their testimony, as everyone knows, from the judge on down to the defendant. Or he said something online about, you know, a group that is, that beloved group up there that we talked about. you up or if you were trying to get a state contract and they said well have you ever protested Israel and you're like yeah fuck those guys and they're like you can't have a state contract why I'm the most qualified I also I'm also charging you less than everyone else still that's not important what's important is your attitude about Israel

Yet all of this somehow remains in the background. The falsified testimony is not necessarily obvious from the trial documents in the section of the criminal code. Dealing with incitement does not formally exclude the application of that charge to the copying of a banned novel. In other words, a legal code, at least in several areas, is no more than a facade, an aspect of the world of appearances. Then why is it there at all? For exactly the same reason as ideology is there. It provides a bridge of excuses between the system and individuals, make it easier for them to enter the power structure and serve the arbitrary demands of power. The excuse lets individuals fool themselves into thinking they are merely upholding the law and protecting society from criminals.

Without this excuse, how much more difficult it would be to recruit new generations of judges and prosecutors and interrogators. As an aspect of the world of appearances, however, the legal code deceives not. not only the conscience of prosecutors, it deceives the public, it deceives foreign observers, and it even deceives history itself. How can you live historically when it's completely distorted? Like ideology of the legal code and is essential instrument of ritual communication outside the power structure. It is the legal code that gives the exercise of power, a form, a framework, a set of rules. It is a legal code that enables all components of the system to communicate.

to put themselves in a good light to establish their own legitimacy. It provides their whole game with its rules and engineers with their technology. Can the exercise of post-totelitarian power be imagined at all without this universal ritual, making it all possible, serving as a common language to bind the relevant sectors of the power structure together? The more important the position occupied by the repressive apparatus in the power structure, the more important that it functioned according to some kind of formal code. How, otherwise, could people be so easily and inconspicuously locked up for copying banned books if there were no judges, prosecutors, interrogators, defense lawyers, court stenographers, and thick files,

and if all this were not held together by some form of order, some firm order. And above all, without that innocent-looking section rule on incitement, This could all be done, of course, without a legal code and its accessories, but only in some ephemeral dictatorship run by a Ugandan bandit, not in a system that embraces such a huge portion of civilized humankind and represents an integral, stable, and respected part of the modern world. That would not only be unthinkable, it would quite simply be technically impossible. Without the legal code functioning as a ritually cohesive, course, the post-Sotelitarian system does not exist. The legal code is no different than the post-war

consensus than the post-war myth. It's all there to have the appearance of, in our case, I guess it would be fairness, even though we all know it's that depending on how much wealth you have, you're standing in the world. And, you know, if you can appeal to, hey, you shouldn't have taken this to court, we should have taken this to the rabbis. Yeah. It's all faking gay to bring something back from a couple years ago, again. The entire role of ritual facades and excuses appears most eloquently, of course, not in the prescriptive section of the legal code, which sets out what a citizen may not do and what the grounds for prosecution are, but in the section declaring what he may do and what his or her rights are. Here, there is truly nothing but words, words, words. Yet even

that part of the code is of immense importance to the system, for it is here that the system embellishes its legitimacy as a whole before its own citizens, before schoolchildren, before the international public, and before history. The system cannot afford to disregard this because it cannot permit itself to be cast doubt upon the fundamental postulates of its ideology, which are so essential to its very existence. We have already seen how the power structure is enslaved by its own ideology and its ideological prestige. To do this would be to deny everything it tries to present itself as, and thus one of the main pillars on which the system the rest would be undermined the integrity of the world of appearances.

What's interesting is that you, you know, basically the world of appearances in the case of Czechoslovakia would have been, they would have paid lip service to how they look to the outside world. We actually care more about how fellow Americans accept the lies. That's what the people in charge do. The ones who structured this system care more about how we view the lies that they're telling us. We don't care what anybody thinks outside. If the exercise of power circulates through the whole power structure as blood flows through veins,

then the legal code can be understood as something that reinforces the walls of those veins. Without it, the blood of power could not circulate in an organized way, and the body of society would hemorrhage at random. Order would collapse. A persistent and never-ending appeal to the laws, not just to the laws concerning human rights, but to all laws, does not mean at all that those who do so have succumbed to the illusion that in our system the law is anything other than what it is. They are well aware of the role it plays, but precisely because they know how desperately the system depends on it, on the noble version of the law, that is. They also know how enormously significant such appeals are. because the system cannot do without the law, because it is hopelessly tied down by the necessity of pretending the laws are observed, it is compelled to react in some way to such appeals.

Demanding that the laws be upheld is thus an act of living within the truth that threatens the whole mendacious structure at its point of maximum mendacity. Over and over again, such appeals make the purely ritualistic nature of the law clear to society and to those who inhabit. but its power structures. I mean, I guess that's the one really good thing about living under, like, a totalitarian system or a system that was designed to be a totalitarian system is that it's so much easier to recognize where here, it's a free country, bro.

They draw attention to its real material substance and thus, indirectly, compel all those who take refuge behind the law to affirm and make credible this agency of excuses. This means a communication, this reinforcement of the social arteries outside of which their will could not be made to circulate through society. They are compelled to do so for the sake of their own consciences, for the impression they make on outsiders,

to maintain themselves in power as part of the system's own mechanism of self-preservation and its principle of cohesion, or simply out of fear that they will be reproached for being clumsy in handling the risk. They have no other choice because they cannot disregard the rules of their own game. They can only attend more carefully to those rules, not to react to challenges means to undermine their own excuse and lose control of their mutual communication system. To assume that the laws are a mere facade, that they have no validity, and that therefore it is pointless to appeal to them would mean to go on reinforcing those aspects of the law

that create the facade and the ritual. It would mean confirming the law as an aspect of the world of appearances and enabling those who exploit it to rest easy with the cheapest and therefore the most mendacious form of their excuse. I'd take a sip. All right. I have frequently witnessed policemen, prosecutors, or judges, if they were dealing with an inexperienced chartist or a courageous lawyer,

and if they were exposed to public attention as individuals with a name no longer protected by the anonymity of apparatus, suddenly and anxiously begin to take particular care that no cracks appear in the ritual. This is not all to the fact that a despotic power is hiding behind that ritual, but the very existence of the official's anxiety necessarily regulates limits and slows down the operation of that despotism. I think you could probably see that and you could get local and state apparatchiks here to break and to basically get your way. But there's, try that in Washington, D.C. This, of course, is not enough. But an essential part of the dissent and attitude is that it comes out of the reality of the human here and now.

It places more importance on often repeated and consistent concrete action, even though it may be inadequate and though it may ease only insignificantly the suffering of a single insignificant citizen than it does in some abstract fundamental solution in an uncertain future. In any case, is not this, in fact, just another form of small-scale work in the Maserican sense, with which the dissent an attitude. seemed at first to be in such sharp contradiction. This section would be incomplete without stressing certain internal limitations to the policy of taking them at their own word. The point is this. Even in the most ideal of cases, the law is only one of several imperfect and more or less external ways of defending what is better in life against what is worse.

By itself, the law can never create anything better. Its purpose is to render a service and its meaning does not lie in the law itself. I'm going to repeat that. By itself, the law can never create anything better. Its purpose is to render a service and its meaning does not lie in the law itself. Understanding that the law does not, enforcing the law does not bring about order. It only starts you down that path. It's probably something that most people just can't get. You don't have order because you have more laws than any one. one else and you're enforcing them and laws should be enforced. The fact of the matter is, the moral laws you have, the less order you have. If you have to start writing laws and you have a constitution, then you don't have a constitution. The constitution reflects the constitution of the people and that people should only want that constitution written on paper so that they can look and see themselves reflected in it. Not that it would be an enforcement mechanism.

If it's an enforcement mechanism, you went wrong somewhere. This is what should be written. That should be written on the hearts of the people, not because people's hearts are wicked and you need to restrain them. Sure, people's hearts are wicked and they do need to be restrained. That's not what that paper is for, and that's not the best way to do it. Establishing respect for the law does not automatically ensure a better life for that, after all, is a job for people and not for laws and institutions. It is possible to imagine a society with good laws that are fully respected, but in which it is impossible to live. Conversely, one can imagine life being quite bearable, even where the laws are imperfect and imperfectly applied.

The most important thing is always the quality of that life and whether or not the laws enhance life or repress it, not merely whether they are upheld or not. Often strict observance of the law could have a disastrous impact on human dignity. The key to a humane, dignified, rich, and happy life does not lie either in the Constitution or in the criminal code. These merely establish what may or may not be done, and thus they may make life easier or more difficult. They limit or permit, they punish, tolerate, or defend, but they can never give life substance or meaning. The struggle for what is called legality must constantly keep this legality in perspective against the background of life as it really is, without keeping one's eyes open to the real dimension of life's beauty and misery and without a moral relationship to life, this struggle will sooner or later come to grief on the rocks of some self-justifying system of scholastics.

Without really wanting to, one would thus become more and more like the observer who comes to conclusions about our system, only on the basis of trial documents and is satisfied if all the appropriate regulations have been observed. All right, that is, I think that's the longest part in the book, in this paper. I'll call it a paper. But that is a very long, very coherent section. And it's one that really needs to be thinking, to be thought about going into the future. So that's it. my second reading today. My voice is starting to go.

Yeah, that's it. Be back with Thomas in a couple days. Something else planned. I can't remember what it is. Oh, yeah, oh, I got a good one. Someone who's never been on the show before. That'll be fun. You got a couple things coming up. And, of course, we've got to finish this one out and see when this can be done. because I have a new reading that I want to start.

And I actually got permission from the author to do it, which is awesome. So that's it. And I'll be back in a few days with another episode. Take care, everyone. Bye. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekingana show. This is part six of my reading of the Power of the Powerless by Baklav Havel. We're up to part 18.

and I'm just going to jump right in. Part 18. Is the basic job of the dissident movement, if the basic job of the dissident movement is to serve the truth, that is, to serve the real aims of life, and if that necessarily develops into a defense of individuals and their right to a free and truthful life, that is, a defense of human rights and a struggle to see the law is respected,

then another stage of this approach, perhaps the most mature, stage for all is what Baklop Benda called the development of parallel structures. I don't like the term human rights and stuff like that, but, you know, I mean, hey, it was a different time, different circumstances as well. When those who have decided to live within the truth have been denied any direct influence on the existing social structures, not to mention the opportunity to participate in them, and when these people begin to create what I have called the independent life of society, this independent life begins of itself to become structured in a certain way.

Sometimes there are only very embryonic indications of this process of structuring. At other times, the structures are already quite well developed. I think this is very applicable to today. What are you saying right here? Their genesis and evolution are inseparable from the phenomenon of descent. even though they reached far beyond the arbitrarily defined area of activity usually indicated by that term. What are these structures? Ivan Jueres was the first in Czechoslovakia to formulate and apply and practice the concept of a second culture.

Although at first he was thinking chiefly of nonconformist rock music and only certain literary artistic or performance events close to the sensibilities of those non-conformist musical groups. The term second culture very rapidly came to be used for the whole area of independent and repressed culture, that is, not only for art and its various currents, but also for the humanities, the social sciences, and philosophical insights. What better example is there than of Thomas' book, the Nuremberg system? basically just blowing it out on on Amazon people wanting to read it people downloading our episodes or two episodes on it together two so far so yeah yeah it's going to go far beyond

Bitcoin which has been around for a while and well I don't even want to get into it But, you know, and then there is just people like Emily, I don't know how to pronounce her last name, I apologize, Usis, who's using AI to make cartoons. And, yeah, I mean, these are, these are all things that are looked at by the regime as dissent. looked at it by the regime as worse than that, but we would recognize it as dissent on it to itself. This second culture, quite naturally, has created elementary organizational forms, samistat editions of books and magazines, private performances and concerts, seminars, exhibitions, and so on. In Poland, all of this is vastly more developed. There are independent publishing houses

and many more periodicals, even political periodicals. They have means of proliferation other than carbon copies and so on. In the Soviet Union, Samistat has a longer tradition, and clearly its forms are quite different. Culture, therefore, is a sphere in which the parallel structures can be observed in their most highly developed form. Benda, of course, gives thought to potential or embryonic forms of such structures in other spheres as well.

from a parallel information network to parallel forms of education, private universities, parallel trade unions, parallel foreign contacts, to a kind of hypothesis on a parallel economy. On the basis of these parallel structures, he then develops the notion of a parallel polis or state, or rather, he sees the rudiments of such a polis in these structures. Just go back here. So embryonic forms, from a parallel information network to parallel forms of education, Parallel information network. Podcasting, the internet forums, the internet, social media, the internet.

I mean, the internet, when he wrote this, the internet existed, but it existed in a very primitive form that was only used for the military. And then what do we have here? Parallel forms of education, like private universities. What about homeschooling? We've been doing this stuff already. You can actually see if you're looking that people figured this out a long time ago. And they've been building stuff outside the system.

I'm old enough to remember when homeschoolers were considered to be lunatics. I knew somebody who was taken away from her family because they wanted to homeschool. And they basically had to run away and drop off the map. So, yeah, all of this basically builds up, um, has already started building here. At a certain stage in its development, the independent life of society and the dissident movements cannot avoid a certain amount of organization and institutionalization. This is a natural development, and unless the independent life of society is somehow radically suppressed and eliminated, the tendency will grow, along with it, a parallel problem.

political life will also necessarily evolved, and to a certain extent it exists already in Czechoslovakia. Various groupings of a more or less political nature will continue to define themselves politically to act and confront each other. These parallel structures, it may be said, represent the most articulated expression so far of living within the truth. One of the most important tasks the dissident movements have set themselves is to support and develop them. I mean, living within the truth. I mean, isn't that what... When someone says, find your people.

When someone says clan up. When someone says the future is local and it is nullification. What are we talking about here? We can learn from this. Once again, it confirms the fact that all attempts by society to resist the pressure of the system have their essential beginnings in the pre-political area.

For what else are parallel structures than an area where a different life can be lived, a life that is in harmony with its own aims, and which in turn structures itself in harmony with those aims? What else are those initial attempts at social self-organization than the efforts of a certain part of society to live as a society within the truth? to rid itself of the self-sustaining aspects of totalitarianism, and thus, to extricate itself radically from its involvement in the post-totelitarian system. Yeah, I mean, I would say, I don't know how different it was. I'd have to really, really start digging into books about the Czech system,

but I mean, they didn't have the kind of federalism or, you know, federalism is probably a bad word, but the kind of localism that we have. Sure, the, your local government, can be within the system, but local government is also something that is easily, more easily subverted and used for one's own purposes. So, yeah, what else is it but a nonviolent attempt by people to negate the system within themselves and to establish their lives on a new basis, that of their own proper identity? Call yourself what you want. You don't know. I don't know. have to be wrapped up in the labels that the post-world, you know, the post-war consensus wants you to be wrapped up as they just want you to be anti-fascist. That's it. Not even talking about

antafa. I'm talking about anti-fascist. Can they define fascism? What's a threat to their power? What's a threat to their structure? That's pretty much it at this point. Yeah. Anything from the right that's a threat to their structure. Anything from the left that's a threat to their structure is communism. Is it? I mean, very few of those people actually know what communism is. And economically, you know, it's not viable. They've done a good job of adapting that for social issues.

And that's just the way you fight that is to live within the truth. And does this tendency not confirm once more the principle of returning the focus to actual individuals? After all, the parallel structures did not grow a priori of a theoretical vision of systemic changes. There are no political sex involved. But from the aims of life and the authentic needs of real people, in fact, all eventual changes. in the system. Changes we may observe here in their rudimentary forms have come about as it were de facto from below because life compelled them to, not because they came before life, somehow directing it or forcing some change on it. Yeah, it's all just going to rise up.

It's what you saw during COVID. Even politicians and state, you know, state-level politicians were forced or felt compelled to resist. And there were some states that were better than others. Were there perfect states? No, you're never going to have the perfect. But, I mean, I lived in Georgia at the time. Georgia was better than New York, and I went to New York during COVID.

Florida was better than Georgia. sure Florida did shut down for a couple weeks but then DeSantis just like turned on a dime and Alabama was better than some you know there were states that were better there were areas that were untouched were they perfect again there's no such thing historical experience teaches us that any genuinely meaningful point of departure in an individual's life usually has an element of universality about it. In other words, it is not something partial, accessible only to a restricted community, and not transferable to any other.

On the contrary, it must be potentially accessible to everyone. It must foreshadow a general solution, and thus, it is not just the expression of an introverted, self-contained responsibility that individuals have to and for themselves alone, but responsibility to and for the world. Thus, it would be quite wrong to understand the parallel structures and the parallel polis as a retreat into a ghetto and as an act of isolation. I think that because of the way our government was set up and the way that their government

was set up, that to a certain extent, yet it doesn't have to be universal. In my opinion, you can do this with your own people. As a matter of fact, it would be doing it alone doesn't work. Ask me how I know. It just doesn't work. So you have to find your own people. Oh, but they might be feds. Okay.

Then die. What else are you going to do? Post on Twitter all day. I've had it. But, but, bah, where am I? It would be wrong, in short, to consider it an essential, essentially group solution that has nothing to do with the general situation. Essentially groups.

Well, I don't agree with that. such a concept would from the start alienate the notion of living within the truth from its proper point of departure, which is concerned for others, transforming it ultimately into just another more sophisticated version of living within a lie. I don't know what he's trying to get at here, but we're wrong in short, in an essentially group solution that has nothing to do with the general situation. Okay, well, is he saying here that, you know, if you are going to do this, you have to do it right, you have to know why you're doing it if you're doing it for the wrong reasons. It's not going to work. Such a concept would from the start of L.A.

made the notion of living within the truth. Yeah. Yeah. It has to be done for the right reasons and done within the truth. In doing so, of course, it would cease to be a genuine point of departure for individuals and groups and would recall the false notion of dissidents as an exclusive group with exclusive interests carrying their own exclusive dialogues with the power, exclusive dialogue with the powers it be. In any case, even the most highly developed forms of life in the parallel structure is, even the most mature form of the parallel polis, can only exist, at least in post-otelitarian circumstances

when the individual is at the same time lodged in the first. official structure by a thousand different relationships, even though it may only be the fact that one buys what one needs in their stores, uses their money, and obeys their laws. Certainly one can imagine life in its baser aspects flourishing in the parallel polis, but would not such a life live deliberately that way as a program be merely another version of the schizophrenic life within a lie which everyone else must live on one way or another? He's basically saying you have to do this 100% or not at all. Would it not just be further evidence that a point of departure that is a point of departure that is not a model solution that is not applicable to

others cannot be meaningful for an individual either? Pataka used to say that the most interesting thing about responsibility is that we carry it with us everywhere. That means that responsibility is ours, but that we must accept it and grasp it here now, in this place and time and space where the Lord has set us down, and that we cannot lie our way out of it by moving somewhere else, whether it be to an Indian ashram or to a parallel polis. If Western young people so often discover that retreat to an Indian monastery fails them as an individual or group solution, then this is obvious because and only because it lacks that element of universality, since not everyone can retire to an ashram.

Christianity is an example of an opposite way out. It is a point of departure for me here and now, but only because anyone, anywhere at any time, may avail themselves of it. It is an example of an opposite way out. It is a point of departure for me here and now, but only because anyone anywhere at any time may avail themselves of it. In other words, the parallel polis points beyond itself and makes sense only as an act of deepening one's responsibility to and for the whole as a way of discovering the most appropriate locus for this responsibility and not as an escape from it. Basically, what he's saying is, is that doing like, what did they used to call it. I forget what was like basically like Zionism. You go and you set up somewhere and you have no care for anything else.

But Czechoslovakia is a different. I don't know how applicable this is because Czechoslovakia is different than here. We have different states. We have different cultures. We have different, I mean, multiracial, multicultural. And it's been that way from the start when it comes to definitely when it comes to culture. So I don't know how applicable this is. I mean, there is, you do have a chance to save your own, especially when I don't know what crime was like in, say, Prague under communism.

but I mean we have cities that they're just not part of America. They're not part of the American ideal. They're not part of the American identity. So, yeah, I get what he's saying, and it appears to have work there, that you don't go and hide yourself away because the whole system needs to change. But the one thing difference you do have here is, is that there are different, I mean,

anyone who says that there aren't better estates to live in than others is just lying. Or delusional. Let's take a sit. Part 19. I've already talked about the political potential of living within the truth and of the limitations on predicting whether, how, and when a given expression of that life within the truth can lead to actual changes. I have also mentioned how irrelevant trying to calculate the risks in this regard are,

for an essential feature of independent initiatives is that they are always initially at least and all or nothing gamble. Nevertheless, this outline of some of the work done by dissonant movements would be incomplete without considering, if only very generally, some of the different ways this work might actually affect society. In other words, about the ways that responsibility to and for the whole might, without necessarily meaning that it must be realized in practice. In the first place, it has to be emphasized that the whole sphere comprising the independent life of society and even more so the

dissonant movement as such is naturally far from being the only potential factor that might influence the history of countries living under the post-fatatitarian system. The latent social crisis in such societies can at any time, independently of these movements, provoke a wide variety of political changes. It may unsettle the power structure and induce or accelerate various hidden confrontations, resulting in personal, conceptual, or at least climactic changes. It may significantly influence the general atmosphere of life, evoked unexpected and unforeseen social unrest, and explosions of discontent. Power shifts at the center of the block can influence conditions in the different countries in various ways. Economic factors naturally have an important influence,

as do broader trends of global civilization. An extremely important area, which could be a source of radical changes and political upsets, is represented by international politics, the policies adopted by the other superpower and all the other countries, the changing structure of the international interests and the positions taken by our bloc. That's something that's important for us to understand. the person who's saying, well, the reason we can't, we're not winning the Iran war is because we're not dropping nukes, realize that that person shouldn't be listened to and probably should be in an institution. Almost definitely should be an institution.

It's not the way the world works. Sure, people plan it. Daniel Ellsberg talked about that, talked about how they, Basically, his job was planning how to win a nuclear war. Does that sound insane? Yeah, to normal people, it sounds insane. But you have to understand that other countries, and we know this as well as anyone, affect what's happening at home.

I mean, look at what outsourcing did. What outsourcing did. It grew other countries into powers that have more power than we do when it comes to manufacturing. We can't even manufacture on the scale or at the speed that a Russia or a China can. And China manufactures a lot of the parts that we use for weapons. I'm not saying they're making all our weapons. Saying parts.

So, yeah, very well, the change that we, a lot of us wish to see here, can be put into motion by a foreign power. Will that be good for us? Who fucking knows? Anyone who's telling you, oh, it wouldn't be good for us because this, that, this, this, this, this, this, and this. They're just giving you their opinion. You don't have to believe them.

You don't have to believe my opinion. There are very few people whose opinions I look at, and I'm like, oh, yeah, that's obviously right. Well, I mean, yeah, it's personal. Even the people who end up in the highest positions are not without significance, although, as I have already said, one ought not underestimate the importance of leading personalities in the post-Satilitarian system. There are many such influences and combinations of influence, and the eventual political impact of the dissonant movement is thinkable only against this general background, and in the context that this background provides. That impact is only one of the many factors and far from the most important that affect political developments, and it differs from the other factors, perhaps only in that its essential focus is reflecting upon that political development from the point of view of defense of people and seeking an immediate application of that reflection.

Here's what he said right here, and I agree with them. changing out of leading personalities in a system. How have things gotten better since... I'll be generous. 1973. Have things gotten better. Yeah. May elections since then?

How many populist movements? Maybe it's not the personnel. Maybe it's not the personnel. maybe the personnel you see aren't even in charge. The primary purpose of the outward direction of these movements is always, as we have seen, to have an impact on society, not to affect the power structure, at least not directly and immediately. Independent initiatives address the hidden sphere. They demonstrate that living within the truth is a human and social alternative,

and they struggle to expand the space available for that life. They help, even though it is, of course, indirect help, to raise the confidence of citizens. citizens. They shatter the world of appearances and unmasked the real nature of power. They do not assume a messianic role. They are not a social avant-garde or elite that alone knows best and whose task it is to raise the consciousness or the unconscious masses. That arrogant self-projection is, once again, intrinsic to an essentially different way of thinking, the kind that feels it has a patent on some ideal project, and therefore that it has to write to impose it. on society.

That whole thing there is about the quote unquote influencer. He's telling you how things need to be in order to make things work properly. Just get me elected. You know, just get this guy elected. I'm not going to lie to you. One of the one of the things right now that I tell people that I'm, I lie. is to make lists of anybody who is accusing other people who are giving their opinion of lying. Because those people can never be allowed back in. Yeah, it's time to make lists. And anybody

who jumps to know they're lying? Who else says that? What other group accuses everyone of lying? Nor do they want to lead anyone. They leave it up to each individual to decide what he will or will not take from their experience and work. If official Czechoslovak propaganda described the Chartists as self-appointees, it was not in order to emphasize any real avant-garde ambitions on their part, but rather a natural expression of how the regime thinks. Its tendency is to judge others according to itself. Since, they lie all day, so they tell their apparatchiks to accuse everybody else of

lying. I mean, when you're being lied to all day, even by people that you think are working for you, there's something in your subconscious is going to tell you that everyone's lying, except the person who's lying directly to you. Let me start the sentence again. If official Czechos of Akpropaganda described the chartists as self-appointees, it was not in order to emphasize any real avant-garde ambitions on their part, but rather a natural expression of how the regime thinks.

its tendency to judge others according to itself. Since behind any expression of criticism, it automatically sees the desire to cast the mighty from their seats and rule in their places, in the name of the people, the same pretext the regime itself is used for years. These movements, therefore, always affect the power structure as such indirectly, as a part of society as a whole, for they are primarily addressing the hidden spheres of society, since it is not a matter of confronting the regime on the level of actual power.

I've already indicated one of the ways this can work, an awareness of the laws and the responsibility for seeing that they are upheld is indirectly strengthened. That, of course, is only a specific instance of a far broader influence the indirect pressure felt from living within the truth, the pressure created by free thought, alternative values, and alternative behavior, and by independent social self-realization. So he's talking about an awareness of the laws

and the responsibility for seeing that they are upheld is indirectly strengthened. It almost seems, and I don't know if I've said this before, so I apologize if I'm repeating myself in this series, but it almost appears like the powers of be learned from me. this and basically said, oh, you want us to enforce the laws? Fuck you. A narco tyranny for you. Fuck you. Yeah. That's another thing you can learn from reading this. Things that worked for them, you can see that being attacked. Anything that relates to our situation, it's attack.

They're not all geniuses, but some of them learn. I'm not going to pretend. I'm not going to pretend. this is like some high IQ cabal. But just like every other cabal and every other group, paredo distributions work. And you're going to have, you have a couple people who are really, really, really smart and know what mistakes they've made in the past. They can head them off.

The power structure, whether it wants to or not, must always react to this pressure to a certain extent. Its response, however, is always limited to two dimensions, repression and adaptation. Sometimes one dominates, sometimes the other. For example, the Polish Flying University came under increased persecution in the flying teachers were detained by the police. At the same time, however, professors in existing official universities tried to enrich their own curricula with several subjects hitherto considered a taboo, and this was a result of indirect pressure exerted by the Flying University. The motives for this adaptation may very

vary from the ideal, the hidden space has received the message and conscience and the will to truth are awakened. To the purely utilitarian, the regime's instincts for survival compels it to notice the changing ideas and the changing mental and social climate and to react flexibly to them. Which of these motives happens to predominate in a given moment is not essential in terms of the final effect. They want to survive. So they're going to throw you breadcrumbs. If they see it as being in their best interest.

If their best interest is to crush you, they'll do that too. Adaptation is the positive dimension of the regime's response, and it can and usually does have a wide spectrum of forms and phases. Some circles may try to integrate values of people from the the parallel world into the official structures, to appropriate them, to become a little like them while trying to make them a little like themselves, and thus to adjust an obvious and untenable imbalance. In the 1960s, progressive communists began to discover certain unacknowledged cultural values and phenomena. This was a positive step, although not without its

dangers, since the integrated and appropriated values lost something of their independent. and originality, and having been given a cloak of officiality and conformity, their credibility was somewhat weakened. Yeah, you, this is, this is the dissident who decides, would Zionists, you win. How's that working out? Was price of diesel? Anybody book a flight recently? See the prices?

Weird, huh? Anybody thought about traveling? I'm like, maybe I shouldn't. I'm like, oh, I can afford it. It's just, why should I go somewhere when the country that you're a citizen of is bombing other people, like literally murdering civilians? You don't think that can blow back? As someone who traveled after 9-11 internationally, Well, sometimes it's just questions.

Sometimes it's very friendly. Sometimes it's not. In a further phase, this adaptation can lead to various attempts on the part of the official structures to reform, both in terms of their ultimate goals and structurally. Such reforms are usually halfway measures. They are attempts to combine and realistically coordinate serving life and serving the post-totalitarian automatism. But they cannot be otherwise. They muddy what was originally a clear demarcation line between living within the truth and living with a lie.

They cast a smokescreen over the situation, mystifies society, and make it difficult for people to keep their bearings. This, of course, is not alter the fact that it is always essentially good when it happens because it opens out new spaces, but it does make it more difficult to distinguish between admissible and inadmissible compromises. he's actually calling for purity spiraling. What a terrible man! He's calling for purity spiraling in this, in infiltration. Another and higher phase of adaptation is a process of internal differentiation that takes place in the official structures.

These structures open themselves to more or less institutionalized forms of plurality because the real aims of life demand it. One example, without changing the centralized and institutional basis of cultural life, new publishing houses, group periodicals, artist groups, parallel research institutes and workplaces, and so on, may appear under pressure from below. Or another example, the single monolithic youth organization run by the state as a typical post-Italitarian transmission belt

disintegrates under the pressure of real needs into a number of, of more or less independent organizations, such as the Union of University students, the Union of Secondary School students, the Organization of Working Youth, and so on. There is a direct relationship between the kind of differentiation which allows initiatives from below to be felt, and the appearance and constitution of new structures which are already parallel, or rather independent, but which at the same time are respected, or at least tolerated in varying degrees by official institutions. These new institutions are more than just liberalized official structures adapted to the authentic needs of life.

They are a direct expression of those needs, demanding a position in the context of what is already here. In other words, they are genuine expressions of the tendency of society to organize itself. In Czechoslovakia in 1968, the best known organizations of this type were KAN, the Club of Committed Non-Communists and K-21, an organization. of former political prisoners. The ultimate phase of this process is a situation in which the official structures as agencies of the post-totelitarian system, existing only to serve its automatism and

constructed in the spirit of that role, simply begin withering away and dying off to be replaced by new structures that have evolved from below and are put together in a fundamentally different way. So watch one fail. do it right the next time. Certainly many other ways may be imagined in which the aims of life can bring about political transformations in the general organization of things and weaken on all levels the holds that techniques of manipulation have on society.

Here I have mentioned only the way in which the general organization of things was, in fact, as we experienced it ourselves in Czechoslovakia around 1968. It must be added that all these concrete instances were part of a specific historical progress which ought not to be thought of as the only alternative, nor is necessarily repeated, particularly not in our own country, a fact which, of course, takes nothing away from the importance of the general lessons, which are still sought and found in it to this day. While on the subject of 1968 in Czechoslovakia, it may be appropriate to point to some of the characteristic aspects of development at that time. All the transformations, first in the general mood, then conceptually and finally

structurally, did not occur under pressure from the kind of parallel structures that are taking shape today. Such structures, which are sharply defined antithesis of the official structures, quite simply did not exist at the time, nor were there any dissidents in the present sense of the word. The changes it took place were simply a consequence of pressures of the most varied sort, some thoroughgoing, some partial. There were spontaneous attempts at freer forms of thinking, independent creation, and political articulation. There were long-term, spontaneous, and inconspicuous efforts to bring about the interpretation, the interpenetration of the independent life of society with the existing structures, usually beginning with a quiet institutionalization of this life on and around

the periphery of the official structures. In other words, it was a gradual process of social awakening, a kind of creeping process in which the hidden sphere is gradually opened out. There is some truth in the official propaganda which talks about a creeping counter-revolution in Czechoslovakia, referring to how the aims of life proceed. The motive force behind this awakening did not have to come exclusively from the independent life of society, considered as a definable social milieu, although of course it did come from there, a fact that has yet to be fully appreciated.

It could also simply have come from the fact that people in the official structures who more or less identified with the official ideology came up against reality as it really was and as it gradually became clear to them through latent social crises and their own bitter experiences with the true nature and operations of power. I am thinking here mainly of the many anti-dogmatic reform communists who grew to become, over the years, a force inside the official structures. Neither the proper conditions nor the race on Detra existed for those limited self-structuring independent initiatives familiar from the present era of dissident movements that stands so sharply outside the official structures and are unrecognized by them in block. At that time, the post-Sotelitarian system in Czechoslovakia had not yet petrified into the static, sterile, and stable forms that exist today, forms that compel people to fall back on their own organizing capabilities.

For many historical and social regions, the regime in 1968 was more open. The power structure, exhausted by Stalinist despotism and helplessly groping about for painless reform, was inevitably rotting from within quite incapable of offering any intelligence. intelligent opposition to changes in the mood, to the way its younger members regarded things into the thousands of authentic expressions of life on the pre-political level that sprang up in that vast political terrain between the official and the unofficial. From the more general point of view, yet another typical circumstance appears to be important. The social ferment that came to a head in 1968, never, in terms of actual

structural changes, went any further than the reform. Differentiation, or, or the replacement of structures that were really only of secondary importance. It did not affect the very essence of the power structure in the post-Sotelitarian system, which is to say its political model, the fundamental principles of social organization, not even the economic model in which all economic power is subordinated to political power, nor were any essential structural changes made in the direct investment instruments of power, the army, the police, the judiciary, etc. On that level, the issue was never more than a

change in the mood, the personnel, the political line, and above all changes in how that power was exercised. Everything else remained at the stage of discussion and planning. The two officially accepted programs that went further in regard were the April 1968 action program of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and their proposals for economic reforms. The action program, it could not have been otherwise, was full of contradictions and halfway measures that left the physical aspects of power untouched. And the economic proposals, which, while they went a long way to accommodate the aims of life in the economic sphere, they accepted such notions as a plurality of interests and initiatives, dynamic incentives, restrictions upon the economic command

system, left untouched the basic pillar of economic power, that is, the principle of state, rather than genuine social ownership of the means of production. So there is a gap here where no social movement in the post-Satilitarian system has ever been able to bridge, with the possible exception of those few days during the Hungarian uprising. What other developmental alternative might emerge in the future? Replying to that question would mean entering the realm of pure speculation. For the time being, it can be said that the latent social crises in the system has always, and there is no reason to believe it will not continue to do so, resulted in a variety

of politically and social disturbances. Germany in 1963, Hungary, the USSR, and Poland in 1956, Czechoslovakia in Poland in 1968, and Poland in 1970 and 1976. All of them very different in their backgrounds, the course of their evolution, and their final consequences. If we look at the enormous complex of different factors that led to such disturbances, and at the impossibility of predicting what accidental accumulation of events will cause that fermentation in the hidden sphere to break through to the light of day, the problem of the final straw. And if we consider how impossible it is to guess what the future holds, given such opposing trends as, on the one hand, the increasingly profound integration of the block and the expansion of power within it. And on the other hand, the prospects of the USSR disintegrating under pressure from awakening national consciousness in the non-Russian areas. In this regard, the Soviet Union cannot expect to remain forever free of the worldwide struggle for national liberation.

Then we must see the hopelessness of trying to make long-range predictions. In any case, I do not believe that this type of speculation has any immediate significance for the dissonant movements, since these movements, after all, do not develop from speculative thinking, and so to establish themselves on that basis, would mean alienating themselves from the very source of their identity. As far as prospects for the dissident movements as such go, there seems to be very little likelihood that future developments will lead to a lasting coexistence of two isolated, mutually non-interacting, and mutually indifferent bodies, the main polis, and the parallel polis. As long as it remains what it is, the practice of living within the truth cannot fail to be a threat to the system.

It is quite impossible to imagine it continuing to coexist with the practice of living within a lie without dramatic tension. The relationship of the post-Satilitarian system, as long as it remains what it is, and the independent life of society, as long as it remains the locus of a renewed responsibility for the whole and to the whole, will always be one of either latent or open conflict. In this situation, there are only two possibilities. Either the post-totelitarian system will go on developing, that is, will be able to go on developing, thus inevitably coming closer to some dreadful Orwellian vision of a world with absolute manipulation, while all the more articulate expressions of living within the truth are definitely snuffed out, or the independent life of society, the parallel polis, including the dissonant movements,

will slowly but surely become a social phenomenon of growing importance, taking a real part in the life of society with increasing clarity and influencing the general situation. Of course, this will always be one of many factors influencing the situation, and it will operate rather in the background in concert with the other factors and in a way appropriate to the background. Whether it ought to focus on reforming the official structures or on encouraging differentiation, or on replacing them with new structures, whether the intent is to ameliorate the system or,

on the contrary to tear it down, these and similar questions, insofar as they are not pseudo-problems, can be posed by the dissonant movement only within the context of particular solution when the movement is faced with a concrete task. In other words, it must pose questions, as it were ad hoc out of a concrete consideration of the authentic needs of life. To reply to such questions abstractly and to formulate a political program in terms of some hypothetical future would mean, I believe, a return to the spirit and methods of traditional politics, and this would limit and alienate the work of dissent, where it is most intrinsically itself and has the most genuine prospects for the future. I have already emphasized several times that these dissonant movements do not have their point of departure in the invention of systematic changes, but in a very real everyday struggle for a better life here and now.

The political and structural systems that life discovers for itself will clearly always be, for some time to come at least, limited, halfway, unsatisfying, and polluted by debilitating tactics. I'm going to repeat that sentence again. The political and structural systems that life discovers for itself will clearly always be, for some time to come, at least, limited, halfway, unsatisfying, and, polluted by debilitating tactics. It cannot be otherwise and we must expect this and not to be demoralized by it. It is of great importance that the main thing, the everyday, thankless and never-ending struggle of human beings to live more freely, thankfully, and in quiet dignity, never impose

any limits on itself, never be half-hearted, inconsistent, never trap itself in political tactics, speculating on the outcome of its actions or entertaining fantasies about the future. The purity of this struggle is the best guarantee of optimum results when it comes to actual interaction with the post-totelitarian structures. Sorry, it's not like I was rushing to finish that section. It's just all of that needed to go together. So, I mean, I don't know that I can comment anymore than he already has. Other than, you know, he's talking about a system. Are there people in that system? Sure.

Is that system run by people? Yes. The question most people fail to ask when they're like, we need to get involved in politics and we need to take over the system and use it for our means. Can you? Will you? I think that's a, that's a question you should be asking when it comes to national policy. All right. I'll be back.

We'll be finishing this up on the next episode. There'll be seven episodes. Cool. And I hope you all have a good weekend. It is coming out on Thursday. So have a good weekend. And I'll be back with more Thomas reading. reading his book.

I think that's the next episode after this. And then that next episode after that will probably be finishing this out. And then have other plans. Get Mr. Bagby back here. And yeah. So thank you. And take care of yourselves.

And please take into consideration what he's, the points that he's making. I wouldn't be reading this if I didn't think it was important. important. So take care. Bye. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekanino show. Well, we're going to finish it up today. Baklav Havel's Power of the Powerless, this will probably be a very short episode. I think we only have eight pages left. But let's get this done. And then I want to

get it out in one big file for those of you who have been enjoying it. So getting something out of it more than enjoying it. So here we go. The specific nature of post-totelitarian conditions, with their absence of a normal political life and the fact that any far-reaching political change is utterly unforeseeable, has one positive aspect. It compels us to examine our situation in terms of its deeper coherences and to consider our future in the context of global and long-range prospects of the world of which we are a part. The fact, the most intrinsic and fundamental confrontation between human beings in the system takes place at a level incomparably more profound than that of traditional politics would seem at the same time to determine as well the

direction such considerations will take. Our attention, therefore, inevitably turns to the most essential matter, the crisis of contemporary technological society as a whole. The crisis that Heidegger describes as the ineptitude of humanity face to face with the planetary power of technology. Technology, that child of modern science, which in turn is a child of modern metaphysics, is out of humanity's control, has ceased to serve us, has enslaved us, and compelled us to participate in the preparation of our own destruction. It's amazing how Evergreen this is since he wrote it in the 70s. Was he thinking about any of the technological things that people like stay up at night

worrying about that I get yelled at that for not covering enough? You don't talk enough about AI. You don't talk enough about Palantir. Okay, so tell me exactly what me talking about that. What do you want me to do? I've had people say, oh, you must be. be taking money from Peter Thiel because you don't talk about Palantir. I knew what Palantir was in 2010.

I wrote blog posts about it in 2010. That's 16 years ago. I mean, some of you were in grade school when I knew what Palantir was. There's nothing I could do about it then. And the blogs I was writing on had fairly big traffic. So frustrating. It's like, oh, well, you know, it's like, I swear some people see podcasters as like your grandparents saw Walter Cronkite,

or your parents, if you're old enough, saw Walter Cronkite. Like, we're making the news and shaping the news. Sure, there are things that we can do. I might inspire the person one day who fixes all of this, who steps up and says, screw it, I'm going to fix it, you're going to have to kill me. But as far as these things go, really, what do you want me to do? you have as much power over AI and Palantir as I do.

You, who doesn't have a podcast, doesn't have an audience. Understand. You can go and listen to, you know, Whitney Webb all you want. And you can feel like you're doing something. But literally it's a surrogate activity. When it comes to things like this, I'm trying to, what I try to do in talking about history and talking about theory even is explained to you exactly how the world works so that you can navigate it. Well, you should be talking more about Palantir because

there are tons of people talking about Palantir. If you want to know what it is so that you know how to navigate it, go listen to them. It's not, I was screaming about it 15 years ago. AI, don't even know what AI is. AI could be something that ends us all. AI could just be something that's a bubble right now. It's just something to prop up the economy. This is about you. What I do is about you trying to help you to navigate it so that you can have a better life.

And if you want to get together with other people, I can help with that too. But, oh, you need to talk about Palantir because if you talk about Palantir on Twitter, that, please. Please stop it, grow up. And humanity can find no way out. We have no idea and no faith, and even less do we have a political conception to help us bring things back under human control. We look on helplessly as that coldly functioning machine we have created inevitably engulfs us, tearing us away from our natural affiliations, for instance, from our habitat in the

widest sense of that word, including our habitat in the biosphere, just as it removes us from the experience of being and cast us into the world of existences. This situation has already been described from many different angles, and many individuals and social groups have sought, often plainly, to find ways out of it, for instance, through Oriental thought or by forming communes. The only social, or rather political, attempt to do something about it contains the necessary element of universality, responsibility to and for the whole. Universality is the desperate end, given the turmoil the world is in,

fading voice of the ecological movement, and even there, the attempt is limited to a particular notion of how to use technology to oppose a dictatorship of technology. And the ecological movement, you can say what you want, but like data centers, things like that. I know that that's a huge topic. And some people are like, if you're talking about data centers, that's left coded. Go fuck yourself. How many green groups do you see stepping up and saying, don't do this? That's what he's like banking on right here.

Quote, only a God can save us now, end quote. Heidegger says, and he emphasizes a necessity of, quote, a different way of thinking, end quote. That is, of a departure from what philosophy has been for centuries and Iraq. change in the way in which humanity understands itself, the world, and his position in it. He knows no way out, and all he can recommend is preparing expectations. What comes next, what you want to see come next will have echoes of the past, but it's going to be something completely new. There's no going back.

There's only going through. We used to say that three or four years ago. It was a constant refrain. But that was when Biden was in office. And apparently as soon as Trump got into office, people had expectations that things were going to. He was here to save the day. And I thought things would get better. You will never find me the audio of me saying that Trump was going to save the day.

The only thing I said was is that some of the people he could put in there are more confident and they can make it better for us, at least for the next four years. If you find the audio of me saying anything other than that, I will Mayaculpah, and I'll do a video, I'll do a frigate episode on it. Various thinkers and movements feel that this as yet unknown way out might be generally characterized as a broad existential revolution. I share this view, and I also shared the opinion that a solution cannot be sought in some technological sleight of hand, that is, in some external proposal for change,

or in a revolution that is merely philosophical, merely social, merely technological, or even merely political. These are all areas where the consequences of an existential revolution can and must be felt, but their most intrinsic locus must only be human existence in the profoundest sense of the word. It is only from that basis that it can become a generational ethically and, of course, ultimately a political reconstruction of society. He uses the term living your truth, which is, I mean, who wants to talk about left-coded?

But living historically, something that we're familiar with. If you listen to this show, you've heard that over and over again. If you want to start a genuine radical change in society, people have to start. People have to start living differently, thinking differently, worshiping differently, more from the soul, less from the, more spiritual, less physical. This is the, I don't, you can't say you got to think it into existence, but if you want to see a different world, you're going to have to start living that way and thinking that way and worshiping that way. You think it's just going to happen overnight. like thinking, yeah, that's like the anarcho-capitalists who think, oh, the government's going to just dissolve and everybody's going to choose my way. Well, if the government fell tomorrow,

the people are going to go with who can feed them. And if the anarcho-capitalists aren't ready to feed them and protect them, these radical individualists, well, who will they go with? They're going to go with the warlord who has a farm. or who has a confederation of arms or something like that. What we call the consumer and industrial or post-industrial society, and Ortega E. Gassett once, once understood as the revolts of the masses, as well as the intellectual, moral, political, and social misery in the world today, all of this is perhaps merely an aspect of the deep crisis in which humanity

dragged helplessly along by the automatomitism of global technological civilization finds itself. The post-Sotilitarian system is only one aspect, a particularly drastic aspect, and thus all the more revealing of its real origins, of this general inability of modern humanity to be the master of its own situation. The automatism of the post-satilitarian system is, merely an extreme version of the global automatism of technological civilization. The human failure that it mirrors is only one variant of the general failure of modern humanity. This planetary challenge to the position of human beings in the world is, of course, also taking place in the Western world, the only difference being the social and political forms it takes. Heidegger refers expressly to a crisis of democracy. There is no real evidence,

that Western democracy, that is democracy of the traditional parliamentary type, can offer solutions that are any more profound. Gee, he's figured out what the James Lindsay's and the Joel Berries of the world, the Babylon B and the James Lindsay's of the world, refused to, or getting paid to deny. we'll column A, a little column B, probably. That traditional democracies are not going to save us. Liberalism, classical liberalism, is not going to save us. It may even be said that the more room there is in Western democracies

compared to our world for the genuine aims of life, the better the crisis is hidden from the people, and the more deeply do they become immersed in it? 100% this was so spot on. People, I mean, they don't want to change. They don't see the problem. Depending on your bank account, I mean, and that's basically what we've been taught, right? That's the way we've been brainwashed.

As long as your bank account's looking good, your investment portfolio is good, everything's fine. Yeah. I mean, I believe some people are getting paid to not see it, but most people just can't see it. And that's why you're going to wake them all up. No, that's not the way this works. It would appear that the traditional parliamentary democracies can offer no fundamental opposition to the automatism of technological civilization and the industrial consumer society,

for they, too, are being tried helplessly along by it. People are manipulated in ways that are infinitely more subtle and refined than the brutal methods used in post-totelitarian societies. This is something I was listening to the latest polling numbers for the AFD in Germany. Whatever you think of the AFD, when you look, who's voting for the AFD? Former East Germany. Who's voting for gay race, you know, gay race communism? The former West Germany.

People are manipulated in ways that are infinitely more. subtle and refined than the brutal methods use in post-Italitarian societies. East Germany was brutalized, but they weren't told they couldn't be German anymore. West Germans were told, if you want to be German, you're literally Hitler. And you do that for a couple of generations, and people vote for gay race communism. They vote for Turks, which is what's happening in Germany right now. East Germany came out better. And, you know, I've heard some people say, well, you know, they're not voting for that

because they don't like, you know, because they know what communism is. That's total fucking bullshit. They weren't exposed to Globo-Homo and 80 years, or at that point it would have been 50 years, 45 years of gay race communism being shoved down their throat.

So they're like, yeah, we want to be Germans. Germany is for German. Germany is for Germans. Throw these people out. Not because they know what communism is. But this static complex of rigid, conceptually sloppy and politically pragmatic, mass political parties run by professional apparatuses

and releasing the citizen from all forms of concrete and personal responsibility and those complex focuses of capital accumulation engaged in secret manipulations and expansion, the omniprised and dictatorship of consumption, production, advertising, commerce, consumer culture, and all that flood of information, all of it. So often analyzed and describe can only with great difficulty be imagined as the source of

humanity's rediscovery of itself in his June 1978 Harvard lecture, Solzheneson describes the illusory nature of freedoms not based on personal responsibility and the chronic inability of the traditional democracies as a result to oppose violence and totalitarianism. In a democracy, human beings may enjoy many personal freedoms and securities that are unknown to us. You talk about the checks. But in the end, they do them no good, for they too are ultimately victims of the same automatism and are incapable of defending their concerns about their own identity or preventing their superficialization and transcending concerns about their own personal survival to become proud and responsible members of the

polis, making a genuine contribution to the creation of its destiny. From behind the fucking iron curtain, he could see what our problem was in the 1970s. And people refuse to see what it is today. It's not the only problem, but this is the bird's eye view problem. Because all our prospects for a significant change for the better are very long range indeed, we are obliged to take note of this deep crisis of traditional democracy. Certainly if conditions were to be created for democracy in some countries in the Soviet bloc, although this is becoming increasingly improbable,

it might be an appropriate transitional solution that would help to restore the devastated premise of civic awareness to renew democratic discussion to allow for the crystallization of an elementary political plurality, an essential expression of the aims of life. But to cling to the notion of traditional parliamentary democracy as one's political idea and to succumb to the illusion that only this tried and true form is capable of guaranteeing human beings enduring dignity and an independent role in society would, in my opinion, be at least short-sighted. What's he saying?

It's preferable to what we have, and maybe it'll work. is a bridge to something more lasting, something more permanent, something that actually means something beyond a friggin' open-air strip mall. But it's not our end. I see a renewed focus of politics on real people as something far more profound than merely returning to the everyday mechanisms of Western, or if you like, bourgeois democracy. In 1968, I felt that our problem could be solved. by forming an opposition party that would compete publicly for power with the Communist Party.

I have long since come to realize, however, that it is just not that simple, and that no opposition party in and of itself, just as no new electoral laws in and of themselves, could make society proof against some new form of violence. No, dry organizational measures in themselves can provide that guarantee, and we would be hard-pressed to find in them, that God who alone can save us. Take a sip. Part 21. And now I may properly be asked the question.

What then is to be done? My skepticism toward alternative political models and the ability of systematic reforms or changes to redeem us does not, of course, mean that I am skeptical of political thought altogether. Nor does my emphasis on the importance of focusing concern on real human beings disqualifying me from considering the possible structural consequences flowing from it. On the contrary, if A was said, then B should be said as well. Nevertheless,

I will offer only a few very general remarks. I will offer only a few very general remarks. Above all, any existential revolution should provide hope of a moral reconstitution of society, which means a radical renewal of the relationship of human beings to what I have called the human order, which no political order can replace, a new experience of being, a renewed rootedness in the universe, a newly grasped sense of higher responsibility, a newfound inner relationship to other people and to the human community. These factors clearly indicate the direction in which we must go. What does he say? what is this here?

Political order can't replace renewed rudeness in the universe a renewed grass a newly grass sense of higher responsibility freedom is just responsibility freedom doesn't mean anything without responsibility secondly doesn't really mean anything because it means so many different things

to so many people because we've become so individualized a newfound inner relationship to other people and to the human community. Find your people. Gee, where have we heard that before? These factors clearly indicate the direction of which we must go. And the political consequences? Most probably they could be reflected in a constitution of structures that will derive from this new spirit, from human factors rather than from a particular formalization of political relationships and guarantees.

In other words, the issue is the rehabilitation of values like, trust, openness, responsibility, solidarity, love. I believe in structures that are not aimed at the technical aspect of the execution of power. Let me go back. In other words, the issue is the rehabilitation of values like trust, openness, responsibility, solidarity, love. Any group in your polis that subverts that either has to be gone or marginalized. because they're going to use that against you. It has to be your people rehabilitating values of trust, openness, responsibility, solidarity, and love.

And especially can't be groups that have solidarity, but not the other things. Trust, openness, responsibility, and love. They have to go. Or they have to be treated as a different cast. Sorry. I believe in structures that are not aimed at the technical aspect of the execution of power, but at the significance of that execution and structure is held together, more by a commonly shared feeling of the importance of certain communities

and by commonly shared expansionist ambitions directed outward. There can and must be structures that are open, dynamic, and small. Beyond a certain point, human ties like personal trust and personal responsibility, cannot work. There must be structures that in principle place no limits on the genesis of different structures. Any accumulation of power whatsoever, one of the characteristics of automatism, should be profoundly alien to it. They would be structures not in the sense of organizations or institutions, but like a community. Going back to John C. Calhoun now. Their authority certainly cannot be based on long, go listen to my reading of John C. Calhoun's

exquisition on government if you haven't. It's short. I think it's like four hours. It's what it should be. It's what this country was built to be. Any accumulation of power whatsoever, one of the characteristics of automatism should be profoundly alien to it.

They would be structures not in the sense of organizations or institutions, but like a community. Their authority certainly cannot be based on long, empty traditions, like the tradition of mass political parties, but rather how, in concrete terms, they enter into a given situation. Rather than a strategic agglomeration of formalized institutions, it is better to have organizations springing up ad hoc, infused with enthusiasm for a particular purpose, and

disappearing when that purpose has been achieved. The leader's authority ought to derive from the personalities and be personally tested in their particular surroundings, and not from their position in any nomenclature, nomenclature. They should enjoy great personal confidence and even great lawmaking powers based on that confidence. This would appear to be the only way out of the classic impotence of traditional democratic structures, which frequently seem founded more on mistrust than mutual confidence and more on collective irresponsibility than on responsibility. I've taken to believing over the past few years that if you have to put a law down that says you're not allowed to murder, you already have a problem. It is only with the full existential backing of every

member of the community that a permanent bulwark against creeping totalitarianism can be established. These structures should naturally arise from below as a consequence of authentic social self-organization. They should derive vital energy from a living dialogue with the genuine needs from which they arise. And when these needs are gone, the structure should also disappear. The principles of their internal organization should be very diverse with the minimum of external regulation. The decisive criterion of this self-constitution should be the structure's actual significance and not just an mere abstract norm. The principles of their internal organization should be very diverse with a minimum of external regulation.

It's all internal. I don't know what he means by the term diverse, how he's using diverse there. Because with the minimum of external regulation, he's basically saying like a concurrent majority. Both political and economic life ought to be founded on the varied and versatile cooperation of such dynamically appearing and disappearing organizations. As far as the economic life of society goes, I believe in the principle of self-management,

which is probably the only way of achieving what all the theorists of socialism have dreamed about. That is, the genuine, i.e. informal, participation of workers in economic decision-making, leading to a feeling of genuine responsibility for their collective work. The principles of control and discipline ought to be abandoned in favor of self-control and self-discipline. I don't want to use the term what he's describing here because it terms people off. But if you know, you know. As is perhaps clear from even so general and outline, the systematic consequences of an existential revolution of this type goes significantly beyond the framework of classical parliamentary democracy.

Having introduced the term post-Satilitarian for the purposes of this discussion, perhaps I should refer to the notion I have just outlined, purely for the moment, as the prospect for a post-democratic system. Undoubtedly, this notion could be developed further, but I think it would be a foolish undertaking, to say the least, because slowly, but surely the whole idea would become alienated, separated from itself. After all, the essence of such a post-democracy is also that it can only develop Viofakti as a process deriving directly from life from a new atmosphere and a new spirit. Political thought, of course, would play a role here, though not as a director, merely as a guide. It would be presumptuous, however, to try to foresee the structural expressions of this new spirit

without that spirit actually being present and without knowing its concrete physiognomy. Take another sip. I think this is the last part, part 22. I would probably have omitted the entire proceeding section as a more suitable subject for private meditation, were it not for a certain recurring sensation. It may seem rather presumptuous, and therefore I will present it as a question. Does not this vision of post-democratic structures in some way remind one of the dissident groups or some of the independent citizens' initiatives as we have already known them from our own surroundings? Do not these small communities bound together by thousands of shared tribulations give rise to some of those special humanly, special humanly meaningful political relationships and ties that we have been talking about? Are not these communities, and they are communities more than organizations,

motivated mainly by a common belief in the profound significance of what they are doing, since they have no chance of direct external success joined together by precisely the kind of atmosphere in which to form, formalized and ritualized ties common in the official structures are supplanted by a living sense of solidarity and fraternity. Do not these post-democratic relationships of immediate personal trust and the informal rights of individuals based on them come out of the background of all those commonly shared difficulties? Do not these groups emerge, emerge, live, and disappear under pressure from concrete and authentic needs, unburdened by the ballast of hallow traditions? Is not their attempt to create an articulate form of living within the truth, and to renew the feeling of higher responsibility in an apathetic society really a sign of some kind of rudimentary moral reconstitution? In other words, are not these informed, non-bureaucratic, dynamic, and open communities that comprise to parallel polis, a kind of rudimentary prefiguration, a symbolic model of those more meaningful post-democratic political structures that might become the foundation of a better society? society. I know from thousands of personal experiences how the mere circumstance of having signed

Charter 77 has immediately created a deeper and more open relationship and evokes sudden and powerful feelings of genuine community among people who were all but strangers before. This kind of thing happens only rarely, if not at all, even among people who have worked together for long periods in some apathetic official structure. It is as though the mere awareness and acceptance of a common task and a shared experience were enough to transform people and the climate of their lives as though it gave their public work a more human dimension than is seldom found elsewhere elsewhere. This is why you have to find your people. Perhaps all this is only the consequence of a common threat. Perhaps the moment the threat ends or eases the mood it helped create will

begin to dissipate as well. The aim of those who threaten us, however, is precisely the opposite. Again and again, one is shocked by the energy they devote to contaminating in various despicable ways, all of the human relationships inside the threatened community. Looks really familiar. Sounds really familiar. Yet even if that were so, it would change nothing in the question I have posed. We do not know the way out of the marasmus of the world, and it would be an expression of unforgivable pride were we to see the little we do as a fundamental solution, ourselves, our community, and our solutions to vital problems is the only thing worth doing. Even so, I think they've given all these preceding thoughts on post-Satelitarian conditions

and giving the circumstances and the interconstitution of the developing efforts to defend human beings and their identity in such conditions, the questions I have posed are appropriate. If nothing else, they are an invitation to reflect concretely on our own experience and to give some thoughts to whether certain elements of that experience do not, without our really being aware of it, point somewhere further beyond their apparent limits. And whether right here in our everyday lives, certain challenges are not already encoded, quietly waiting for the moment when they will be read and grasped. For the real question is whether the brighter future is really always so distant.

What if on the contrary it has been here for a long time already, and only our own blindness and weakness has presented us, has prevented us from seeing it around us and within us and kept us from developing it? That's it. 80 pages. I hope the last three chapters really hit home. It's easy. It's not easy, but I mean, it's a decision. start living inside inside of you the way you want to live just live and believe in what you want to believe find your own people and multiply that and i really honestly believe that will only be

the beginning but that's where we have to start all right thank you for being here for this and um yeah see on the next episode and uh A couple good ones coming up. Going to continue some series as I conclude this one. So for now, take care. And see you next time. Bye.