After Long Years | Page 9

seeks to deprive others of their
successes and possessions. It is very typical of societies with a grossly
unequal distribution of wealth;
h. The Mentality (or the Historical) Defences - these are defence
mechanisms, which make use of an imagined mentality problem ("we
are like that, we have been like this for ages now, nothing to do, we are
deformed") - or build upon some historical pattern, or invented pattern
("we have been enslaved and submissive for five centuries - what can
you expect");
i. The Passive-Aggressive reaction: occurs mainly when the market
players have no access to more legitimate and aggressive venues of
reacting to their predicament or when they are predisposed to
suppressing of aggression (or when they elect to not express it). The
passive-aggressive reactions are "sabotage"-type reactions: slowing
down of the work, "working by the book", absenteeism, stealing from
the workplace, fostering and maintaining bureaucratic procedures and
so on;
j. The inability to postpone satisfaction - The players regress to a
child-like state, demanding immediate satisfaction, unable to postpone
it and getting frustrated, aggressive and deceiving if they are required
to do so by circumstances. They engage in short term activities, some
criminal, some dubious, some legitimate: trading and speculation,
gambling, short-termism.
The results are, usually, catastrophic: A reduction in economic activity,
in the number of interactions and in the field of economic potentials

(the product of all possible economic transactions). An erosion of the
human capital, its skills and availability. Brain drain - skilled people
desert, en masse, the fragmented economic system and move to more
sustainable ones. Resort to illegal and to extra-legal activities Social
and economic polarization. Interethnic tensions and tensions between
the very rich and the very poor tend to erupt and to explode.
And this is where most countries in transition are at right now. To a
large extent, it is the fault of their elites. Providing orientation and
guidance is supposed to be their function and why society invests in
them. But the elites in all countries in transition - tainted by long years
of complicity in the unseemly and the criminal - never exerted moral or
intellectual authority over their people. At the risk of sounding
narcissistic, allow me to quote myself (from "The Poets and the
Eclipse"). Replace "intellectuals of the Balkan" with "intellectuals of
the countries in transition":
(Article written on October 31, 1999 and published November 15, 1999
in "Central Europe Review" volume 1, issue 21)
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The Poets and the Eclipse

Poets in Somalia hold an inordinate sway over the indigenous
population. They sing the praises of war with the same alacrity and
vehemence that they invest in glorifying peace. And the population
listens and follows these dark skinned pied pipers. Lately, they have
been extolling peace and peace prevails in Somaliland and the other
state-like enclaves in this tortured shadow of a country.
In the evening we celebrate a birthday party under deciduous trees, in
floodlit darkness, somewhere in the Balkans. The voices of industrious
crickets, of late chirping birds, of the cesma - the fabled Balkan water

fountain - all intermingle to produce an auditory magic. A famous
satirist and poet catapults slurred, vitriolic diatribes at a guest from the
West that I brought with me. His words ring inebriatedly authentic. He
need not learn the language, he exclaims, of people without a spirit and
without a mind. He is referring to English. His country - he
triumphantly shrills - is the best, an island of civilization among the
barbarians at the gates. He enumerates his neighbours and proceeds to
describe in vivid, gut wrenching detail what he would do to them all,
given the opportunity. "The rotten core of our national apple" - a
melancholy contribution from a professor of psychiatry.
Another day. As the moon bit into the otherwise scorching sun - the
streets emptied. Shops closed, the traffic halted, workers remained
cooped up in steamy offices. Why all this - I asked my friend. He is a
leading journalist, an author, an editor and a media personality. He
looked at me warily and proceeded to expound upon the health risks
entailed in being exposed to the eclipse. He was serious as was
evidenced by his subsequent descent into his basement and by the
resounding bolting of the anti-nuclear double plated armoured door. He
offered me to join him and was appalled to hear that I had every
intention of watching the eclipse - and from the street.
The intellectuals of the Balkans - a curse, not in disguise, a nefarious
presence, ominous, erratic and corrupt. Sometimes, at the nucleus of all
conflict and mayhem - at other times (of ethnic cleansing or
suppression of the media) conspicuously absent. Zeligs of umpteen
disguises and ever changing, shimmering loyalties.
They exert no