Katarzyna Kasia: You have international experience, which means you live not only in Poland, but also in various other places. We have the feeling that Poles like to talk about themselves from the perspective of courage, as a unique, messianic nation with a special mission. But is this unique to us, or is it just that others have exactly the same thing? Do Czechs or Americans also have their myths about courage and their stories about uniqueness?
Agnieszka Holland: Czechs are more mature because they have a mythology that is completely different from ours. They have Ċ vejk, not Kmicic, as their national sign, so that proves something – a certain self-irony, distance and the fact that they believe that a certain type of irrational daring is simply stupid. And that because they are not a religious nation (I think this plays the biggest role), they do not count on any rewards after death, on the afterlife and satisfaction in the form of, I don’t know, monuments and eternity. They know that they have one life, that no one will give them another one, and that if they lose it for some abstraction, it’s just a pity, because they can still live. You can drink a little of this beer, you can look at the beauty of Prague and the wonderful Moravian valleys. And this gives them something that we despise and call them “pepiki”. It gives them a kind of balance that prevents them from jumping from one extreme to the other. Which does not change the fact that in certain situations, such as such as 1968 and the Prague Spring, showed great courage, and someone, like my hero Jan Palach, demonstrated this courage in an extreme way by setting himself on fire and laying his life on a pile of hope that he would move his compatriots and that they would rebel against oppression .
We had the act of Piotr SzczÄsny, who set himself on fire in 2017 for a very similar reason. And who – what’s more – formulated very precisely the reasons why he did it, left a manifesto in which very high things stood next to very specific things and concerned specific institutions and specific perspectives that await us. Everything he wrote came true. Nobody drew any conclusions from this. A few people demonstrated from time to time and continue to demonstrate in honor of his memory, but no one drew any practical conclusions from it. When I see his wife and children who lost a close, very needed and really nice man, I think to myself: “Well, Piotr. And why did he do it? Was it worth it?”
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Grzegorz Markowski: And why did it happen that something that seemed to be in line with our spirit, i.e. a very brave, sharp, radical gesture, did not resonate and did not bring any change?
Agnieszka Holland: He wasn’t accepted by the majority, you know? I mean, there was no willingness to accept it as some kind of pattern. And it was very easily perceived as something inadequate, hysterical, superfluous. I remember the statement of a man whom I listen to quite often, whom I also read from time to time and who I appreciate intellectually – Tomasz StawiszyĊski. StawiszyĊski believed that this act did not fit modern times, the current situation, because we live in a comfortable, increasingly wealthy, consumerist society. And against this background, throwing one’s life on the stake seems inappropriate, even distasteful or morbid.
GM: It doesn’t fit into a nice life.
Agnieszka Holland: It doesn’t fit into a nice life at all, and the oppression we face from the authorities is such soft oppression. If you are not interested in politics, you may not actually feel it. If you don’t read certain newspapers, don’t watch certain media, you don’t deal with a boss who is oppressive in a political way… I talk to my younger colleagues, they don’t know… A whole lot of things that I don’t know about it seems that everyone should know that because they are so outrageous or so shameful, they are ignored. They don’t know what I’m talking about. And these are not stupid or insensitive people. When I tell them this, they care, but they simply have no need to look for such information and interact with it. However, we live in a terribly small bubble where everything that happens resonates very strongly, but for most people it doesn’t resonate that strongly and that’s why they are outraged by other things. You know, they have other topics that concern them a lot, equality issues and neuroatypical issues. There is no such thing as a common theme that resonates very strongly between generations, between bubbles.
KK: Well, yes, the only question is how we will define being brave, because see – probably for those people who are concerned about completely different problems, the definition of courage will also look different. I was reminded of Aristotle and the rule of the golden mean, because he tells us about this golden mean, referring to courage. He gives her as an example when he says: when there is a battle, you can attack this foreign army simply with your bare hands and screaming. And that’s not brave. This is reckless and stupid, it makes no sense. You can of course turn around and say you won’t fight at all. Or you can be brave, i.e. act in a way that will be as effective as possible, without fear, but rationally. And you could say that there is such a scale. Somewhere this courage is in the middle, and there will be bravado on one side and cowardice on the other. Where are we â as a society â today on this scale? Are you suggesting, as I understand it, that we are leaning more towards cowardice?
Agnieszka Holland: That’s how I would rate it. Especially since such extreme courage does not require incredible bravado. I’m not talking about self-immolation-type courage. I’m thinking about courage like standing up to evil in a situation of moderate risk.
GM: So hasn’t there been an interesting change in the matter of our courage? You said that today, on the scale Kasia outlined, you would move us all towards cowardice. It seemed to me that our basic problem, or one of these basic problems, is that we confuse bravado with courage, and where someone would say: “this is bravado broken by stupidity”, we say: “no, this is the only thing can be done.” And there are many acts of bravado confused with courage that end with us running out of the trench and getting shot in the middle of the head within the first minute. Meanwhile, you say that we have just moved in the other direction, towards cowardice.
Agnieszka Holland: I think we live in a kind of schizophrenia, you know? That we live somewhere between two realities. Between this imaginary life, built by tradition, and this real life, quiet bourgeois life, where we are constantly afraid of losing something, something we already have, our resources. Especially since we have accumulated a lot of it and when we find ourselves in a situation where we cannot repay these loans, we will lose everything and find ourselves on the street. I think it is an unformulated and unconscious fear… All consumer societies, especially those in which there are no deep roots in old property or heritage, feel this fear very strongly. And in our case, it’s all built on shifting sands.
GM: Consumerism ate romanticism.
KK: Previously, we lived for several dozen years in the Polish People’s Republic, a system that, at least in its declarations, sought to equalize everything. People were supposed to live in such a top-down regulated world. And maybe it’s like that, that courage was just somehow, you know, thrown away, eroded away.
Agnieszka Holland: Maybe so, but in my opinion people were braver back then. As you were talking about Aristotle and this golden mean, we are now, you could say, in this golden mean, or maybe a very shitty middle. I don’t know. But we have Ukraine on our right, to the east, right? Where is this courage, one could say desperate? Where suddenly people like us, with similar aspirations, similar habits, go to the front and are ready to fight in Mariupol, Bakhmut or anywhere else, knowing that they can die at any moment. To top it off, this fight may end in defeat, at least for a while. And they take the risk anyway.
KK: Something important is also happening in Israel now. Everyone there, including military pilots, went on strike because of changes in the Supreme Court. We thought our protests were great. We lit candles in front of the courthouse, that’s where we all met. But there were no strikes. Can you imagine that our army goes on strike because of the government’s violation of the rule of law?!
Agnieszka Holland: Well, yes, but on the other hand, you know, these Israelis are once again electing a disgusting, corrupt fash who murders Palestinians and robs them for good measure, and takes away their freedom. He finally got elected, right? More to come. Even though he was proven guilty of theft and corruption. So I don’t know if I should admire them that much, honestly.
KK: Sure, but if we are talking about courage and our decline in commitment, loss of courage, then what is happening in Israel is some kind of inspiration, proof that “you can”. We have done various things in recent years, but never We didn’t have that kind of commitment.
Agnieszka Holland: It wasn’t because we have polarization and at least 40 percent of society is delighted with what is happening. And our side, in turn, thought for a very long time that what our government was doing was so terrible that it simply had to end on its own. And then, unfortunately, we believed that we were enchanted, as in the parable of the ratcatcher, and there was nothing we could do.
Source: Gazeta
Bruce is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment . He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
