It has been a while since I did not write anything on this blog. Because I felt it was about time to "Turn the page". As you have all noticed, the language of this blog was Romanian. Until now. The choice of this language inherently chose an audience: Romanian speakers. Nothing wrong with this I guess. Except for one thing. Languages are often associated with a cultural space (I am not counting here Romanian speakers from diaspora). A collective mentality, a way of "seeing", "arguing", a set of collective "values". And, not to forget, a certain set of "topics". Once I have understood this, I have understood I can't go on anymore in this formula. Something had to change about this blog. I had to "Turn the page".
I have left Romania (I can safely add now "for good") at the end of 1998. I will not discuss here the reasons that made me leave. It would be off topic. I will only tell you that I have paid in full this decision. I have travelled to France, Israel, Canada, Germany and finally settled in France. Sixteen years of travel on three continents. Four more languages learned. A million of new things learned. Acquainted with several different cultures. Tasted several new cuisines and learned that life remains beautiful even without "mamaliga" (the Romanian name of the Italian polenta usually served with cheese and/or meant to replace the bread). Although I have never admitted it openly (till now), I think I was hoping to return one day to Romania and contribute the things I have seen, learned to finally help (with my modest means) fixing up at least partially the "unacceptable" that made me (and thousands like me) leave sixteen years ago. This explains perhaps why I have never stopped reading Romanian news, making Romanian "friends" on Facebook, getting involved in debates concerning the Romanian reality. And, of course, writing articles (as I do not make free publicity when no longer deserved, I shall not name the journal - you can figure it out by yourselves on Google, good luck!) about my understanding of the "Romanian problem" in .... Romanian.
I was naive if not entirely idiot. Tackling with the Romanian mentality was a suicide mission. Half of your former classmates from Facebook become your undeclared enemies, you are treated for a traitor, the bad one that "criticises", the "anti-Romanian". So yes, it turned out that the Romanian mentality is sufficient to itself. It accepts no dialogue, no solution. Romanians are living a cheap myth. They "know" it all and they need not changing anything in their mentality. And if there are some "problems", well, it is the fault of the "leaders". As if their leaders are not coming among them and have been teleported from the starship Enterprise by Captain Jean-Luc Piccard and his crew. Any attempt of discussing what went wrong, of straightening the things up ends up with an attack, with a torrent of insults. At this stage, all becomes futile and I certainly have no intention of playing Don Quijote in 2014.
The best illustration of this came recently with the so called "Lucian Boia" case. For non Romanians, Professor Lucian Boia is a Romanian historian who has "dared" challenging several of these rotten Romanian myths in a sequence of best selling titles among which: "Why is Romania different?", "Two centuries of national mythology", "The game with the past: history between truth and fiction" etc.. Each of these works stirred violent controversies. Who is guy to challenge our ways? How dares he? Who is paying him? What conspiracy did he join? Is he paid by the Jewish? Or by the Hungarians? Professor Boia rarely gets a civilised and documented dialogue from his audience. He typically gets furious insults, anti-social reactions and sometimes even threats. You may get a feeling of the extent of this mess here:
For those not reading Romanian, I can tell you that half of the comments to this article will never be published in an Eurpean newspaper.
So here comes the puzzle which finally led me to this title. If an internationally recognised scholar like Professor Lucian Boia does not seem to have much success in setting the things right (some exceptions exist, but my feeling is that they are statistically irrelevant, check the link above once more) what a heck am I doing in this story?
I have found only one solution to the puzzle: "Turn the page". Count me out. And do not expect any article written in Romanian in this blog. Because you will later be disappointed.
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