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There certainly are moments when one feels as if in a sinking ship or, rather, in a ship where someone set off a false emergency alarm merely because storm clouds are gathering somewhere above the Euro-lighthouse.
Several sea miles away, the captain of the Hungarian ship has already reacted and, having closed all portholes, is accelerating away from the open sea and into a swampy bay (where, surely, there's no danger of drowning). And here we are, being told to go on doing what we're doing because – listen to that! – steady, patient and persistent work is the only thing that can save us from the storm. What are we – being thus fooled – to do?
To evacuate!
Perhaps I do not follow public debate closely enough, but I got an impression that, over several years, this word has passed into modern folklore. To point all the connotations it involves (disillusionment, resentfulness, anger, sarcasm, cynicism, illusion) a book would not suffice, but, in a nutshell, it is an apocalyptic message to the captain: we are not merely emigrating, we are fleeing a country that is crumbling (the one that you unsettled). Bottom-line: a tragic catastrophe has already happened and, therefore, run for your lives while you can. The rates of emigration seem to prove such underlying thinking.
Can we doubt the massive rates of emigration? No. Can we blame the ones who left for going where the grass is greener? Certainly not. Is emigration indeed a veritable threat to the existence of the Lithuanian state? Certainly possible. Has every captain who has steered the ship over the last twenty years contributed to the situation? Undoubtedly.
Yet even if one accepts this line of argument, I still do not see why the only logical conclusion should be this cynical word “to evacuate.” A word of symbolic significance, one which has been deploringly overused and, if you will, fiendishly delighted in.
A revealing example – a recent survey that (might have) shocked the society by showing that a majority of its own members would pick material wellbeing over independence.
The most remarkable thing to it is not perhaps the survey itself (the sociologists were fully right to carry it out and the media to publish the results), but reactions and reactions to reactions. Government representatives responded traditionally: the soviet past and capitalist materialism are to blame. The others interpreted this as yet another instance of the establishment refusing to see their own fault and instead putting the blame on the people. I, however, think that the unreflecting attitudes of the authorities are less dangerous than the commentators' straightforward response telling the officials to look in the mirror. One representative commentator, bashing the authorities for their “unreflectiveness,” used the “evacuation” (it is the word he used) example: while you are doing mischiefs, people are getting out.
Another commentator adds, in a rather rowdy lingo: the survey is a way for the people to show the establishment their middle finger. As if the captain of the ship were someone from outside (another sea), imposed upon us by something we do not control, as if “them” did not came from among “us”; moreover, as if the policies of our current government were nothing but a continuation of previous governments', as if no qualitative change has ever occurred. Listen up, people, things are hopeless, therefore:
Evacuate!
The “reflectively unreflecting” commentators do not offer us to look for solutions, only for scapegoats (everyone knows where they graze). To look with hatred, contempt, abuses.
Let me repeat myself: the situation does look like a panic after a false alarm. These are but several public discourse examples among many that back the ship-in-panic metaphor. Just look at the communication in public sphere.
The general atmosphere is filled with anger, bullying, frustration, accusations, as if respectable men – otherwise giving air of composure and common sense – are rushing to the lifeboats, pushing aside children, elderly people, and women, and shouting that the rest of us who refuse to push and bully others, especially the captain, are idiots.
Refusal to weigh one's words has become standard practice. Not just personal stance, style of rhetoric, group fad – no, it's a veritable norm for everyone to follow.
I do not wish to over-generalize, but it seems that sophisticated forms of bullying is becoming one of the ways to experience commonality. For instance, every online editor knows that the more provocative the headline, the bigger chance that readers might click on it. Moreover, the provocativeness does not lie in its originality, but merely in the use of strong words.
Everyone (readers as well as editors) take this for granted. But where does this taking-for-grantedness come from? Why shouldn't one take for granted that such piece of writing is not worth reading, say, because its author is incompetent in choosing his or her words? Who cares where that comes from – the haute couture shallowness, giving one the nerve to compare current economic hardships to Stalinist deportations, or “pure reason”, as G.K.Chesterton would put it, whereby a so-called choreographer is convinced that he's outsmarting everyone else by being publicly obnoxious, since “it's good for the ratings.” They know that this kind of talk will get them attention.
But going on like this we might end up actually sinking. When everyone is shouting abuses and waving middle fingers, there is no coordination. The worst would come if everyone started to evacuate en masse and all boats were attached to one side of the ship.
As all passengers start rushing to that one side, the ship tips and... the crew has no choice but to ask everyone to stay in their cabins. But no one listens, there are even those who find the marginal situation profitable (they might start charging everyone 2.5 for boarding a lifeboat).
Lithuania is not the only country in panic. Many Europeans are throwing frightful glances at lightnings and torrents of rain. An Italian director Luca Ragazzi and his friend Gustav Hofer traveled the country, filming people and asking them: is it worth it staying in Italy (they made a documentary “Italy: Love It or Leave It”). Andreos Camilleri, an author, gave this response: “When we decide to run, we leave emptiness behind us. It is filled by the evil that made us run in the first place.”
What might sound as literary fancy is in fact a very real and pragmatical principle. As you leave, as you “evacuate,” you do not help solve the problem (though there were statisticians who claimed, mistaking number magic for truth, that the government policies worked exactly because people were leaving); on the contrary, what you do is allow more space for the problems to thrive. Amidst all the shouting, who will hear the question: Perhaps it might be better to remain in our cabins?
