About true patriotism

True patriotism

Driving a truck from Portugal to Kazakhstan, I have the opportunity to do research on societies and sometimes simply talk to people living in other countries who have different points of view on many issues. So I compare not only the level of primitivism or development, mental backwardness or enlightened empathy, but above all the attitude towards another person – the tone of voice that people address to each other, whether their faces more often show peace or worry, whether they are inclined to courtesy, whether to manifest their undervalued ego, whether they are cooperative or lazy, whether they kindly serve me in restaurants, offices, whether their smaller drivers are people on a level or the proverbial beetroot. Poles do well compared to other nations. Of course, if one sees only drunken refugees, he probably cannot see more. That’s his problem.

We are creative and we can do many things well – repair the car, glue the tiles, we are hardworking, friendly, open-minded, and although I’m not talking about all of them, because even from a high position, some monkeys can jump at us, nevertheless I do not see that Poles have any reason for any complexes. Except for one. This is Polishness – “defiling one’s own nest”. The more a person is complex, the more he runs away from his own fears, the more often he looks for a scapegoat in Polishness. It is a primitive reaction of one of its ends hitting the other end – the more distorted the Polish “patriotism” is, the more distorted is the understanding of cosmopolitanism.. It boils down to a rabid attitude – the more rabid in avoiding “strangeness” a “real Pole” is, the more rabid in often unconscious searching – at least on an aesthetic level – only negative aspects of Polishness (I am not saying that Poland is super beautiful) is most often a poor Dulszczan who found a new Ithaca in a piece of Paris and had an epiphany. There he probably saw a Man that he had never been himself. A man who is not and will not be – because he is not himself. For a man steeped in dulszczyzna, the discovery of new dimensions of identity will always take place at the cost of making Polishness a cloaca of his boggy affects. Defacing your own nest is not a European attitude, much less a global one. Only among Polish employees of foreign companies or among Polish drivers do I encounter such insult to my country that I do not even meet among the citizens of Romania, Kazakhstan, Georgia or Ukraine. Of course, this is not a rule, because half of the trucks are hung with Polish pennants, scarves with the inscription “Poland”, etc. But nowhere have I encountered such complexity regarding my own origin as among Poles. I thought to myself that this trait – among the negative traits of Polishness – is exceptionally Polish. Unfortunately. Wafing in one’s own excrement – a wire-straight contraction of romantic martyrdom. One of the Polish specialties.

Louie, my only English friend living in Liverpool, said when I asked him while offloading at the company where he works that my conclusions about societies will never be based on in-depth and more extensive analysis because I do not have the opportunity to stay in one place for more than less than a weekend for a break among the driver’s duties – once in a while, often not even twice a year. Unless someone works in the liner, on regular orders. I work for shipping – every time I go to a completely different place. One day it may be Guadalajara, the next – Lviv. Louie is a sociologist by profession, and I agreed with him – truck drivers won’t stay anywhere for longer. However, this has its positive side: It allows you to intensively compare the external mood, appearance and demeanor of people, as well as evaluate the general mental state of societies. As a driver, my favorite thing to do is to be in the countries of the United Kingdom. Because although I definitely prefer the nature of Romania, the spaces of Russia or Sweden or the warm, vast landscapes of Spain, I nevertheless consider British society to be the most mature, and the local people to be the closest when it comes to attitudes towards life, not forgetting the not-so-positive aspects of their existence. However, it is about the whole, not about details, among which we can always find advantages and disadvantages. I love British rock and heavy metal, British motoring – especially triumph and royal enfield motorcycles – and Mr. Bean and Monty Python. Besides, I love simple cuisine. I am not a foodie. Fish & chips and the feeling of a full stomach, and a double espresso from a vending machine at a gas station – for my simple taste, it is a dose of energy much more valuable than mussels and white wine. I also like the personal culture of the British – she is simply polite, not distinguished, although distinction is the specialty of the British. However, there is no French blast in it and this pretending that the cheese that stinks with a boiled diaper is sublime. I like to have a truck on thurrock services M25, where always a nice receptionist can easily book a taxi for me to London. I like the feeling that I am among normal people, I like the high level of service for my being in restaurants, while visiting cities, museums, or even at unloading and at gas stations. I don’t have such an impression in Germany. Even though young Germans are usually fine, among the old ones I still feel at the Gestapo station – sorry, but I really feel like that. During a recent Sunday conversation at Louie’s house, to which he always invites me if I have the opportunity to film a pause in The Beatles town, we talked about patriotism and my observations, although obviously not going deep into the local mentality nuances, positively surprised him.

The British are proud of Britain. They love their country – and it is a peaceful and ordinary love. Bland as pudding, but sure. It does not contain the fierce affectivity of the rydzysk society, nor the right-wing azimuths with a horizon filled with fearful piety at any cost. There is also no left-wing reactivity to the deviations of the right. The political life of the British is based on treating the left, right and center as modules of the same British pragmatism, distance to all kinds of ideology and the common sense principle as a determinant of normality. This is probably due to the simple fact that as humans they can live and enjoy life. Maybe it is a model of upbringing, maybe a continuation of a deep-sea, less agrarian tradition? I do not know. As a rule, the British do not need worldview prostheses for their own deficits. If you have a problem – solve it, don’t avoid it. No group of people can solve your troubles. You have the problem, no one else. And don’t get bogged down in this problem – go and solve it, because your only problem is that you don’t want to solve it, and there aren’t any problems that can’t be solved. Everything is possible, just stop feeling sorry for yourself. And above all: “ Always look on the bright side of life ” as the Pythons sing in one of their sketches. It’s a quiet affirmation. From the beginning of my studies, I was positively surprised by the stoicism that I found in the UK to such an extent as in any other country. Of course, I’m not talking about parties, because here the British unfortunately have no borders. – Drunken Englishman or Scotsman is Satan incarnate. Someone much more crude than a drunk Pole. And one more important thing: Patriotism is not one of the outlooks on the island. It is an element of life in a society like the rules of the road are for us. In Poland, patriotism has been strangely connected with anachronistic sentimentality, unfoundedly claiming to create the only possible point of view. In most cases, Polish patriotism is martyrdom historicism, a mythology of sabers directed at the tanks of the devil who surrounds Poland from all sides. In Britain, patriotism is a pro-civic attitude and has nothing to do with any kind of society. Everyone is a patriot. If someone is not – they are traumatized, have a problem with themselves, or maybe they don’t understand something. A Polish patriot in Great Britain is treated with much higher respect than a Pole who renounces Polishness and glorifies the UK. Such is considered a coward.

When speaking of patriotism, we speak with Louie not only about a deeply entrenched sense of identity with a place or with a nation, but above all about a person’s attitude towards his roots. Here, too, we do not need to refer to some identity arche, because a person can be proud of their place of birth as much as of the date and time they saw the world. After all, we can distinguish between pride , which we do not owe to ourselves, and therefore we really have no reason to be proud, from dignity . The first one strives for some imaginary rather metaphysical depth, that is, in fact, a mental error which, apart from the affectionate appearance of a man, wants to appropriate and subordinate the human interior, tearing his individual heart out of the victim of an idea.. Pride can saturate Man only as a sublime joy resulting from the sense of rightness and the great value of an act he has committed himself. You can also be proud of the achievements of people with whom we have something in common – for example history. Nevertheless, the pride felt about the place or date of birth indicates a deficit of its own personality that is desperately running away from itself towards the external values ​​on which it is trying to build itself. Likewise, building your ego pride on the basis of manifesting aversion to your origin: This is not a different azimuth. Patriotism and anti-patriotism take a different twist. The direction, however, remains the same. Before we turned to the concept of dignity, we considered patriotism built on the affect of pride.

Louie and I called him identity patriotism . It represents the attitude of individuals seeking their own identity ( ipse ) outside of themselves. So it is, in fact, the prosthesis of this identity. Moreover, it is worth emphasizing – this is not true patriotism, because the motive behind the actions of individuals identifying with a nation or race is not their affirmation, but the affirmation of themselves on the basis of a sense of strength that is provided by group identification in escaping loneliness. For nationalists, axiological telos who see romantic impulses that unite the Nation, for fascists, in unity (bonds – fasci ) exploring strength and power for their weakened psyche, for the Nazis, who need resentment to build their own ego, Nation itself does not count. It is just an excuse. Louie reminded me of the old British principle of common sense , where identity is the same as consensus . In other words, common sense among the British is a principle – not only a philosophical one – to respect social, linguistic, moral and legal conventions in order to make life clearer and simpler.. So it is even a matter of feeling for aesthetics and rejecting low affectivity to recognize common sense as a rule of wise behavior in social practice. Identity patriotism treats common sense as a goal, to which, however, it is not common sense itself that leads, but an affective love for it; panicky, sloppy, dull, tearful-threatening, hollow and manipulative with emotions. The social convention here ceases to discover the role of a rational paradigm, and becomes an idealized goal to which no reason will ever lead. In the hands of the nationalists, the social convention becomes a compulsion and thus loses its status as a convention. A good rule loses its transparency and contextual dynamics, thereby vanishing in the convention its universal status as a skillful means in favor of a fossilized tradition; it becomes a fetish for identities seeking idols to fill their own deficit. In other words, identity patriotism is more like a belligerent front of undervalued narcissists looking for pride among factors beyond their control and trying to confirm this pride by imposing their own point of view on others. In fact, it is the opposite of both pride and patriotism.

Next, Louie and I went over to discuss what pride actually is, when at the moment of searching for it among factors beyond our control – just as one can be proud of the place of birth, the date of birth and the weather which then she was, you can be so proud of having nails – she loses the rank of pride. Is there anything that precedes pride? After all, pride should be earned. You have to build your pride in yourself. A proud man is not a proud idler. This is someone who does not have to flaunt his pride or manifest it, because pride has it that it emanates from Man in a natural and unforced way like a good mood or serenity. The pride to be manifested is nothing but ferocity. True pride is “added” – one effect, but never foundation. In other words, pride is not something to be aspired to or something that can be “acquired” in some way. Pride is the result of an attitude. What precedes pride, as it were, is dignity ( dignity, pride, honor ). In the Polish combination of the words: “ God, Honor, Fatherland “, the order does not seem to be accidental. Leaving aside personal theological preferences and not taking these words out of the context of the times when God was as obvious as night and day, we note that patriotism does not come out of nowhere. It is not a foundation. It is a way of manifesting other values.

Patriotism is a natural attitude of a Man who affirms certain human values ​​and is, in a way, their emanation, a completely natural result of cultivating them. So we referred to honor understood as human dignity. For believers, dignity means the high value of being Human in general – a value sanctioned by God. For those who do not believe in god, what carries the rank of Divinity is Man himself or Humanity as one of the dimensions of Nature. I am not talking about pathological cases of hatred of humanity because of the greenhouse effect or other aberrations – such affects I and Louie considered resentmental, or low, responses; if someone calls people worms (cancer of the Earth), he is himself a worm (cancer of society) – then she has a problem with herself, not humanity. Human dignity means getting out of the very fact that you are Human. The exit – that is, a certain conclusion. It is possible to be a Man and not to notice this fact throughout your life, living “next to” your own humanity. Dignity is a task, treating life as a challenge, it is a certain “structural task” of life. It is a point of honor for every Humanity to cope with the Humanity given to himself, that is, to simply represent it with dignity.. Realizing the high dimension of being Human is setting the task of being Human. This is what dignity is all about.

What Man needs the most is affirmation . It is an attitude, a way of thinking and a way of shaping your consciousness. It is characterized by possible avoidance of negation and escape mechanisms. Affirmation even concerns the neuronal level of functioning of the human brain. It is the aesthetics and hygiene of mental life, the opposite of stupidity. We distinguished with Louie identity patriotism ( identity patriotism ), which we considered anti-patriotism, representing wickedness on a level similar to the anti-patriots themselves, from affirmative patriotism or affirming ( affirming patriotism ). In the evening, we blessedly realized that affirmative patriotism did not have to be called affirmative, but simply patriotism, because that is what it is everywhere, even in contemporary Germany – everywhere except Poland. Contrary to true patriots, identity patriots resemble anti-patriots who – as I mentioned at the beginning of the text – try to camouflage their own parochial complex with extremely stupid cosmopolitanism or making themselves a new, Parisian or Stockholm Volksdoj at all costs, a Cracovian more Krakow than a Krakowiak An Irishman who tries to be like that – especially in relation to Poles, to whom he tries to expose their lowness – despite the fact that he himself has Dazbog by skin and a potato nose.

Common sense is an affirmation. A positive attitude towards one’s Polishness and towards Poland is a similarly affirmative and upbuilding sign of human strength and maturity. It is no longer about identifying with the negative, martyrdom aspects of a backwater, which really have nothing to do with patriotism – it is just the fearful resentment of people who have not seen the world outside of their small town. By the way, the more willing I go back to my Cieszyn, the more I visit. I discover new, so far undiscovered flavors of my town and the Beskids. It is about realizing that shame, escape, negation, rejection, looking only for negative aspects of one’s origin, is based on personal problems, and not in the actual so-called external state. Polish anti-patriotism is more parochially Polish than distorted Polish pseudo-patriotism. So we have the chauvinism of rydzyk pseudopatriots and anti-Semites, we also have “reverse chauvinism” of cowards who renounce one element of the truth about themselves. Antipatriotism and nationalism are the same direction of a complex ego. Even if I live in the Czech Republic one day – I’m a Czechophile – I will always be a Pole. I wish to avoid rooting based on uprooting, having realized the principles of shaping identity and non-identity such a mechanism operates on.

It is bad for you when you lie to your past. Something else is criticism and bitter words to the pathological phenomena that, unfortunately, have been troubling Poland for years. Among the worst phenomena, in addition to the psychopathic pseudo-patriotism of national and Marian factions, proposing a sour, sentimental mush in a true Scripture, Smolensk style, feeding on emotions, and not justifying in a rational and unemotional way that Poland is simply a common yard and our common business, we have the anti-patriotism that grows out of such fanaticism. I seem to be, even among my friends, something about an alleged awakening, about “seeing through my eyes” or discovering a higher dimension of humanity, defacing my own nest, proving to other Poles that, being stuck in Polishness, they are nobody, they are funny and they will remain funny. I have other information for such people: We are not funny, but ordinary. If there was a war, you – like most pseudopatriots – will be robbing shop windows. You will curl your tail and run away with what you plundered, and after the war – prey on a country you did not defend. Unfortunately, that’s your mentality. Of course, I hope that there will be no war – this is just a picture. Those who feel themselves Polish just because they simply did not give up their Polishness, even if they worked outside their country, because in our country, the earnings of some people are actually offensive, so these people have a little more brain sticks than you “spatter”. And most of all, they have stronger characters and you can trust them more. When you spit on Poland, you never know if you are not smearing another person behind your back. It probably is – because on such a mechanism you build your own identity. Please familiarize yourself with the term: “resentment”. It is available on Wikipedia.

This text is not my manifesto at all because I am not a romantic man or even a history buff. I am not a patriot in the sense of identity, although I must honestly admit that as a creature not without emotions, I have very fond memories of the atmosphere of Masurian holidays from my childhood, visiting Warsaw on the way, which, although it seems to be a bit bigger Katowice today, at that time made the impression of a metropolis, I like their Beskids and Cieszyn. And simply in the world, I notice that wherever I am, patriotism is just ok, and when someone speaks badly about their country, they immediately look at it as someone who should rather not be trusted – and rightly so. People on unloading and loading ramps, in factories, offices, towns, pubs, restaurants and drivers from other countries always ask me what is going on in Poland, what is worth visiting, what is the weather, what is going on in politics. I always reply that politics is too much for me, but I raise my thumb when I talk about what is happening in Poland. And that it is worth visiting Gdańsk and the coast – we have a cold sea, but beautiful beaches with golden sand and healthy air, dunes and pine forests, we have picturesque Kashubia and Masuria, Warsaw with its history and specific, a bit eclectic, a bit post-communist mood, beautiful Poznań and Toruń, Sandomierz and Kazimierz, in general, the entire eastern wall of Poland is perfect for endless hiking and relaxation for people who want idyllicity and relaxation, and not necessarily pretending to be a trapper from Alaska – we have mountains for them. It is worth visiting Malbork, we also have Krakow, the unique Tatra Mountains, Białowieża Primeval Forest – the last forest in Europe that did not grow after earlier logging, Bieszczady – part of the wildest mountain range in Europe. In general, the Carpathians are the last mountain-forest range, where there are no elk and reindeer, but there are bears, wolves and wild cats, owls and other wild birds like in Alaska. The Biebrza swamps are home to the greatest variety of birds in Europe, and all the stars can be seen from Śnieżnik or Turbacz. Also visit Cieszyn, there are quite a few sleepy towns in Poland, where you can relax in the summer just like in the towns of Provence or Burgundy, but Cieszyn is unique. If someone is not a tourist consumer looking for the crushing majesty of sensational monuments such as Disneyland, but likes to contemplate, this one will like Cieszyn for its truly provincial atmosphere and for Czech beer.

A large number of these people have already been to Poland. They have fond memories of the event in Krakow or Zakopane. They like – especially young Germans – the fact that after crossing the border in Zgorzelec, they suddenly enter another dimension, where they see the non-urbanized space around them with the A4. Each time driving from the west with a foursome, I have the same experience. I like it very much. I appreciate the beauty of the Polish landscape, although we have already destroyed it so heavily, trying to arrange a free American in the 90s. The British like baroque monuments, the secrets of Lower Silesia and nature. Scandinavians really like this architectural disorder that I don’t like. It’s just different for them.

A symptom of ignorance, as well as psychological abnegation, abandoning tasks and being stripped of dignity is the inability to notice that we live in Poland, which is nowhere else, and that we are better people for ourselves and for others people, the better we are also for Poland. Even if we prefer to identify with others, it is rather because we find better solutions rather than running away from worse. However, the more we experience better solutions, the more often we realize that there are better and worse everywhere. Everything has its pros and cons. Not just about one side. If we see only advantages on one side and disadvantages on the other, then we have a big problem with us.

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True patriotism

Driving a truck from Portugal to Kazakhstan, I have the opportunity to do research on societies and sometimes simply talk to people living in other countries who have different points of view on many issues. So I compare not only the level of primitivism or development, mental backwardness or enlightened empathy, but above all the attitude towards another person – the tone of voice that people address to each other, whether their faces more often show peace or worry, whether they are inclined to courtesy, whether to manifest their undervalued ego, whether they are cooperative or lazy, whether they kindly serve me in restaurants, offices, whether their smaller drivers are people on a level or the proverbial beetroot. Poles do well compared to other nations. Of course, if one sees only drunken refugees, he probably cannot see more. That’s his problem.

We are creative and we can do many things well – repair the car, glue the tiles, we are hardworking, friendly, open-minded, and although I’m not talking about all of them, because even from a high position, some monkeys can jump at us, nevertheless I do not see that Poles have any reason for any complexes. Except for one. This is Polishness – “defiling one’s own nest”. The more a person is complex, the more he runs away from his own fears, the more often he looks for a scapegoat in Polishness. It is a primitive reaction of one of its ends hitting the other end – the more distorted the Polish “patriotism” is, the more distorted is the understanding of cosmopolitanism.. It boils down to a rabid attitude – the more rabid in avoiding “strangeness” a “real Pole” is, the more rabid in often unconscious searching – at least on an aesthetic level – only negative aspects of Polishness (I am not saying that Poland is super beautiful) is most often a poor Dulszczan who found a new Ithaca in a piece of Paris and had an epiphany. There he probably saw a Man that he had never been himself. A man who he is not and will not be – because he is not himself. For a man steeped in dulszczyzna, the discovery of new dimensions of identity will always take place at the cost of making Polishness a cloaca of his boggy affects. Defacing your own nest is not a European attitude, much less a global one. Only among Polish employees of foreign companies or among Polish drivers do I encounter such insult to my country that I do not even meet among the citizens of Romania, Kazakhstan, Georgia or Ukraine. Of course, this is not a rule, because half of the trucks are hung with Polish pennants, scarves with the inscription “Poland”, etc. But nowhere have I encountered such complexity regarding my own origin as among Poles. I thought to myself that this trait – among the negative traits of Polishness – is exceptionally Polish. Unfortunately. Wafing in one’s own excrement – a wire-straight contraction of romantic martyrdom. One of the Polish specialties.

Louie, my only English friend living in Liverpool, said when I asked him while offloading at the company where he works that my conclusions about societies will never be based on in-depth and more extensive analysis because I do not have the opportunity to stay in one place for more than less than a weekend for a break among the driver’s duties – once in a while, often not even twice a year. Unless someone works in the liner, on regular orders. I work for shipping – every time I go to a completely different place. One day it may be Guadalajara, the next – Lviv. Louie is a sociologist by profession, and I agreed with him – truck drivers won’t stay anywhere for longer. However, this has its positive side: It allows you to intensively compare the external mood, appearance and demeanor of people, as well as evaluate the general mental state of societies. As a driver, my favorite thing to do is to be in the countries of the United Kingdom. Because although I definitely prefer the nature of Romania, the spaces of Russia or Sweden or the warm, vast landscapes of Spain, I nevertheless consider British society to be the most mature, and the local people to be the closest when it comes to attitudes towards life, not forgetting the not-so-positive aspects of their existence. However, it is about the whole, not about details, among which we can always find advantages and disadvantages. I love British rock and heavy metal, British motoring – especially triumph and royal enfield motorcycles – and Mr. Bean and Monty Python. Besides, I love simple cuisine. I am not a foodie. Fish & chips and the feeling of a full stomach, and a double espresso from a vending machine at a gas station – for my simple taste, it is a dose of energy much more valuable than mussels and white wine. I also like the personal culture of the British – she is simply polite, not distinguished, although distinction is the specialty of the British. However, there is no French blast in it and this pretending that the cheese that stinks with a boiled diaper is sublime. I like to have a truck on thurrock services M25, where always a nice receptionist can easily book a taxi for me to London. I like the feeling that I am among normal people, I like the high level of service for my being in restaurants, while visiting cities, museums, or even at unloading and at gas stations. I don’t have such an impression in Germany. Even though young Germans are usually fine, among the old ones I still feel at the Gestapo station – sorry, but I really feel like that. During a recent Sunday conversation at Louie’s house, to which he always invites me if I have the opportunity to film a pause in The Beatles town, we talked about patriotism and my observations, although obviously not going deep into the local mentality nuances, positively surprised him.

The British are proud of Britain. They love their country – and it is a peaceful and ordinary love. Bland as pudding, but sure. It does not contain the fierce affectivity of the rydzysk society, nor the right-wing azimuths with a horizon filled with fearful piety at any cost. There is also no left-wing reactivity to the deviations of the right. The political life of the British is based on treating the left, right and center as modules of the same British pragmatism, distance to all kinds of ideology and the common sense principle as a determinant of normality. This is probably due to the simple fact that as humans they can live and enjoy life. Maybe it is a model of upbringing, maybe a continuation of a deep-sea, less agrarian tradition? I do not know. As a rule, the British do not need worldview prostheses for their own deficits. If you have a problem – solve it, don’t avoid it. No group of people can solve your troubles. You have the problem, no one else. And don’t get bogged down in this problem – go and solve it, because your only problem is that you don’t want to solve it, and there aren’t any problems that can’t be solved. Everything is possible, just stop feeling sorry for yourself. And above all: “ Always look on the bright side of life ” as the Pythons sing in one of their sketches. It’s a quiet affirmation. From the beginning of my studies, I was positively surprised by the stoicism that I found in the UK to such an extent as in any other country. Of course, I’m not talking about parties, because here the British unfortunately have no borders. – Drunken Englishman or Scotsman is Satan incarnate. Someone much more crude than a drunk Pole. And one more important thing: Patriotism is not one of the outlooks on the island. It is an element of life in a society like the rules of the road are for us. In Poland, patriotism has been strangely connected with anachronistic sentimentality, unfoundedly claiming to create the only possible point of view. In most cases, Polish patriotism is martyrdom historicism, a mythology of sabers directed at the tanks of the devil who surrounds Poland from all sides. In Britain, patriotism is a pro-civic attitude and has nothing to do with any kind of society. Everyone is a patriot. If someone is not – they are traumatized, have a problem with themselves, or maybe they don’t understand something. A Polish patriot in Great Britain is treated with much higher respect than a Pole who renounces Polishness and glorifies the UK. Such is considered a coward.

When speaking of patriotism, we speak with Louie not only about a deeply entrenched sense of identity with a place or with a nation, but above all about a person’s attitude towards his roots. Here, too, we do not need to refer to some identity arche, because a person can be proud of their place of birth as much as of the date and time they saw the world. After all, we can distinguish between pride , which we do not owe to ourselves, and therefore we really have no reason to be proud, from dignity . The first one strives for some imaginary rather metaphysical depth, that is, in fact, a mental error which, apart from the affectionate appearance of a man, wants to appropriate and subordinate the human interior, tearing his individual heart out of the victim of an idea.. Pride can saturate Man only as a sublime joy resulting from the sense of rightness and the great value of an act he has committed himself. You can also be proud of the achievements of people with whom we have something in common – for example history. Nevertheless, the pride felt about the place or date of birth indicates a deficit of its own personality that is desperately running away from itself towards the external values ​​on which it is trying to build itself. Likewise, building your ego pride on the basis of manifesting aversion to your origin: This is not a different azimuth. Patriotism and anti-patriotism take a different twist. The direction, however, remains the same. Before we turned to the concept of dignity, we considered patriotism built on the affect of pride.

Louie and I called him identity patriotism . It represents the attitude of individuals seeking their own identity ( ipse ) outside of themselves. So it is, in fact, the prosthesis of this identity. Moreover, it is worth emphasizing – this is not true patriotism, because the motive behind the actions of individuals identifying with a nation or race is not their affirmation, but the affirmation of themselves on the basis of a sense of strength that is provided by group identification in escaping loneliness. For nationalists, axiological telos who see romantic impulses that unite the Nation, for fascists, in unity (bonds – fasci ) exploring strength and power for their weakened psyche, for the Nazis, who need resentment to build their own ego, Nation itself does not count. It is just an excuse. Louie reminded me of the old British principle of common sense , where identity is the same as consensus . In other words, common sense among the British is a principle – not only a philosophical one – to respect social, linguistic, moral and legal conventions in order to make life clearer and simpler.. So it is even a matter of feeling for aesthetics and rejecting low affectivity to recognize common sense as a rule of wise behavior in social practice. Identity patriotism treats common sense as a goal, to which, however, it is not common sense itself that leads, but an affective love for it; panicky, sloppy, dull, tearful-threatening, hollow and manipulative with emotions. The social convention here ceases to discover the role of a rational paradigm, and becomes an idealized goal to which no reason will ever lead. In the hands of the nationalists, the social convention becomes a compulsion and thus loses its status as a convention. A good rule loses its transparency and contextual dynamics, thereby vanishing in the convention its universal status as a skillful means in favor of a fossilized tradition; it becomes a fetish for identities seeking idols to fill their own deficit. In other words, identity patriotism is more like a belligerent front of undervalued narcissists looking for pride among factors beyond their control and trying to confirm this pride by imposing their own point of view on others. In fact, it is the opposite of both pride and patriotism.

Next, Louie and I went over to discuss what pride actually is, when at the moment of searching for it among factors beyond our control – just as one can be proud of the place of birth, the date of birth and the weather which then she was, you can be so proud of having nails – she loses the rank of pride. Is there anything that precedes pride? After all, pride should be earned. You have to build your pride in yourself. A proud man is not a proud idler. This is someone who does not have to flaunt his pride or manifest it, because pride has it that it emanates from Man in a natural and unforced way like a good mood or serenity. The pride to be manifested is nothing but ferocity. True pride is “added” – one effect, but never foundation. In other words, pride is not something to be aspired to or something that can be “acquired” in some way. Pride is the result of an attitude. What precedes pride, as it were, is dignity ( dignity, pride, honor ). In the Polish combination of the words: “ God, Honor, Fatherland “, the order does not seem to be accidental. Leaving aside personal theological preferences and not taking these words out of the context of the times when God was as obvious as night and day, we note that patriotism does not come out of nowhere. It is not a foundation. It is a way of manifesting other values.

Patriotism is a natural attitude of a Man who affirms certain human values ​​and is, in a way, their emanation, a completely natural result of cultivating them. So we referred to honor understood as human dignity. For believers, dignity means the high value of being Human in general – a value sanctioned by God. For those who do not believe in god, what carries the rank of Divinity is Man himself or Humanity as one of the dimensions of Nature. I am not talking about pathological cases of hatred of humanity because of the greenhouse effect or other aberrations – such affects I and Louie considered resentmental, or low, responses; if someone calls people worms (cancer of the Earth), he is himself a worm (cancer of society) – then she has a problem with herself, not humanity. Human dignity means getting out of the very fact that you are Human. The exit – that is, a certain conclusion. It is possible to be a Man and not to notice this fact throughout your life, living “next to” your own humanity. Dignity is a task, treating life as a challenge, it is a certain “structural task” of life. It is a point of honor for every Humanity to cope with the Humanity given to himself, that is, to simply represent it with dignity.. Realizing the high dimension of being Human is setting the task of being Human. This is what dignity is all about.

What Man needs the most is affirmation . It is an attitude, a way of thinking and a way of shaping your consciousness. It is characterized by possible avoidance of negation and escape mechanisms. Affirmation even concerns the neuronal level of functioning of the human brain. It is the aesthetics and hygiene of mental life, the opposite of stupidity. We distinguished with Louie identity patriotism ( identity patriotism ), which we considered anti-patriotism, representing wickedness on a level similar to the anti-patriots themselves, from affirmative patriotism or affirming ( affirming patriotism ). In the evening, we blessedly realized that affirmative patriotism did not have to be called affirmative, but simply patriotism, because that is what it is everywhere, even in contemporary Germany – everywhere except Poland. Contrary to true patriots, identity patriots resemble anti-patriots who – as I mentioned at the beginning of the text – try to camouflage their own parochial complex with extremely stupid cosmopolitanism or making themselves a new, Parisian or Stockholm Volksdoj at all costs, a Cracovian more Krakow than a Krakowiak An Irishman who tries to be like that – especially in relation to Poles, to whom he tries to expose their lowness – despite the fact that he himself has Dazbog by skin and a potato nose.

Common sense is an affirmation. A positive attitude towards one’s Polishness and towards Poland is a similarly affirmative and upbuilding sign of human strength and maturity. It is no longer about identifying with the negative, martyrdom aspects of a backwater, which really have nothing to do with patriotism – it is just the fearful resentment of people who have not seen the world outside of their small town. By the way, the more willing I go back to my Cieszyn, the more I visit. I discover new, so far undiscovered flavors of my town and the Beskids. It is about realizing that shame, escape, negation, rejection, looking only for negative aspects of one’s origin, is based on personal problems, and not in the actual so-called external state. Polish anti-patriotism is more parochially Polish than distorted Polish pseudo-patriotism. So we have the chauvinism of rydzyk pseudopatriots and anti-Semites, we also have “reverse chauvinism” of cowards who renounce one element of the truth about themselves. Antipatriotism and nationalism are the same direction of a complex ego. Even if I live in the Czech Republic one day – I’m a Czechophile – I will always be a Pole. I wish to avoid rooting based on uprooting, having realized the principles of shaping identity and non-identity such a mechanism operates on.

It is bad for you when you lie to your past. Something else is criticism and bitter words to the pathological phenomena that, unfortunately, have been troubling Poland for years. Among the worst phenomena, in addition to the psychopathic pseudo-patriotism of national and Marian factions, proposing a sour, sentimental mush in a true Scripture, Smolensk style, feeding on emotions, and not justifying in a rational and unemotional way that Poland is simply a common yard and our common business, we have the anti-patriotism that grows out of such fanaticism. I seem to be, even among my friends, something about an alleged awakening, about “seeing through my eyes” or discovering a higher dimension of humanity, defacing my own nest, proving to other Poles that, being stuck in Polishness, they are nobody, they are funny and they will remain funny. I have other information for such people: We are not funny, but ordinary. If there was a war, you – like most pseudopatriots – will be robbing shop windows. You will curl your tail and run away with what you plundered, and after the war – prey on a country you did not defend. Unfortunately, that’s your mentality. Of course, I hope that there will be no war – this is just a picture. Those who feel themselves Polish just because they simply did not give up their Polishness, even if they worked outside their country, because in our country, the earnings of some people are actually offensive, so these people have a little more brain sticks than you “spatter”. And most of all, they have stronger characters and you can trust them more. When you spit on Poland, you never know if you are not smearing another person behind your back. It probably is – because on such a mechanism you build your own identity. Please familiarize yourself with the term: “resentment”. It is available on Wikipedia.

This text is not my manifesto at all because I am not a romantic man or even a history buff. I am not a patriot in the sense of identity, although I must honestly admit that as a creature not without emotions, I have very fond memories of the atmosphere of Masurian holidays from my childhood, visiting Warsaw on the way, which, although it seems to be a bit bigger Katowice today, at that time made the impression of a metropolis, I like their Beskids and Cieszyn. And simply in the world, I notice that wherever I am, patriotism is just ok, and when someone speaks badly about their country, they immediately look at it as someone who should rather not be trusted – and rightly so. People on unloading and loading ramps, in factories, offices, towns, pubs, restaurants and drivers from other countries always ask me what is going on in Poland, what is worth visiting, what is the weather, what is going on in politics. I always reply that politics is too much for me, but I raise my thumb when I talk about what is happening in Poland. And that it is worth visiting Gdańsk and the coast – we have a cold sea, but beautiful beaches with golden sand and healthy air, dunes and pine forests, we have picturesque Kashubia and Masuria, Warsaw with its history and specific, a bit eclectic, a bit post-communist mood, beautiful Poznań and Toruń, Sandomierz and Kazimierz, in general, the entire eastern wall of Poland is perfect for endless hiking and relaxation for people who want idyllicity and relaxation, and not necessarily pretending to be a trapper from Alaska – we have mountains for them. It is worth visiting Malbork, we also have Krakow, the unique Tatra Mountains, Białowieża Primeval Forest – the last forest in Europe that did not grow after earlier logging, Bieszczady – part of the wildest mountain range in Europe. In general, the Carpathians are the last mountain-forest range, where there are no elk and reindeer, but there are bears, wolves and wild cats, owls and other wild birds like in Alaska. The Biebrza swamps are home to the greatest variety of birds in Europe, and all the stars can be seen from Śnieżnik or Turbacz. Also visit Cieszyn, there are quite a few sleepy towns in Poland, where you can relax in the summer just like in the towns of Provence or Burgundy, but Cieszyn is unique. If someone is not a tourist consumer looking for the crushing majesty of sensational monuments such as Disneyland, but likes to contemplate, this one will like Cieszyn for its truly provincial atmosphere and for Czech beer.

A large number of these people have already been to Poland. They have fond memories of the event in Krakow or Zakopane. They like – especially young Germans – the fact that after crossing the border in Zgorzelec, they suddenly enter another dimension, where they see the non-urbanized space around them with the A4. Each time driving from the west with a foursome, I have the same experience. I like it very much. I appreciate the beauty of the Polish landscape, although we have already destroyed it so heavily, trying to arrange a free American in the 90s. The British like baroque monuments, the secrets of Lower Silesia and nature. Scandinavians really like this architectural disorder that I don’t like. It’s just different for them.

A symptom of ignorance, as well as psychological abnegation, abandoning tasks and being stripped of dignity is the inability to notice that we live in Poland, which is nowhere else, and that we are better people for ourselves and for others people, the better we are also for Poland. Even if we prefer to identify with others, it is rather because we find better solutions rather than running away from worse. However, the more we experience better solutions, the more often we realize that there are better and worse everywhere. Everything has its pros and cons. Not just about one side. If we see only advantages on one side and disadvantages on the other, then we have a big problem with us.

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31

True patriotism

Driving a truck from Portugal to Kazakhstan, I have the opportunity to do research on societies and sometimes simply talk to people living in other countries who have different points of view on many issues. So I compare not only the level of primitivism or development, mental backwardness or enlightened empathy, but above all the attitude towards another person – the tone of voice that people address to each other, whether their faces more often show peace or worry, whether they are inclined to courtesy, whether to manifest their undervalued ego, whether they are cooperative or lazy, whether they kindly serve me in restaurants, offices, whether their smaller drivers are people on a level or the proverbial beetroot. Poles do well compared to other nations. Of course, if one sees only drunken refugees, he probably cannot see more. That’s his problem.

We are creative and we can do many things well – repair the car, glue the tiles, we are hardworking, friendly, open-minded, and although I’m not talking about all of them, because even from a high position, some monkeys can jump at us, nevertheless I do not see that Poles have any reason for any complexes. Except for one. This is Polishness – “defilement of one’s own nest”. The more a person is complex, the more he runs away from his own fears, the more often he looks for a scapegoat in Polishness. It is a primitive reaction of one of its ends hitting the other end – the more distorted the Polish “patriotism” is, the more distorted is the understanding of cosmopolitanism.. It boils down to a rabid attitude – the more rabid in avoiding “strangeness” a “real Pole” is, the more rabid in often unconscious searching – at least on an aesthetic level – only negative aspects of Polishness (I am not saying that Poland is super beautiful) is most often a poor Dulszczan who found a new Ithaca in a piece of Paris and had an epiphany. There he probably saw a Man that he had never been himself. A man who is not and will not be – because he is not himself. For a man steeped in dulszczyzna, the discovery of new dimensions of identity will always take place at the cost of making Polishness a cloaca of his boggy affects. Defacing your own nest is not a European attitude, much less a global one. Only among Polish employees of foreign companies or among Polish drivers do I encounter such insult to my country that I do not even meet among the citizens of Romania, Kazakhstan, Georgia or Ukraine. Of course, this is not a rule, because half of the trucks are hung with Polish pennants, scarves with the inscription “Poland”, etc. But nowhere have I encountered such complexity regarding my own origin as among Poles. I thought to myself that this trait – among the negative traits of Polishness – is exceptionally Polish. Unfortunately. Wafing in one’s own excrement – a wire-straight contraction of romantic martyrdom. One of the Polish specialties.

Louie, my only English friend living in Liverpool, said when I asked him while offloading at the company where he works that my conclusions about societies will never be based on in-depth and more extensive analysis because I do not have the opportunity to stay in one place for more than less than a weekend for a break among the driver’s duties – once in a while, often not even twice a year. Unless someone works in the liner, on regular orders. I work for freight forwarding – every time I go to a completely different place. One day it may be Guadalajara, the next – Lviv. Louie is a sociologist by profession, and I agreed with him – truck drivers won’t stay anywhere for longer. However, this has its positive side: It allows you to intensively compare the external mood, appearance and demeanor of people, as well as evaluate the general mental state of societies. As a driver, my favorite thing to do is to be in the countries of the United Kingdom. Because although I definitely prefer the nature of Romania, the spaces of Russia or Sweden or the warm, vast landscapes of Spain, I nevertheless consider British society to be the most mature, and the local people to be the closest when it comes to attitudes towards life, not forgetting the not-so-positive aspects of their existence. However, it is about the whole, not about details, among which we can always find advantages and disadvantages. I love British rock and heavy metal, British motoring – especially triumph and royal enfield motorcycles – and Mr. Bean and Monty Python. Besides, I love simple cuisine. I’m not a foodie. Fish & chips and the feeling of a full stomach, and a double espresso from a vending machine at a gas station – for my simple taste, it is a dose of energy much more valuable than mussels and white wine. I also like the personal culture of the British – she is simply polite, not distinguished, although distinction is the specialty of the British. However, there is no French blast in it and this pretending that the cheese that stinks with a boiled diaper is sublime. I like to have a truck on thurrock services M25, where always a nice receptionist can easily book a taxi for me to London. I like the feeling that I am among normal people, I like the high level of service for my being in restaurants, while visiting cities, museums, or even at unloading and at gas stations. I don’t have such an impression in Germany. Even though young Germans are usually fine, among the old ones I still feel at the Gestapo station – sorry, but I really feel like that. During a recent Sunday conversation at Louie’s house, to which he always invites me if I have the opportunity to film a pause in The Beatles town, we talked about patriotism and my observations, although obviously not going deep into the local mentality nuances, positively surprised him.

The British are proud of Britain. They love their country – and it is a peaceful and ordinary love. Bland as pudding, but sure. It does not contain the fierce affectivity of the rydzysk society, nor the right-wing azimuths with a horizon filled with fearful piety at any cost. There is also no left-wing reactivity to the deviations of the right. The political life of the British is based on treating the left, right and center as modules of the same British pragmatism, distance to all kinds of ideology and the common sense principle as a determinant of normality. This is probably due to the simple fact that as humans they can live and enjoy life. Maybe it is a model of upbringing, maybe a continuation of a deep-sea, less agrarian tradition? I do not know. As a rule, the British do not need worldview prostheses for their own deficits. If you have a problem – solve it, don’t avoid it. No group of people can solve your troubles. You have the problem, no one else. And don’t get bogged down in this problem – go and solve it, because your only problem is that you don’t want to solve it, and there aren’t any problems that can’t be solved. Everything is possible, just stop feeling sorry for yourself. And above all: “ Always look on the bright side of life ” as the Pythons sing in one of their sketches. It’s a quiet affirmation. From the beginning of my studies, I was positively surprised by the stoicism that I found in the UK to such an extent as in any other country. Of course, I’m not talking about parties, because here the British unfortunately have no borders. – Drunken Englishman or Scotsman is Satan incarnate. Someone much more crude than a drunk Pole. And one more important thing: Patriotism is not one of the outlooks on the island. It is an element of life in a society like the rules of the road are for us. In Poland, patriotism has been strangely connected with anachronistic sentimentality, unfoundedly claiming to create the only possible point of view. In most cases, Polish patriotism is martyrdom historicism, a mythology of sabers directed at the tanks of the devil who surrounds Poland from all sides. In Britain, patriotism is a pro-civic attitude and has nothing to do with any kind of society. Everyone is a patriot. If someone is not – they are traumatized, have a problem with themselves, or maybe they don’t understand something. A Polish patriot in Great Britain is treated with much higher respect than a Pole who renounces Polishness and glorifies the UK. Such is considered a coward.

When speaking of patriotism, we speak with Louie not only about a deeply entrenched sense of identity with a place or with a nation, but above all about a person’s attitude towards his roots. Here, too, we do not need to refer to some identity arche, because a person can be proud of their place of birth as much as of the date and time they saw the world. After all, we can distinguish between pride , which we do not owe to ourselves, and therefore we really have no reason to be proud, from dignity . The first one strives for some imaginary rather metaphysical depth, that is, in fact, a mental error which, apart from the affectionate appearance of a man, wants to appropriate and subordinate the human interior, tearing his individual heart out of the victim of an idea.. Pride can saturate Man only as a sublime joy resulting from the sense of rightness and the great value of an act he has committed himself. You can also be proud of the achievements of people with whom we have something in common – for example history. Nevertheless, the pride felt about the place or date of birth indicates a deficit of its own personality that is desperately running away from itself towards the external values ​​on which it is trying to build itself. Likewise, building your ego pride on the basis of manifesting aversion to your origin: This is not a different azimuth. Patriotism and anti-patriotism take a different twist. The direction, however, remains the same. Before we turned to the concept of dignity, we considered patriotism built on the affect of pride.

Louie and I called him identity patriotism . It represents the attitude of individuals seeking their own identity ( ipse ) outside of themselves. So it is, in fact, a prosthesis of this identity. Moreover, it is worth emphasizing – this is not true patriotism, because the motive behind the actions of individuals identifying with a nation or race is not their affirmation, but the affirmation of themselves on the basis of a sense of strength that is provided by group identification in escaping loneliness. For nationalists, axiological telos who see romantic impulses that unite the Nation, for fascists, in unity (bonds – fasci ) exploring strength and power for their weakened psyche, for the Nazis, who need resentment to build their own ego, Nation itself does not count. It is just an excuse. Louie reminded me of the old British principle of common sense , where identity is the same as consensus . In other words, common sense among the British is a principle – not only a philosophical one – to respect social, linguistic, moral and legal conventions in order to make life clearer and simpler.. So it is even a matter of feeling for aesthetics and rejecting low affectivity to recognize common sense as a rule of wise behavior in social practice. Identity patriotism treats common sense as a goal, to which, however, it is not common sense itself that leads, but an affective love for it; panicky, sloppy, dull, tearful-threatening, hollow and manipulative with emotions. The social convention here ceases to discover the role of a rational paradigm, and becomes an idealized goal to which no reason will ever lead. In the hands of the nationalists, the social convention becomes a compulsion and thus loses its status as a convention. A good rule loses its transparency and contextual dynamics, thereby vanishing in the convention its universal status as a skillful means in favor of a fossilized tradition; it becomes a fetish for identities seeking idols to fill their own deficit. In other words, identity patriotism is more like a belligerent front of undervalued narcissists looking for pride among factors beyond their control and trying to confirm this pride by imposing their own point of view on others. In fact, it is the opposite of both pride and patriotism.

Next, Louie and I went over to discuss what pride actually is, when at the moment of searching for it among factors beyond our control – just as one can be proud of the place of birth, the date of birth and the weather which then she was, you can be so proud of having nails – she loses the rank of pride. Is there anything that precedes pride? After all, pride should be earned. You have to build your pride in yourself. A proud man is not a proud idler. This is someone who does not have to flaunt his pride or manifest it, because pride has it that it emanates from Man in a natural and unforced way like a good mood or serenity. The pride to be manifested is nothing but ferocity. True pride is “added” – one effect, but never foundation. In other words, pride is not something to be aspired to or something that can be “acquired” in some way. Pride is the result of an attitude. What precedes pride, as it were, is dignity ( dignity, pride, honor ). In the Polish combination of the words: “ God, Honor, Fatherland “, the order does not seem to be accidental. Leaving aside personal theological preferences and not taking these words out of the context of the times when God was as obvious as night and day, we note that patriotism does not come out of nowhere. It is not a foundation. It is a way of manifesting other values.

Patriotism is a natural attitude of a Man who affirms certain human values ​​and is, in a way, their emanation, a completely natural result of cultivating them. So we referred to honor understood as human dignity. For believers, dignity means the high value of being Human in general – a value sanctioned by God. For those who do not believe in god, what carries the rank of Divinity is Man himself or Humanity as one of the dimensions of Nature. I am not talking about pathological cases of hatred of humanity because of the greenhouse effect or other aberrations – such affects I and Louie considered resentmental, or low, responses; if someone calls people worms (cancer of the Earth), he is himself a worm (cancer of society) – then she has a problem with herself, not humanity. Human dignity means getting out of the very fact that you are Human. The exit – that is, a certain conclusion. It is possible to be a Man and not to notice this fact throughout your life, living “next to” your own humanity. Dignity is a task, treating life as a challenge, it is a certain “structural task” of life. It is a point of honor for every Humanity to cope with the Humanity given to himself, that is, to simply represent it with dignity.. Realizing the high dimension of being Human is setting the task of being Human. This is what dignity is all about.

What Man needs the most is affirmation . It is an attitude, a way of thinking and a way of shaping your consciousness. It is characterized by possible avoidance of negation and escape mechanisms. Affirmation even concerns the neuronal level of functioning of the human brain. It is the aesthetics and hygiene of mental life, the opposite of stupidity. We distinguished with Louie identity patriotism ( identity patriotism ), which we considered anti-patriotism, representing wickedness on a level similar to the anti-patriots themselves, from affirmative patriotism or affirming ( affirming patriotism ). In the evening, we blessedly realized that affirmative patriotism did not have to be called affirmative, but simply patriotism, because that is what it is everywhere, even in contemporary Germany – everywhere except Poland. Contrary to true patriots, identity patriots resemble anti-patriots who – as I mentioned at the beginning of the text – try to camouflage their own parochial complex with extremely stupid cosmopolitanism or making themselves a new, Parisian or Stockholm Volksdoj at all costs, a Cracovian more Krakow than a Krakowiak An Irishman who tries to be like that – especially in relation to Poles, to whom he tries to expose their lowness – despite the fact that he himself has Dazbog by skin and a potato nose.

Common sense is an affirmation. A positive attitude towards one’s Polishness and towards Poland is a similarly affirmative and upbuilding sign of human strength and maturity. It is no longer about identifying with the negative, martyrdom aspects of a backwater, which really have nothing to do with patriotism – it is just the fearful resentment of people who have not seen the world outside of their small town. By the way, the more willing I go back to my Cieszyn, the more I visit. I discover new, so far undiscovered flavors of my town and the Beskids. It is about realizing that shame, escape, negation, rejection, looking only for negative aspects of one’s origin, is based on personal problems, and not in the actual so-called external state. Polish anti-patriotism is more parochially Polish than distorted Polish pseudo-patriotism. So we have the chauvinism of rydzyk pseudopatriots and anti-Semites, we also have “reverse chauvinism” of cowards who renounce one element of the truth about themselves. Antipatriotism and nationalism are the same direction of a complex ego. Even if I live in the Czech Republic one day – I’m a Czechophile – I will always be a Pole. I wish to avoid rooting based on uprooting, having realized the principles of shaping identity and non-identity such a mechanism operates on.

It is bad for you when you lie to your past. Something else is criticism and bitter words to the pathological phenomena that, unfortunately, have been troubling Poland for years. Among the worst phenomena, in addition to the psychopathic pseudo-patriotism of national and Marian factions, proposing a sour, sentimental mush in a true Scripture, Smolensk style, feeding on emotions, and not justifying in a rational and unemotional way that Poland is simply a common yard and our common business, we have the anti-patriotism that grows out of such fanaticism. I seem to be, even among my friends, something about an alleged awakening, about “seeing through my eyes” or discovering a higher dimension of humanity, defacing my own nest, proving to other Poles that, being stuck in Polishness, they are nobody, they are funny and they will remain funny. I have other information for such people: We are not funny, but ordinary. If there was a war, you – like most pseudopatriots – will be robbing shop windows. You will curl your tail and run away with what you plundered, and after the war – prey on a country you did not defend. Unfortunately, that’s your mentality. Of course, I hope that there will be no war – this is just a picture. Those who feel themselves Polish just because they simply did not give up their Polishness, even if they worked outside their country, because in our country, the earnings of some people are actually offensive, so these people have a little more brain sticks than you “spatter”. And most of all, they have stronger characters and you can trust them more. When you spit on Poland, you never know if you are not smearing another person behind your back. It probably is – because on such a mechanism you build your own identity. Please familiarize yourself with the term: “resentment”. It is available on Wikipedia.

This text is not my manifesto at all because I am not a romantic man or even a history buff. I am not a patriot in the sense of identity, although I must honestly admit that as a creature not without emotions, I have very fond memories of the atmosphere of Masurian holidays from my childhood, visiting Warsaw on the way, which, although it seems to be a bit bigger Katowice today, at that time made the impression of a metropolis, I like their Beskids and Cieszyn. And simply in the world, I notice that wherever I am, patriotism is just ok, and when someone speaks badly about their country, they immediately look at it as someone who should rather not be trusted – and rightly so. People on unloading and loading ramps, in factories, offices, towns, pubs, restaurants and drivers from other countries always ask me what is going on in Poland, what is worth visiting, what is the weather, what is going on in politics. I always reply that politics is too much for me, but I raise my thumb when I talk about what is happening in Poland. And that it is worth visiting Gdańsk and the coast – we have a cold sea, but beautiful beaches with golden sand and healthy air, dunes and pine forests, we have picturesque Kashubia and Masuria, Warsaw with its history and specific, a bit eclectic, a bit post-communist mood, beautiful Poznań and Toruń, Sandomierz and Kazimierz, in general, the entire eastern wall of Poland is perfect for endless hiking and relaxation for people who want idyllicity and relaxation, and not necessarily pretending to be a trapper from Alaska – we have mountains for them. It is worth visiting Malbork, we also have Krakow, the unique Tatra Mountains, Białowieża Primeval Forest – the last forest in Europe that did not grow after earlier logging, Bieszczady – part of the wildest mountain range in Europe. In general, the Carpathians are the last mountain-forest range, where there are no elk and reindeer, but there are bears, wolves and wild cats, owls and other wild birds like in Alaska. The Biebrza swamps are home to the greatest variety of birds in Europe, and all the stars can be seen from Śnieżnik or Turbacz. Also visit Cieszyn, there are quite a few sleepy towns in Poland, where you can relax in the summer just like in the towns of Provence or Burgundy, but Cieszyn is unique. If someone is not a tourist consumer looking for the crushing majesty of sensational monuments such as Disneyland, but likes to contemplate, this one will like Cieszyn for its truly provincial atmosphere and for Czech beer.

A large number of these people have already been to Poland. They have fond memories of the event in Krakow or Zakopane. They like – especially young Germans – the fact that after crossing the border in Zgorzelec, they suddenly enter another dimension, where they see the non-urbanized space around them with the A4. Each time driving from the west with a foursome, I have the same experience. I like it very much. I appreciate the beauty of the Polish landscape, although we have already destroyed it so heavily, trying to arrange a free American in the 90s. The British like baroque monuments, the secrets of Lower Silesia and nature. Scandinavians really like this architectural disorder that I don’t like. It’s just different for them.

A symptom of ignorance, as well as psychological abnegation, abandoning tasks and being stripped of dignity is the inability to notice that we live in Poland, which is nowhere else, and that we are better people for ourselves and for others people, the better we are also for Poland. Even if we prefer to identify with others, it is rather because we find better solutions rather than running away from worse. However, the more we experience better solutions, the more often we realize that there are better and worse everywhere. Everything has its pros and cons. Not just about one side. If we see only advantages on one side and disadvantages on the other, then we have a big problem with us.

Number of views:
31