Teacher
If the social order stands on an unhealthy foundation, nothing in it can be healthy and untouched by the toxic substances that emerge from the unhealthy foundation. In such a society, public space is inevitably dangerously polluted, no matter what you mean by public space: from the air we breathe to culture, values and the level of public debate about anything. Deterioration and rotting are inevitable, decline and dumbing down are deceptively slow but reliably constant, and the more time passes in such a polluted environment, the more "universal" the infection becomes, that is, at some point it necessarily begins to affect those who, paradoxically, struggle against it and resist it as best they know how.
Let's not fool ourselves or overdo it: undemocratic foundations are always unhealthy foundations. Serbian society has already been based on them several times in history - which would always result in a quiet but thorough regression, and often spectacular departures into the abyss, as in the last decade of the last century - and this last cycle of decline is still going on. Moreover, it has been going on long enough that the government and its satellites are not only corrupt and violent - which they have been from the beginning - but also openly frantic and unaccountable, but in the long term, the more serious problem is that the process of collapse has already advanced on the other side, where they are, or should be, the political opposition, civil and non-governmental associations, media independent of the government (radically marginalized, but that's another story), the academic community, etc. And they are the kind of dam and defense of public interest and common sense before the implicit and explicit terror of stupidity and lies. If he remains without them, or if they fail him, the free citizen remains without even symbolic protection, reduced to nothing more than the chaotic and arbitrariness of a mere biological existence, like the proverbial "straw among whirlwinds".
In the environment described above, the possibility of any meaningful public debate disappears, especially among the so-called to dissenters - and I don't see what kind of debate is possible apart from that at all. It is necessary for the health of society not for the sake of "achieving harmony" - which is a sweet-talking, but totalitarian fantasy - but precisely to understand that "irreconcilable differences" will always be the core of a free society (and that, moreover, it is not inherently bad! ), and that democracy is primarily a way of learning to live with them and of articulating them in a way that will not excommunicate anyone from, let's say, the society of the worthy.
If we've theorized enough, let's see where on the scale of decay we find ourselves at the moment. A striking example comes to us from "white Valjevo" (Radovan Beli Marković), in which the professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at the Valjevo High School (that subject is taken by fourth-graders, let's not say high-school graduates) precisely in democratic public torn by the horses' tails because of the allegedly terrible pedagogical-moral-political crime he committed by assigning students a topic and a thesis to work on and defend: to write about the hottest Serbian topic today, lithium mining, but by defending the position "for" mining. Ah, like some young SNS member? – the smart student asked in disgust. Yes, as a young SNS member! - the professor cheerfully answered her. All this caused a storm of protests and disagreements, parents were invited who ritually fell into the phrase "what kind of violence is perpetrated against their children", the matter leaked to the public, first on a local portal, and then it reached the national level, and overnight, the professor became a figure of the "regime boot" who forces our progressive youth to become progressive youth...
This reckless reaction is typical of the so-called reflex. moral panics: the trigger terms automatically cause consternation, outrage and condemnation - up to and beyond the point of character assassination of the alleged sinner - without delving into what it's all about. The reflex of moral panic is a typical technique used by an undemocratic, usually populist regime to distort the power of public opinion's reasoning. Here we see how the "other side" begins to behave in the same way. This completes the decline; only hopelessness remains.
The subject that the infamous professor teaches not to some "poor children" but mainly to young people of age teaches them critical thinking, and above all its public articulation, expression, reasoning; is it possible to be a good lawyer, professor, journalist tomorrow without those knowledge and skills? The professor's job is not to pander to youthful self-confidence and know-it-all narcissism (which we've all been through), but to challenge it and point out its limits, and to confront smart but inexperienced heads with the complexity of the world, which is impossible to seriously understand without developing the ability to immerse yourself in it. the other's position - even if only to deny it better. I will venture to offer a personal example: I am a staunch atheist, but for my atheism the study of religion at one time did more than the clarification of counter-religious reading...
And is the topic of lithium "political" - which the professor is also reproached for? It is, in a broad sense, so what? Politics, no less than sex, is a normal adult occupation. If a man grew up to vote, to sit behind the wheel or to legally order whiskey in the cafes of Valje, by God he also grew up for lithium.
