Apathy and indifference are not virtues

When in mid-September 2024. Bishop Gregory (the official title is - Archbishop of Dusseldorf and Berlin, Metropolitan of Germany) held the promotion of his Romanian A stranger in the forest, the packed hall of Kolarč's endowment looked like an island of goodness where intellectuals from the left and right, athletes and top scientists met, an ordinary and decent world eager for authentic speech and open conversation. Meanwhile, the book has sold almost 50.000 copies.

About a month and a half later, on November 1, a terrible tragedy took place in Serbia, some would say a crime, when the canopy of the Railway Station in Novi Sad collapsed and killed 15 people. And then young people, whom many almost wrote off, showed how thirsty they are for justice. They decided to take matters into their own hands, to show how they fight for a healthy society and how the government is held accountable. Bishop Grigorije was the only one from the Serbian Orthodox Church who supported them. The conversation we are having is precisely a conversation about the rebellion and all its faces.

"WEATHER" Are people who know the history of this society and country more prone to rebellion, or does the feeling that we are constantly spinning in a vicious circle silence the need for rebellion?

BISHOP GRIGORIJE: It is important that we have a healthy awareness of history, because that way we have the opportunity to learn from it, whether it is our own or the history of others. But for us, unfortunately, history cruelly repeats itself, it seems to me that we are not able to follow it, to oppose what has already been overcome in historical experience. Because, for the sake of example, if there is already an experience of autocracy, how can we not understand that it did not bring any good to anyone? How do those who rule autocratically not understand that it will not bring good to them in particular? That is why it would be very important if there are institutions that warn about it, that say: "People, this has already been seen, we know that this is not the way to go". Just as it is important to hear the words of knowledgeable professors, whether from the right or the left, who speak about it.

In recent years, an atmosphere has been created in which every statement contains a critical attitude about social events - and which must have something to do with politics - which includes the admonitions and reminders you speak of, was defamed by the sentence: Forwards, you are now involved in politics.

There is no more "political" statement than that. And it boils down to the following: you me you fight with politics that I would not deal with it and that I would leave it only to you. Basically, we all know that as social beings we are responsible for dealing with the place we live in and the people we live with. It is inevitable. That is why it is very important to be brave and ready to rebel, as well as to receive the blows of those who will tell you, as if it is something wrong, "you are a rebel!".

photo: nikola radulović

Of course, there are also dangers hidden there, because it is not a good rebellion simply for the sake of rebellion, but the motives must be healthy. Česlav Miloš writes that he or someone of his was criticized for being selfish, and he replies: "To such remarks, I just give them of all food in the world is wasted. I'm an egoist, here you go." So, if someone told you that you are a rebel, answer that you are, but also add why, why you don't agree to a situation where you are reduced to zero, where you are nobody and nothing. Because if you agree to that, the results will be a bad life, bad politics, bad aesthetics, and the space you are in will become unbearable for you. Because you can't say - I am not guilty because I did not touch anyone, I didn't talk to anyone, I didn't protest against anything. Indifference and apathy are no excuse. And they are not virtues either.

On the other hand, when indifference and fear begin to peel away, as it seems to be happening with us now, how to channel that rebellion? How not to dissipate energy?

To begin with, it is very important to keep in mind that someone else has the right and can think differently than us, that someone who is on the other end is still not our enemy. My maxim in life, which I learned while studying theology, is that diversity is good and division is not. But it is also important to emphasize that divisions are sometimes necessary in order to distinguish justice from injustice, good from evil, truth from lies, light from darkness. People who are afraid of different opinions, views and views of the world have a big problem. Diversity is God-given. But if someone says - you pull to the right, he pulls to the left, let's dig trenches and aim at each other, that's just stupid. One, for example, on the Serbian intellectual scene, will say: "Don't have that one, he's a right-winger", others will say: "Don't have this one, he's a leftist", and thus a wide space is created for a manipulator who uses it, for someone who in fact has no convictions at all. I read a recent lecture by Antonio Scurati, the author of the Mussolini saga, who says that Mussolini was both clerical and anti-clerical, socialist and anti-socialist with equal ferocity, depending on the moment. So, he always manipulated and lied. So we also have radicals who are suddenly pro-European, and then again anti-European. So, the bottom line is that people have to work on their (in)ability to accept another, who is different and thinks differently. Because if they don't, we know that there will always be someone who will use it masterfully.

Do you think it is at all, at the level of an institution or society, possible to really suppress the rebellion? Or from being silenced too much, she just explodes?

When this human need is compressed from the outside - whether it originates from aesthetic, political, historical or philosophical motives - it, in fact, only condenses and will explode at some point. That is exactly why it is important to let people speak, to hear them and to respect them, that is why it is important that these people really influence the processes - from economic, to political to artistic - that concern them.

How subversive, there can be a rebel in the act of writing, in literature?

Everything I've been talking about has to do with that. Why does a man write about events that have already happened? Because they had such a strong effect on him, and therefore he thinks they are important for others as well, he does not want those events to die, to simply be forgotten. And as soon as we describe an event in a certain context, it has its own political connotations. Whatever you write about - say, about how someone loves nature or other people or describing a certain individual - you are sending a message. Certainly, there is a strong aesthetic urge to say something in the best possible way, but we basically want to reach another person knowing that we cannot touch them if we do not speak.

On the promotion of his book A stranger in the forest in Banja Luka, I mentioned the medieval experiment of Emperor Frederick II, who wanted to find out what was the proto-language, that is, what language will be spoken by children that no one speaks to. He took the babies from their mothers and forbade the caregivers to speak in their presence, as well as to caress them, but of course they fed them, clothed them... The experiment was soon stopped because the children died.

So if we don't talk, we can die from it. As Branko Miljković says, "Unspoken words sting the most." For me personally, literature is the rope with which I climb from the abyss to the cliff. And it's not just about someone telling you "I read your book", but about the act of writing, which in itself is already a conversation.

If all writing is a conversation with oneself, your latest book takes it up a notch. It seems to me that it is precisely about addressing the young self from the current angle. How today, compared to before, you look at Bishop Athanasius and Metropolitan Amfilohi and in general those people of the Church who matured under communist rule? Do your view on them, when you yourself have been a bishop for a long time, changed? Do you understand them better?

The phenomenon of them as our teachers, from the end of a totalitarian regime in which they were under serious pressure, is interesting. So then they went abroad, met there with other ways of life and with all that experience, as already developed personalities, they came to Serbia in the late seventies, early eighties and inspired our youthful mind, heart and soul to revolt against that system. When I entered the seminary in the early 1980s, I thought that the existing system would never pass. But they taught me, fortunately or unfortunately, that I must be against a system that stifles freedom. And that system passed, and we just thought - here is freedom, and then came the war. I've written a lot about it and I hope I won't have to again, but that war fell like a great calamity on our youth and on that freedom that will never come back. We then had a short period of the arrival of democracy, and then the shooting of a man who was, I think, a rebel and a seeker of freedom. And after that, wandering again followed... Decades have passed in wandering through the desert, that's a lot of wasted energy.

Now some other young people have appeared, completely different, who are inspired by the same thing. Maybe they are inspired by someone's religious education, maybe someone's anti-religious education, maybe someone's philosophy... Maybe they are a new world that adapts much better to dramatic technological development. But maybe they, in fact, feel what freedom means in the true sense, even much deeper, than we who have uttered the word many times felt it. Perhaps they sense the danger brought with it by the apparent crisis of democracy throughout the world. I confess, I thought there were no more such young people as we were. However, they exist and are realistically much better than us and much less susceptible to manipulation, both by the so-called deep state and by politicians and the media. And the fact that they are not easily susceptible to manipulation is for me one of the most beautiful surprises in 2024. What the students in Serbia are currently doing is one of the cleanest, most moral political initiatives that has appeared in our country, which is not political, not covered by oppositional and positional interests, it is not controlled and corrupt. On the contrary, it is authentic and rests on the genuine interest and advocacy of young people for justice and all those values ​​on which a healthy democratic society should rest.

Is there anything you would advise these young people??

You know what is important - we were always told "you are ambitious", as if it was a big flaw, a problem. It is good for a young man to have ambition. Let them be ambitious. And as we mentioned Česlav Miloš a little while ago, they must not be stopped when someone complains to them "you are writing now just to please others" or "you are fighting for something to please others". So why is that bad? Try to please others, but not in the wrong way and for the wrong things, but by being good, brave and reasonable. In fact, the most pleasant surprise is that we like these students so much precisely because they are so reasonable. Because we are exposed to a constant attack of unreasonableness and arrogant violent behavior. And one should strive to be liked for good, to fight for justice, for beauty, to be ambitious in this and not to allow the bad and ugly to prevail and rule.

The problem with ambition is that it, it seems, often associated here with excessive will to power. We are looking at people in the state who are steeped in it. You also write in the book that episcopacy also brings a great temptation of power. Where are the personal and social responses that would stand in the way of that need for unlimited power?

As I mentioned, there is a historical answer, over time institutions have developed to prevent someone from being too powerful. A German professor, when we talked about the differences between us and them, recently told me that the only difference is that the Germans follow the procedures. And it seems that these procedures have their own meaning. Because if all the procedures had been respected, most likely the canopy in Novi Sad would not have fallen. Procedures involve caring for people. Six years ago, I spoke at the Faculty of Philosophy that if we say that we are true Christians, and we all declare ourselves to be so, why is there no protection in our country when something is being built, why are we not careful if mortared bricks fall on the head of that worker or passerby? ?

Something else is important: those who say they believe in God, but at the same time do not believe in people and do not love them, or even show that they hate other people, it is necessary to somehow draw attention to the fact that their faith in God is wrong, that it is wrong. On the other hand, those who believe in people and in people, must know that people are prone to mistakes, sins and weaknesses, and that is why procedures are important. That is why mechanisms and systems to limit one's power are important.

It is clear that there are good people in every field, in the police and prosecution, medicine and sports, but there must be rules everywhere. It is a civilizational achievement that must be applied. One can neither play nor live without rules, precisely because we tend to abuse power. A huge temptation is power, whether it is worldly or spiritual, as I wrote in the book. Perhaps the spiritual is an even greater temptation.

The largest number of people, if not all, makes compromises. They won't always say everything they mean, they choose the fronts on which to fight, and from which they give up... But where is the limit after which a dignified human being says "I won't do it like this anymore", when it stops being so important whether someone will attack us, are we going to lose something, because by silence and inaction we already lose much more?

I understand people who, out of fear, out of concern for their family, will not expose themselves. I understand that silence, but I don't understand those who support what is not good. And as far as compromise is concerned, I think that a person should be reasonable here as well, to see to what extent or how far his rebellion brings results and how visible it is. But even if he is subdued, if someone is extremely scared, then that person should, as Dostoevsky said, put his hand in his pocket and show a pomegranate to all those oppressors, because if he is reasonable, it will still be a little easier in his soul and on conscience. But if it's not and he goes so far as to say "oh, this is fine", without questioning his conscience at all, and if he also has an interest, that's an unacceptable type of compromise.

Your latest book opens up some topics that are very rarely discussed, that is, there is almost no other voice coming from the Church that would deal deeply with the topics of life, doubts, confrontations... Lewis Carroll says that we read to know that we are not alone. Do you even think about that when you write?

There is a psychological moment. In moments of disappointment and sadness, we need to look within ourselves and start a conversation. These are questions that come from life itself, and it is not easy for many. On the other hand, there are questions that are beyond us, that belong to the domain of metaphysics and call for answers. Simply, it seems to me that I simply don't run away from talking to what is inside that requires reflection and confrontation, because that's how I save myself from exploding, but I don't run away from what's on the outside either, because I believe that as soon as it's there, it just by itself imposes. But I also don't perform with the aspiration to say here I know how things are, so I will tell you exactly to say, already - here I am wrestling with these questions and so far I have reached this point and I have concluded this and that. On the other hand, as soon as you say or write something, you put it up for discussion, you open the possibility for someone to say: "Man, you're not right."

The most important thing is that you have to be ready for someone to prove you wrong and maybe teach you what is actually right. And you win again. But if you silence what's inside you and don't see what's around you, you let it go as if it doesn't exist, that means you're going through life with your eyes closed. And that is very dangerous.

About aesthetic rebellion

"For me as a Christian, rebellion is rebellion against stagnation, which always means decay. You need to get out of yourself and you need to search. The question is - what moves us to get out of ourselves. It may sound strange, but that first, basic thirst for rebellion can also be for aesthetic reasons, i.e. the desire to make something look more beautiful, better, more pleasant, to be good. Because aesthetics reveal to us the inner state of things.

Let's say, in the last six years since I've been in Germany, I've heard in the news from Serbia how Serbia is making incredible progress, experiencing a great boom... And then I was invited to a baptism in Sokograd, so I also visited the bishop in Šabac and I went that way from Šabac to Loznica. You see dilapidated villages, six or seven houses, estates that are falling into disrepair, and then suddenly a house rising to four or five floors. The first thing that strikes you is the injustice between poverty and wealth, but in both cases that aesthetic tells you that something is deeply wrong. It's not just about money. I saw something similar in Bačka, where people are richer.

Look at the aesthetics of Belgrade, the city of my youth, which is frighteningly damaged. Or Banja Luka, where a million unnecessary things are studded. My late friend, the famous architect and painter Vuk Roganović, said that he was not responsible for much of what was built in Trebinje, and he was the chief urban planner, but that he was responsible for much that was not built. And now that he is gone, they managed to spoil the aesthetics of the city and build some strange, mismatched buildings on the coast.