1The belief that albino children bring bad luck lives on in parts of Africa. Every now and then a witchdoctor kills a pallid-looking child in order to prepare a voodoo potion. The child’s organs are usually removed while he or she is still alive, so the child bleeds to death.
BAD PUPILS
A glance at the faces of those who in this society are someone can help understand the joy of being no one.
(The Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection)
I’M SITTING IN a Zagreb café and, as is my custom, I’m eavesdropping. Spying on the everyday is half a writer’s job; the rest is creative filtering of the information gleaned. Maxim Gorky would be happy to hear that. And in any case, it’s more than time we gave a thought to the unjustly loathed classics of socialist realism.
There are two girls at the table next to mine. One is like a rocket: taut, firm jaw, cleavage pumped out, aerodynamic. The other is like pudding: soft, stoop-shouldered, down in the mouth. .
“Every morning I make myself a juice and eat a plate of cereal. I mean, sometimes it happens that I nibble on this or that too, but I don’t start the day without juice and cereal. No way!” says rocket-girl.
“Really?” asks the other, enchanted.
“For me it’s written in stone. And when you write something in stone, there’s no way anyone’s gonna get one over you.”
“Truly?”
“I was at my pedicurist’s the other day, and the chick says to me, hey, how about I round your nails off a little, those straight ones of yours are so out. Not a chance, I tell her. Why, she asks, they’d look better on you. I know what looks best on me. Where would I be if I didn’t know that?!”
“On one hand you’d have round nails, and on the other you’d have straight ones,” says pudding-girl timidly.
“You know what I’m saying?”
And while I listen to the self-confident girl, she who is incapable of being thrown off track, it occurs to me that Maxim Gorky and his slogan “Humankind — how proud that sounds!” are to blame. In time the slogan won over a good part of the world. This big idea about the pride of humankind was adopted by democratic societies, parents, psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, self-help gurus and trainers, priests and thieves, children and killers with children’s faces, politicians and voters, bankers and traders, spin doctors and the kindlers of human self-confidence, and — look at that — we all entered a new time as a result. We all have the right to happiness, we can do anything (anything we want), we all have our opinions, we all know what we want, and we deserve to have it all. Self-confidence, self-worth, self-respect, self-integrity, self-regard—they’re all ladders to climb on the road to success. Doubting oneself, whether it’s low self-esteem or procrastination, has been declared a dysfunction, perfectionists are mental patients, contemplation a deferral of action. Even the Wikipedia entry on procrastination is accompanied by an image of Rodin’s The Thinker. Thinkers are dysfunctional persons in need of expert help.
What has happened to society as a consequence? While murderers murder, procrastinators dilly-dally about whether to pull the trigger. While good artists spend time getting intimate with their doubts, the bad take over the galleries. While good directors lose their minds working on film, the films of the bad flood the cinemas. While serious scholars are blocked by “academic procrastination,” the bad storm the department. While good pop and rock musicians inevitably die young, the bad haunt the stage well into their eighties. While good journalists spend time studiously researching the facts, the bad usurp their places by selling lies. While the rare honest politician is wracked with doubts, the irresponsible govern without a care in the world.
There’s a video clip on YouTube that functions as a visual metaphor of the society of spectacle at its peak. In the clip, Russian President Vladimir Putin struggles to bang out a few notes on the piano, and then sings the old standard, Blueberry Hill. It’s painfully bad. America’s finest musicians accompany Putin’s performance, and out front, in the audience, the country’s entertainment elite rises to its feet. Famous actors and actresses mouth the words and sway in rhythm, all in a show of support for Putin. Putin is a child with worryingly high self-confidence, the actors and actresses parents lovingly watching their progeny.
An innocent joke remains lodged in my memory from the time of Yugoslav communism, coincidentally the only joke in circulation immediately following Tito’s death. A father catches his son smoking the crappy local Drava cigarettes.
“Bad cigarettes are dangerous for your health, here’s some money, go buy yourself those expensive Marlboros.”
The next day the father catches his son swigging hooch.
“Hooch wrecks your liver, here’s some money, go buy Johnnie Walker.”
The third day the father catches his son reading Start, a local lads’ magazine.
“Don’t waste your time, here’s some money, go buy Playboy.” A short time later, the kid asks his father excitedly:
“Dad, who gets to sleep with the playmates?”
“The best in the class, my boy, the best in the class!”
Let’s rewind the tape. The father said: The best in the class. And until society rehabilitates the father from the joke and his message that only the best in the class win the right to advancement, the world will continue its slide toward its — beginnings. Because bad pupils have gained control over all of us. They’re who we vote for, who we listen to; they’re all we see. Bad pupils have usurped the government, political forums, and the media; they produce the food we eat and the drinks we drink; they design our clothes and our surroundings. Bad pupils color our mental landscape; they’re the teachers in our schools, they write the books we devour. Bad pupils are our media idols, establishing the values we accept as our own, modeling us to their standards. Bad pupils employ us, determining the amount we are paid — they are our lords. And lorded over by bad pupils, we’re all gradually becoming dunces. That’s why governments are so happy to cut education funding.
A little rake with an outstretched hand approaches the table next to mine. Rocket-girl takes a note from her handbag and gives the kid twenty kuna.
“Isn’t that a bit much?” pudding girls inquiries.