Booooks 10
Patriotism, West Wing
In the meantime
So I am back! To Vienna! To Booooks! and To Life!
Life is great here and even the looming recession does not make it worse. I hope more of you will come to visit with so far FOUR of my friends coming to stay in Ottakring!
In the past weeks, they published my very first #Nomad podcast episode:
Big personal news about my girlfriend: N got an offer from Oxford! Please send good vibes her way so she can meet its conditions!
Here is the meme of the week:
On the News
... kinda on the shelf too
This is going to be a short one, also a relatively Polish-core story. So get ready, or just skip it lol.
There is an NGO called AWO, which extends basically to: the Academy of Civic Knowledge. Their mission is, according to their website:
Our mission is to instil interest in statesmanship, the public sphere, international institutions and the civil service among young people, so that work for the state, for the state or for the international community, independent of political views, becomes one of the development paths actually considered by current and future high school students.
At a meeting at the famed Congress last year in Oxford members of this group presented their core idea as a Polish version of the Fast Track a highly competitive grad scheme for aspiring public servants in the Whitehall. Of course, as a contrarian, who hangs out with other contrarians I was sceptical - after all, isn't the simple solution to that problem just more money? Clearly, (according to at least two independent people familiar with the matter) higher salary help attract more talent to the National Bank of Poland. The other thing would be the forced de-politicisation of these institutions, or at least parts of them. That could help provide the other strength of the central bank - the intellectual challenge. This is a fairly underrated part of the job you are going to have, which (if you are privileged enough) YOU SHOULD ALWAYS FACTOR IN. These two things should be enough. The internship scheme or whatever will not do the job if these two conditions were not fulfilled.
But I am sure that these intelligent young men (25under25 recipients) knew that already. So why do we need "Civic Knowledge"? I invite you to watch the clip:
Dear Polish friends, can you imagine yourselves standing in an office at the Aleje Ujazdowskie saying "Moim obowiązkiem jest służba Premierowi RP"? I mean it even sounds stupid. I did a little beta testing of that theory and apparently, the very explanation I had in mind was introduced in Turbopatriotism (Turbopatriotyzm) by Marcin Napiórkowski. Something along the lines of neoliberal families washing away all the patriotic feelings so they don't seem backward and nationalistic. Therefore young-educated people lost any pride in public service. But I also am currently reading Karstew and Holmes The Light That Faded. It made me think more about how our imported (German) institutions (parliamentary democracy with a weird ceremonial role of the president and the senate, divided constitutional and supreme courts or even the high concentration of large govt backed companies at the stock exchange) also included a subjugation of patriotic feelings. If you look at Germany, you would probably see tiny shows of patriotism, (much rather loyalty to a corporation). The book is great actually and really made me think about the evolution of Polish democracy. It seems as if we failed to build and evolve our own path, despite getting a chance to actually craft one that could suit us best, knowing about the issues of the past.
Summing up this little Polish-core thing: J. said that he thinks that there might come someone who will serve as the PM and he will have no issue with displaying the funny little words. Someone else could just say that I am addicted to endorphins spiking American propaganda. I just think that public service cannot be separated from a sense of pride in serving your country, and that might be the secret sauce in the mix.
On the Shelf
Did you ever wonder how come that both Barack Obama and Woodrow Willson were members of the same party? Do you want to show off your knowledge about the political history of the US? I certainly did!
I read recently What it took to win a fantastic and long run through the history of the longest-existing party in America. It is part of my two ongoing passion projects:
I love American politics and talking about became mine and N’s love language
I am hunting. For a closeted neo-lib inside me. Once I found him I will flay him alive
The way I am conducting the latter is by watching way too much West Wing and reading books like The light that failed (Ivan Karstew and Stephen Holmes) or In defence of liberalism (Timothy Garton Ash). Alternatively, I build a lego model of the White House in my room. The reason is probably that I am a contrarian who lives with a Trotskite operative who does not seem to respect our communal spaces (he is very clueless).
I will report dutifully on the progress of the hunt here. In the meantime, I recommend the book on Dems!
ICYMI:
It is apparently an important philosophical event:
I will have more gossip as the matter unfolds next week.
Next Up:
That’s all folks! Thanks for hanging out… maybe the pod will be out soon-ish. Otherwise, I will be back here next week, probably with some kind of a reference to the Handmaid’s Tale and Testaments so go catch up on Attwood!
huge congrats to N!