Consensus-building and efforts at dialogue are part of democracy. On the other hand, we cannot completely smooth over any conflict ongoing in society. Which is better: To soften your formulations when conversing with someone whose opinions contradict yours, or to go into conflict with them?
"You don’t have to explain anything to me, I grew up in a Prague cafe," I heard someone say during one of the more lively exchanges of opinions prior to the second round of the presidential elections. This is a variation on those claims that one has had enough experience with the people one’s opponent is trying to describe – or most probably, denigrate.
Anti-racists often use such turns of phrase in their discussions with antigypsyists: "You don’t have to explain anything to me, I’m from Ústí nad Labem," my friends from Ústí always say. We could continue with examples from other towns. Everyone "knows their own". Us and them.
On this occasion it occurred to me that I could write down everything that "no one has to explain to me" so everyone might know that I already know everything and they don’t have to bother me with useless information – but life isn’t like that. When I’m not arguing until I’m blue in the face, I am well aware that as long as I live people will surprise me with their opinions, experiences and observations, with how their fates develop. That makes me happy. Forgive the pathos, but that’s how I feel.
This makes me all the more sorry that I live in a strongly polarized society. A random sample: Praguers vs. the rest of the country, ethnic Czechs vs. Romani people (or anyone else), the rich vs. the poor, and also, naturally, the left vs. the right. The presidential elections may not have strengthened divisions in society, but they revealed them in all their enormity.
I can sense in those closest to me a growing distaste for holding any further dialogue with the "others".
There are moments when I also lose hope that any further dialogue is possible. For example, when I try to explain again and again why anticommunism bothers me and am then charged with defending totalitarianism. Maybe I’m not explaining myself well, or calling things by the wrong names, because what I am talking about really isn’t so much about communism – but I will write about that elsewhere.
These doubts of mine, that "maybe", are probably the reason why, for the most part, I get along well even with people whose worldviews differ from mine.
I have not exhausted all of the possibilities of constructive dialogue and I know that one day the day will come when we at least understand one another, even though we will not agree with one another in many respects. Besides the pleasure in an exchange of opinions and in debate itself, I am motivated by concern for what awaits us. If we want to live in a democracy, discussion is needed and required. That is my position.
There is, however, an alternative position that perceives conflict as a necessity. The idea is that conflict must gradually be exploited as a path to catharsis. Without it, the societal change that awaits us (even though many still don’t want to admit it) might not be slow. It could take on the dimensions of a bloody revolution.
In other words, if misunderstandings between various parts of society, groups of opinion, social groups, don’t result in conflict now, they allegedly will blow up with greater intensity later. The unresolved conflict between Czechs and Slovaks, for example, resulted in the division of the country. The Czechs did not want to admit the existence of any problem whatsoever, and therefore Czechoslovakia had to split up in the end. I am giving this example fully aware that it may be misunderstood, because many believe "we only split up because the Slovaks just kept making things up."
Even those who perceive history differently than I do can review their own relationships and recall the difference between arguments that cleared the air and arguments that didn’t resolve the problems, but just kicked them down the road. Those relationships eventually ended in conflicts so big as to undo the relationship, which fell apart.
Why am I writing all this? My dear colleague Vráťa Dostál ran into his neighbor last Sunday. They talked about the presidential elections and what awaits the Social Democrats. Vráťa noted that a coalition between the Social Democrats and TOP 09 would betray the Social Democrats’ program. His neighbor responded as follows: "The person I like best at Deník Referendum is Saša Uhlová, she’s impartial and not aggressive…."
Naturally, I thank him for the compliment, it pleased me. That’s probably normal, we are all glad when someone likes us. However, this pleasant "news" has finally forced me to face up to my capacity for accommodating others’ views.
This is not the first time the analogy to the "decent Gypsy" has occurred to me when I have been praised as a "decent lefty". Every Romani person who is at least partially integrated is used by the ethnic Czechs around him as proof of the fact that they are not racists. The thought process is roughly as follows: The other "Gypsies" are terrible, but I don’t have any prejudices because Gejza Horváth is a good guy and I have no problem recognizing that.
This is an unpleasant position, because in the depths of his soul, Gejza knows very well he isn’t any better than other Romani people. He has managed to win the admiration of the gadje because he somehow knows how to get along with them, because he’s been lucky, because he never lost his job, because he doesn’t live in the ghetto….
I, too, am not interested in being used as proof of the idea that conflict is unnecessary because it’s possible to communicate with me, whether that be conflict between left and right, between Prague and the rest of the country, or between people who are secure and people in existential stress. I don’t want my open-mindedness to be misconstrued as confirmation that the "problem" is essentially that the left is sectarian, incapable of dialogue, closed, querulous or whatever else, because none of that is true. To be more precise, people can be found in any opinion group who kill dialogue. There aren’t more of them on the left than there are anywhere else.
For many long years after 1989, the left was pushed into a corner and became somehow a priori suspicious. I know what I’m talking about because I move in those circles. (Yes, another variation on "you don’t have to explain it to me").
I have run the opinion column at Deník Referendum for two and a half years. I have read all of the commentaries and columns that came out during that time, and I am well aware that the environment we have created represents a truly broad spectrum of opinions, from the Christian center to the radical left. In many respects, this environment is open to dialogue. I also cannot help but have noticed that when my tired brain missed something while selecting those pieces, the critics joyously swooped in, claiming that omission was further proof that DR (and the entire left along with it) is sectarian, totalitarian, antidemocratic, etc.
I do my best to tone down the conflict which (at work) I call the right-left one. Maybe that’s bad. Doing so increases my internal conflict even more. I discuss everything in a calm tone with everyone who is concerned about it, sometimes even with those who attack me for my left-wing views. I do my best to take on their aggression, here with a joke, there with serious argumentation, and when I feel desperate, with irony. In the depths of my soul, the thought recurs again and again whether it’s all worth it. Often, during a particularly valuable debate, when for example my opponent displays a touching concern for the state of social democracy and proves to me how terribly bad that state is, I want to answer: "OK, since it’s so terrible, I will vote communist" or something similarly inappropriate.
In the end, however, that is not what I do. I will continue to speak in a friendly manner with everyone interested in talking. I will be a consensus-seeker even though class hatred is not an abstract concept to me, but a feeling I have actually experienced. I will carefully consider which of my positions I can explain comprehensibly and I will keep silent on the rest.
Conflict can be cathartic only when we are capable of resolving it. It seems to me that we have not yet acquired that art – or maybe that’s just an excuse and I am deceiving myself because I don’t know any other way to be. There’s nothing left for me to do but hope I’m not making some slight contribution toward delaying some conflict that will subsequently explode.
This article was published in Deník Referendum.
