The Art of the Impossible
I do not have a background in the arts or theatre, and have not done enough reading in my own time to know much of it, which is probably one of the reasons why I kept hearing of Vaclav Havel, but not knowing much of his works. Recently, I came across Havel as he has greatly influenced the current Prime Minister of Ethiopia, and Nobel Peace Laureate, Dr. Abiy Ahmed. I also crossed Havel re-listening to the TED Talk by Bryan Stevenson. While I have not read his plays, I did get a copy of "The Art of the Impossible" (1997), which is a collection of his speeches (largely translated by Paul Wilson). The translator of the book provided a Forward, which states "The pages of this book trace another journey, even more remarkable: the inner, personal journey of an artist and intellectual whose ideas germinated under totalitarianism, grew in the post-Stalinist thaw of the 1960s, toughened in the hard years after the Soviet invasion, matured during his four years in prison, and finally bore fruit in the Velvet Revolution of 1989." (p. xiii). Some quotes from throughout the book (in order, which is also chronological, as the speeches are organized in that way, as Havel did when gave collections of speeches away):
"… this is still not the main problem. The worst thing is that we live in a contaminated moral environment. We fell morally ill because we got used to saying something different from what we thought. We learned not to believe in anything, to ignore each other, to care only for ourselves. Concepts such as love, friendship, compassion, humility, and forgiveness lost their depth and dimensions." (p. 4)
"At the deepest core of this feeling there was, ultimately, a sensation of the absurd: what Sisyphus might have felt if one fine day his boulder stopped, rested on the hilltop, and failed to roll back down. It was the sensation of a Sisyphus mentally unprepared for the possibility that his efforts might succeed, a Sisyphus whose life had lost its old purpose and hadn't yet developed a new one." (p. 49)
"We were very good at being persecuted and at losing. That may be why we are so flustered by our victories and so disconcerted that no one is persecuting us. Now and then I even encounter indications of nostalgia for the time when life flowed between banks that, true, were very narrow, but that were unchanging and apparent to everyone. Today we don't know where the banks lie and are slightly shocked by it. We are like prisoners who have grown used to their prisons and, suddenly given their longed-for freedom, do not know what to do with it, and are made desperate by the constant need to think for themselves." (p. 52)
"In the subconscious of haters there slumbers a perverse feeling that they alone possess the truth, that they are some kind of superhuman or even god, and thus deserve the world's complete recognition, even its complete submissiveness and loyalty, if not its blind obedience. They want to be the centre of the world and are constantly frustrated and irritated because the world does not accept and recognize them as such: indeed, it may not pay any attention to them, and perhaps it even ridicules them." (p. 56)
"… the ability to generalize is a fragile gift that has to be handled with great care. A less perceptive soul can easily overlook the hidden seeds of injustice that may lie in the act of generalization. We have all made observations or expressed opinions of one kind or another about various peoples. We may say that the French, the English, or Russians are like this or that; we don't mean ill by it, we are only trying, through our generalizations, to see reality better. But there is a grave danger hidden in this kind of generalization. A group of people defined in a certain way in this case ethnically is, in a sense, subtly deprived of individual spirits and individual responsibilities, and we endow it with an abstract, collective sense of responsibility. Clearly, this is a wonderful starting point for collective hatred. Individuals become a priori bad or evil simply because of their origin. The evil of racism, one of the worst evils in the world today, depends among other things directly on this type of careless generalization." (p. 61)
"We are beginning, inadvertently but dangerously, to resemble in some ways our contemptible precursors. It bothers us, it upsets us, but we are discovering that we simply can't, or don't know how to, put a stop to it." (p. 71)
"For years I criticized practical politics as no more than a technique in the struggle for power, as a purely pragmatic activity whose aim was not to serve people selflessly and responsibly in harmony with one's conscience, but merely to win their favor through a variety of techniques, with a view to staying in power or gaining more." (p. 82)
"There was, in fact, something communistic in my patience to renew democracy. Or, in more general terms, something of a rationally enlightened nature. I wanted to nudge history forward in the way a child would when wishing to make a flower grow more quickly: by tugging at it. I think the art of waiting is something that has to be learned. We must patiently plant the seeds and water the grounds well, and give the plants exactly the amount of time they need to mature. Just as we cannot fool a plant, we cannot fool history." (p. 107)
"Democracy is a system based on trust in the human sense of responsibility, which it ought to awaken and cultivate. Democracy and civil society are thus two sides of the same coin. Today, when our very planetary civilization is endangered by human irresponsibility, I see no other way to save it than through a general awakening and cultivation of the sense of responsibility people have for the affairs of the world." (p. 145)
"The main task of the present generation of politicians is not, I think, to ingratiate themselves with the public through the decisions they take or their smiles on television. It is not to go on winning elections and ensuring themselves a place in the sun till the end of their days. Their role is something quite different: to assume their share of responsibility for the long-range prospects of our world and thus to set an example for the public in whose sight they work. Their responsibility is to think ahead boldly, not to fear the disfavor of the crowd, to imbue their actions with a spiritual dimension (which of course is not the same thing as ostentatious attendance at religious services), to explain again and again both to the public and to their colleagues – that politics must do far more than reflect the interests of particular groups or lobbies. After all, politics is a matter of servicing the community, which means that it is morality in practice, and how better to serve the community and practice morality than by seeking in the midst of the global (and globally threatened) civilization their own global political responsibility: that is, their responsibility for the very survival of the human race?" (p. 223)
