After the Rain : how the West lost the East Part 4

2.Is preoccupied with unjustified doubts about the loyalty or trustworthiness of friends or a.s.sociates;

3.Is reluctant to confide in others because of unwarranted fear that the information will be used maliciously against him or her;

4.Reads hidden demeaning or threatening meanings into benign remarks or events;

5.Persistently bears grudges, i.e., is unforgiving of insults, injuries, or slights;

6.Perceives attacks on his or her character or reputation that are not apparent to others and is quick to react angrily or to counterattack;

7.Has recurrent suspicions, without justification, regarding fidelity of spouse or s.e.xual partner.

Schizotypal Personality Disorder

A pervasive pattern of social and interpersonal deficits marked by acute discomfort with and reduced capacity for close relationships as well as by cognitive or perceptual distortions and eccentricities of behaviour beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

1.Ideas of reference (excluding delusions of reference) - (SV: the delusional belief that others are looking at him pointing at him, talking about him, especially in a derogatory manner);

2.Odd beliefs or magical thinking that influences behaviour and is inconsistent with subcultural norms (e.g., superst.i.tiousness, belief in clairvoyance, telepathy, or "sixth sense"; in children and adolescents, bizarre fantasies or preoccupations);

3.Unusual perceptual experiences, including bodily illusions;

4.Odd thinking and speech (e.g., vague, circ.u.mstantial, metaphorical, over-elaborate, or stereotyped);

5.Suspiciousness or paranoid ideation;

6.Inappropriate and constricted affect;

7.Behaviour, or appearance that is odd, eccentric, or peculiar;

8.Lack of close friends or confidants other than first-degree relatives;

9.Excessive social anxiety that does not diminish with familiarity and tends to be a.s.sociated with paranoid fears rather than negative judgements about self.

(Article written on December 9, 1999 and published December 13, 1999

in "Central Europe Review" volume 1, issue 25)

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The Last Family

"One man cannot be a warrior on a battlefield"

(Russian proverb)

There is no word for it in Russian. Platon Karatayev, the typical "Russian soul" in Tolstoy's "War and Peace", extols, for pages at a time, the virtues of communality and disparages the individual - this otherwise useless part of the greater whole. In Macedonia the words "private" or "privacy" pertain to matters economic. The word "intimacy"

is used instead to designate the state of being free of prying, intrusive eyes and acts of meddling. Throughout Central and Eastern Europe, the rise of "individualism" did not give birth to its corollary: "privacy". After decades (and, in most cases, centuries) of cramped, multi-generational shared accommodation, it is no wonder.

To the alienated and schizoid ears of Westerners, the survival of family and community in CEE sounds like an attractive proposition. A dual-purpose safety net, both emotional and economic, the family in countries in transition provides its members with unemployment benefits, accommodation, food and psychological advice to boot.

Divorced daughters, saddled with little (and not so little) ones, the prodigal sons incapable of finding a job befitting their qualifications, the sick, the unhappy - all are absorbed by the compa.s.sionate bosom of the family and, by extension the community. The family, the neighbourhood, the community, the village, the tribe - are units of subversion as well as useful safety valves, releasing and regulating the pressures of contemporary life in the modern, materialistic, crime ridden state. The ancient blood feud laws of the kanoon were handed over through familial lineages in northern Albania, in defiance of the paranoiac Enver Hoxha regime. Criminals hide among their kin in the Balkans, thus effectively evading the long arm of the law (state). Jobs are granted, contracts signed and tenders won on an open and strict nepotistic basis and no one finds it odd or wrong.

There is something atavistically heart-warming in all this.

Historically, the rural units of socialization and social organization were the family and the village. As villagers migrated to the cities, these structural and functional patterns were imported by them, en ma.s.se. The shortage of urban apartments and the communist invention of the communal apartment (its tiny rooms allocated one per family with kitchen and bathroom common to all) only served to perpetuate these ancient modes of multi-generational huddling. At best, the few available apartments were shared by three generations: parents, married offspring and their children. In many cases, the living s.p.a.ce was also shared by sickly or no-good relatives and even by unrelated families.

These living arrangements - more adapted to rustic open s.p.a.ces than to high rises - led to severe social and psychological dysfunctions. To this very day, Balkan males are spoiled by the subservience and servitude of their in-house parents and incessantly and compulsively catered to by their submissive wives. Occupying someone else's home, they are not well acquainted with adult responsibilities. Stunted growth and stagnant immaturity are the hallmarks of an entire generation, stifled by the ominous proximity of suffocating, invasive love. Unable to lead a healthy s.e.x life behind paper thin walls, unable to raise their children and as many children as they see fit, unable to develop emotionally under the anxiously watchful eye of their parents - this greenhouse generation is doomed to a zombie-like existence in the twilight nether land of their parents' caves. Many ever more eagerly await the demise of their caring captors and the promised land of their inherited apartments, free of their parents' presence.

The daily pressures and exigencies of co-existence are enormous. The prying, the gossip, the criticism, the chastising, the small agitating mannerisms, the smells, the incompatible personal habits and preferences, the pusillanimous bookkeeping - all serve to erode the individual and to reduce him or her to the most primitive mode of survival. This is further exacerbated by the need to share expenses, to allocate labour and tasks, to plan ahead for contingencies, to see off threats, to hide information, to pretend and to fend off emotionally injurious behaviour. It is a sweltering tropic of affective cancer.

Newly found materialism brought these territories a malignant form of capitalism coupled with a sub-culture of drugs and crime. The eventuating disintegration of all polities in the ensuing moral vacuum was complete. From the more complex federations or states and their governments, through intermediate munic.i.p.alities and down to the most primitive of political cells - the family - they all crumbled in a storm of discontent and blood. The mutant frontier-"independence" or pioneer-"individualism" imported from Western B movies led to a functional upheaval unmatched by a structural one. People want privacy and intimacy more than ever - but they still inhabit the same shoddily constructed, congested accommodation and they still earn poorly or are unemployed. This tension between aspiration and perspiration is potentially revolutionary. It is this unaccomplished, uneasy metamorphosis that tore the social fabric of CEE apart, rendering it poisoned and dysfunctional. This is nothing new - it is what brought socialism and its more vicious variants down.

But what is new is inequality. Ever the pathologically envious, the citizens of CEE bathed in common misery. The equal distribution of poverty and hardship guaranteed their peace of mind. A Jewish proverb says: "The trouble of the many is half a consolation." It is this breakdown of symmetry of wretchedness that really shook the social order. The privacy and intimacy and freedom gained by the few are bound to incite the many into acts of desperation. After all, what can be more individualistic, more private, more mind requiting, more tranquillizing than being part of a riotous mob intent of implementing a platform of hate and devastation?

(Article written on January 9, 2000 and published January 24, 2000

in "Central Europe Review" volume 2, issue 3)

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Rasputin in Transition

The mad glint in his eyes is likely to be nothing more ominous than maladjusted contact lenses. If not clean-shaven, he is likely to sport nothing wilder than a goatee. More likely an atheist than a priest, this mutation of the ageless confidence artist is nonetheless the direct spiritual descendent of Rasputin, the raving maniac who governed Russia until his own execution by Russian n.o.blemen and patriots.

They are to be found in all countries in transition. Wild and insidious weeds, the outcome of wayward pollination by mutated capitalism. They prey on their victims, at first acquiring their confidence and love, then penetrating their political, social and financial structures almost as a virus would: stealthily and treacherously. By the time their quarry wakes up to its infection and subjugation - it is already too late. By then, the invader will have become part of the invaded or its master, either through blackmail or via tempting subornation.

This region of the CEE and the Balkans provides for fertile grounds. It is a Petrie dish upon which cultures of corruption and scandalous conduct are fermented. The typical exploiter of these vulnerabilities is a foreigner. Things foreign are held in awe and adulation by a populace so down trodden and made to feel inferior in every way, not least by foreign tutors and advisors. The craving to be loved, this gnawing urge to be accepted, to be a member of the club, to be distinguished from one's former neighbours - are irresistible. The modern Rasputin doles out this unconditional acceptance, this all-encompa.s.sing affinity, the echoes of avuncularity. In doing so, he evokes in the recipients such warmth, such relief, such fervour and reciprocity - that he becomes an idol, a symbol of a paradise long lost, a golden braid. Having thus completed the first phase of his meticulous attack - he moves on to the second chapter in this book of body s.n.a.t.c.hing.

Armed with his new-fangled popularity, the crook moves on and leverages it to the hilt. He does so by feigning charity, by faking interest, by false "constructive criticism". To his slow forming army, he recruits the media, the flower children, the bleeding hearts, reformers, dissidents and the occasional freak. By holding old authority in disdain, by declaring his contempt for the methods of the "tried and true", by appearing to make war upon all rot and immorality - this creature of expediency emerges as a folk hero. It is the more cynical and world weary and "sophisticated" members of society that lead the way, succ.u.mbing to his ardour and conviction, to his child-like innocence, to his unwavering agenda. He cleverly thrusts at them the double edge of their own disillusionment and disappointment. Thus mirrored, they are transformed and converted into his camp of renewal and clean promises by this epiphany. They hand him the keys to every medium, the very codes and secrets that make him so powerful. They pledge their alliance and allegiance and render to him the access they possess to the nerve centres of society. The castle gates thus opened from inside, his victory a.s.sured, the rogue moves on to consummate this unholy marriage between himself and the deceived.