Margaret Thatcher had some kind of a faith… [Margaret Thatcher avea un soi de credinţă…]

Floods of bytes and pixels are being dedicated these moments to the death of Margaret Thatcher, undoubtedly an outstanding personality of the past century.

It would be a futile attempt from my part to write an obituary, as long as countless other political analysts and historians (as a lousy blogger, I can’t pretend to be any of these) have already published good articles about the Iron Lady who helped tear down the Iron Curtain, bring the USSR on its knees, and end the Cold War.

What I would like to do is draw attention to some of her religious beliefs. Although by no means in accordance with the Orthodox Church’s doctrine, her ideas were quite unparalleled in our secular EU and in stark contrast with the concoction of politically correct clichés that current leaders hold as paramount beliefs.

She probably was the last (or among the last) genuine political personalities of human history, which seems to have entered a decrepit phase of copycat leaders, of pathetic strawmen like Tony Bliar, Gordon Clown, David Chameleon, Barack Obama, Traian Băsescu or... Victor Ponta.

Brainwashed by nihilistic ideologies, trailing their twisted moral backbones and crippled ambitions on the world scene, these statesmen (and women – let’s not forget feminine versions, like Angela Merkel or Hillary Clinton, of the above antiheroes!) are but ethically eviscerated puppets.

Like all great historical heroes (including her favourite Winston Churchill) Margaret Thatcher remains a controversial character. However, unlike most leaders of our troubled times, she had some form of faith.

A faith as staunchly followed as probably only great characters of yore did, perhaps Oliver Cromwell or John Knox. Here are some of her beliefs about Christianity (taken from here): 

“Methodism isn’t just a religion for Sundays – no faith is only a faith for Sundays. There were a lot of things during the week which one attended. Methodism is a pretty practical faith; there were the mothers’ sewing meetings and the guilds for young people.”

“If you are faced with the real problems of poverty and ignorance and people don’t know how best to grow crops, you’ve got a pretty simple, straightforward task because you’ve got to help, and help in practical terms. 

Because while you’re teaching them religion you’ve got to recognise that they are not very likely to receive it or understand it unless it does mean something and enables them to do things for themselves.

“So you replace poverty by a better standard of living out of people’s own efforts, because everyone’s got talent and ability, and you teach them what we regard as necessary to life, and you teach them religion as well.” 

“So when you’ve relieved poverty and ignorance and disease, if you are not a Christian you think that sorts out the problems of the world. You and I know it doesn’t, because there is still the real religious problem in the choice between good and evil. Choice is the essence of ethics.

If you deny that personal responsibility you are denying the religious basis of life – that’s the difference between me and a Marxist. The values by which you and I live are not values given by the State.” 

“Christianity is about more than doing good works. It is a deep faith which expresses itself in your relationship to God. It is a sanctity, and no politician is entitled to take that away from you or to have what I call corporate State activities which only look at interests as a whole.

So, you’ve got this double thing which you must aim for in religion, to work to really know your faith and to work it out in everyday life. You can’t separate one from the other. 

Good works are not enough because it would be like trying to cut a flower from its root; the flower would soon die because there would be nothing to revive it.” 

[For all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]

Cranes over Bucharest [Macarale peste Bucureşti]

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, Romania’s (not Hungary’s!) capital – Bucharest, not Budapest! – hasn’t seen as many cranes (pics 1, 3, 5, 7) as those visible these days.

They are not as omnipresent as they were in the late 1980s, nevertheless, their presence can’t remain unnoticed, to locals and visitors alike.

As if there were no global economic crisis and Romania were immune to the turmoil in the Eurozone, cranes leave their mark of optimism on Bucharest’s skyline.

So it was during Nicolae Ceauşescu’s last days, so it was in Patriarh Noah’s time. People were building as if there would be a guaranteed tomorrow.

It’s true that, in Brussels, where cranes (pics 2, 4, 6, 8) stood a few years ago, a new building has risen to accommodate the newest EU institition.

The European External Action Service (EEAS) has got a nice home now, but whether the EU has a common foreign policy is still arguable.

The same applies for Bucharest. It may have more and more visible tower cranes, however, the city still lacks a coherent development strategy.

Were the cranes in Brussels and are those in Bucharest a true earnest of a prosperous future?! I bet Ceauşescu thought the same about his cranes in 1989…

[For all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]

Witty bits from what I learned in the UK (21) [Vorbe de duh din ce am învăţat în UK]

Less than a year after the biggest wave of EU enlargement, the better off (Western) half of the European Union was more or less terrified by the prospect of an invasion of low skilled workers from the new Member States.

On a peaceful, stable and prosperous continent – too bad that these ‘certitudes’ would be put in doubt sooner than most people could have imagined in May 2004 or January 2007 – this kind of scaremongering was a lucrative strategy for many newspapers.

East Europeans were allegedly rushing to the former paradise that had been protected by the Iron Curtain, in order to feast on its delights, but bring nothing in exchange. So it was told by some, so it was believed by many.

For anyone coming from the poorer (Eastern) half of the EU, those assumptions were preposterous from the beginning.

With some exceptions (tens of thosands at most) most of the intra-EU migrants (about two million only from Romania) would not be savage migratory hordes, but law-abiging taxpayers in their adoptive countries.

By no means were these ‘second class Europeans’ inherently  prone to pulverise the social structures of the Welfare States which had already been weakened by numerous homegrown causes.

The archetipal threat was – as it was portrayed initially and mainly in France, but not exclusively there – the Polish plumber.

This character was meant to represent a cheap worker, with unverifiable skills, who was free to access the labour market, thus to ‘steal’ the jobs of the locals.

A large number of foreign workers would drive wages down, make trade unionism falter, and cause massive unemployment.

A EU commissioner from the Netherlands dared to claim that, contrary to popular belief in the ‘threat’ posed by such workers from the new Member States, he would entrust a Polish handyman with taking care of his second home in France.

When I was in the UK, I asked someone (an economic researcher) whether a similar fear of foreign plumbers existed in Britain, beyond the hysteria of the tabloids.

His answer is another ‘witty bit’ which explains the success of Polish (+ Romanian, Estonian, Hungarian etc) plumbers (+ other workers) have been having in many EU countries over the past years:

“The British plumber is not as good as the Polish plumber, and the latter may even smile to you. Skills of the lower part of  the population are not as good as in Eastern Europe.”

[For all the episodes of this series, and all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate episoadele din această serie şi toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]

Aşteptând încă revoluţia mondială... (9) [Still waiting for the world revolution...]

N-or putea măsura vreodată statisticile câţi or fi fost aceia care, acum 22 de ani, aşteptau zorii libertăţii de a-L putea mărturisi pe Cel Care revoluţionează conştinţele de două mii de ani încoace şi oferă adevărata libertate...

În schimb, este sigur că la un alt fel de revoluţie şi alt fel de libertate se aşteptau majoritatea românilor – să se ‘dea drumul’ la cumpărături, să ai cu ce, dar şi ce să cumperi.

După decenii de dezumanizare – brutală mai întâi, apoi mai rafinată, cu destule ‘părţi bune’ de sub spoiala cărora mulţi nu îşi mai pot aminti nonsensurile şi relele – în ‘paradisul comunist’, puhoaiele de neterminaţi oameni noi nu mai aveau decât aspiraţii de sorginte materială.

Libertatea nu putea fi concepută ca însemnând a fi liber, ci a avea. A deţine, a cumpăra, a folosi sau adesea doar a etala bunuri de tot soiul era expresia supremei libertăţi.

Dacă şi eu, la nici zece ani, eram contaminat – visând să am jucării ca în Germania :-) – ce alte aşteptări puteau să aibă cei abrutizaţi de lipsa de perspectivă, cu mintea trecută fără de încetare prin râşniţa sloganurilor ideologice?

Puţini spre niciunii or mai fi fost aceia care să creadă în posibilitatea de îndeplinire a falselor promisiuni de înfăptuire a paradisului comunist.

Utopia îşi arătase hidoasa neputinţă de multă vreme. Mai degrabă ar fi făcut plopul pere şi răchita micşunele decât să iasă ceva bun din fantasmagoria comunistă.  Probabil că şi cei mai fanatici comunişti (de or mai fi fost vreunii?!) înţelegeau aceasta.

Totuşi, evidenţa eşecului nu era suficientă pentru a aduce eliberarea de credinţa că raiul pe pământ se poate înfăptui. Ba chiar că acesta ar şi exista deja, dincolo de Cortina de Fier.

Comunismul murea, dar efectul său otrăvitor abia avea să se desăvârşească. Majoritatea oamenilor erau robiţi de aceeaşi iluzie pe care o constata Sf. Apostol Pavel: “Dacă morţii nu înviază, să bem şi să mâncăm, căci mâine vom muri!”.

Robii lui ‘aici şi acum’ nu se puteau elibera de comunism decât spre a preschimba lanţurile sclaviei anterioare cu altele mai sclipitoare şi – doar aparent! – mai uşor de purtat.

Din lacul cu rumeguş ideologic al comunismului s-a sărit în puţul consumismului, într-o mocirlă călduţă. Ca de carton putred, sloganurile comuniste erau tot mai greu de ros, dar şi mai greu de digerat. Le-au înlocuit cele de marketing, parcă mai crocante şi apetisante.

Sufletelor constipate de o cvasiabsolută lipsă a opţiunilor, 22 de ani de ‘libertate’ le-au adus o permanentă cufureală, ca urmare a chiolhanului de alegeri care le sunt puse înainte.

Cine nu cumpără nu este şi n-ar putea fi fericit, sugerează – chiar dacă nu explicit – lozincile vremurilor noastre. Cine nu consumă, nu contează (pentru progresul economiei). Cine nu are, nu este (nimic pe lumea aceasta). Acestea sunt proclamatele noi adevăruri.

Şi nici nu s-ar putea numi post-revoluţionare, căci mereu se anunţă noi revoluţii în comerţ, în tehnologie sau economie, başca în politică.

Aşa cum troţkiştii vorbesc despre o revoluţie permanentă, şi în paradisul consumist se tot succed revoluţii – ale preţurilor, ofertelor, bonusurilor, chilipirurilor… Nimic nu stagnează, totul se schimbă. Oare în mai bine?!

Culmea este când negustori din ţara Revoluţiei Culturale a lui Mao Zedong, vin să ne promită  o revoluţie a comerţului (potrivit imaginilor de faţă).

Aşa fraieri să fi fost?! La peste două decenii de ‘libertate’, pare-se că n-am învăţat cât de fericiţi putem fi cheltuind mai puţin, dar cumpărând mai mult. Nici nu vrem mai mult de atât, nici că ni se oferă altceva.

Ca ţară creştin-ortodoxă (oare?!) s-ar fi cuvenit să căutăm mai mult nepreţuitele – pace, bucurie, iubire, blândeţe, compasiune, răbdare…

Bine ne-ar fi fost să nu ne fi scobit de miez sufletele, pentru a le umple cu biete consumabile, prin care îşi închipuie rostul sute de milioane de oameni din lumea aşa-zis dezvoltată sau în care îşi caută eliberarea miliardele de chinezi şi de indieni.

Din păcate, şi românii se leagănă letargic  pe pânza de păianjen a amăgirii că suntem ceea ce avem şi avem ceea ce putem cumpăra – iar aceasta ar fi o condiţie absolut necesară a fericirii.

[Pentru toate episoadele din această serie şi toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la/For all the episodes of this series, and all the posts on this blog go to: Contents/Cuprins]

Witty bits from what I learned in the UK (1) [Vorbe de duh din ce am învăţat în UK]

I guess it's high time I started a series of blog posts exclusively in English about what I am learning here, hoping that both my colleagues, and our lovely SEI hosts would enjoy reading them. Obviously, it would be pointless to reproduce here lecture notes.

Moreover (to be completely honest to everyone :-), even if I learned by heart all the theories that we're being familiarized with these days, I'll probably forget them sooner or later. But I'll definitely not forget quite a few memorable phrases or ideas.

For the beginning, here's why (put in a nutshell) Communism and planned economy were doomed to fail. As they applied 20th century technologies to a 19th century economy (whose main assets were the hordes of cheap, unskilled labourers), those governments increased productivity up to a point, and even launched the first satellite (1957).

Only that in 20 years from then, much of the technology used to take Yuri Gagarin into space would be available in toy stores, and the Communist regimes simply couldn't make that essential swift from the age of electro-mechanics to the age of electronics.

Basically, many industrial secrets that Soviet spies were stealing from the West remained locked in archives. Information was useless in the absence of people trained to know what to do with it!

An infinity of other (political, economical, social, moral, and so forth) reasons would explain the collapse of Communism, but to put it simply - even to those born after 1989-1991 - here is a brilliant (and unacademic :-) explanation from our Course Director.

His words seem to be as carefully distilled as Scotch whisky: "You find it hard to believe that a Soviet planner could come up with the idea of an iPod." It really is as simple as that...

[For all the episodes of this series, and all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate episoadele din această serie şi toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]