ETWAS SISYPHUS, ETWAS SACHER-MASOCH Der ... - The Greens

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I remember during one December evening when the Orange victory appeared to be particularly close, Yurko Prokhasko, who is present today, and I were crossing the still boisterous Maidan (Independence Square). It goes without saying what we were talking about. It was right out of Viktor Hugo: “What are you thinking about? About the future.” Yurko said that it was particularly important to put together “a list of things that must be changed.” I liked the idea very much.. I eagerly would put together my own version of just such a list. At that I would define it more categorically—“things that must be changed, otherwise you’d have nothing but a royal mess.” The more categorical the points of our dissatisfaction that would be stamped by each of us on our personal tablet of commandments, the better our chances to change the country. Then everything seemed possible. You propose such and such a change—and it comes true. Ukrainian society suddenly turned out to be a wonderful democratic tiger—and it realized its unexpectedly beautiful jump up and forward. A qualitative turning point was felt at all levels of the country’s united Maidan: collective consciousness, self-organization, solidarity, moral norms of behavior, gesticulation, articulation, facial expression. With this kind of society one could move mountains. That is to say, without wavering, effectuate any kind, even the most fantastic “list”: change power, bring new highly qualified people into government root out corruption in all of its stages provide for lustration lightning quickly and brilliantly introduce necessary reforms – in the legal system, in education, in public health, and even the orthography (if you like) One could, besides that: make a Ukrainian the next Pope and—at simultaneously—the Dalai Lama land on Mars en mass and even enter the European Union. Any kind of task—even though at the highest level of improbability—would have been, it seems, manageable. However, I did not compose my list. First, it seems, I set aside this pursuit as a result of all kinds of pressing things, and in time I even found the following explanation for
myself: why should I do this? And why in the end should I not permit myself such a luxury— to stop not sleeping night after night over Ukrainian politics? The country finally had emerged onto a good path and generally succeeded in this without my help. Our society had matured by itself, in accordance with certain laws unknown to me, and completely unnoticeably to me it became fully—how would you say it?—civil. I looked for its sprouts, but it turned out to be a large tree in its prime. It found its bearings better than I as to what it now needed to do with all these changes. It comes to light that it was this very thing that turned out to be the primary illusion. There was yet one more illusion—that we finally had secured for ourselves a qualitatively better government. That these “new faces” attest to “new heads” and “a new conscience.” But this illusion was rather secondary, and the main one was different: that we ourselves (society?) had become qualitatively new. That is, we somehow overvalued ourselves uncritically. We took a miracle as the norm—that’s the problem. The miracle of the revolution lay in the fact that the beautiful future glimpsed at us for a moment and over the course of this historical moment it dictated to us our civic maturity. But a miracle is never permanent, for this reason it is a miracle, in order to pass, and to say it more precisely—to slip through. Together with the rolling up of the last tents, the future went away from us, and its place has been occupied by holdovers from the past now playing the boss. Today it already seems as if from that time not a single of the “things from the list” has been changed. That is, we again are really in some kind of hopeless year 1999 of Ukrainian history and no third millennium is shining on us from anywhere. I understand that this is an illusion too: something has changed! I feverishly sift through several mantric word combinations—democratic elections, freedom of speech, and others. One can certainly strongly doubt the fact as to what degree the elections were truly democratic and to what degree freedom of speech is really freedom of speech, and not, let’s say, a temporary result of a more and more dubious diarchy. But mantras are mantras for this reason, so you repeat them without thinking. You just repeat them as many times as possible.
Seite 1 und 2: ETWAS SISYPHUS, ETWAS SACHER-MASOCH
Seite 3 und 4: Als die letzten Zelte abgebaut wurd
Seite 5: Wieder hat man dich vom obersten Gi
Seite 9: In the times of high Kuchmism I wro

ETWAS SISYPHUS, ETWAS SACHER-MASOCH Der ... - The Greens

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