When the seats remain empty

XHABIR DERALLA

When serious processes and events take place, what comes to mind to few people is that society too has limits of endurance. The pressure and blows of the tireless propaganda machinery, the ruthless and unscrupulous struggle for power, for money, for influence to the last square centimetre in all areas – are exhausting society. At some point, society will stop, will die out.

In such a stagnant society, people abate, they withdraw and become distrustful, selfish and afraid – to survive. When people’s values, ambitions, dreams and plans are under the blow of the propaganda of the centers of power for too long, people start to think about surviving, instead of living. Then, society dies, then life halts, and only survival remains.

When in society you have political parties that have occupied every and to the tiniest space for action, then every hope for progress ceases. Business, the church or mosque, the media, culture and art, education and sports, all cling to the small elites in the large party structures. Then the criticism stops and the dictatorship begins, soft, hard, violent, rare, medium or burnt.

To avoid that rigid term, and because the point of reference for this has been given by infamous individuals in history, which is difficult to achieve in today’s world, this state is called by other expressions that often are euphemisms: illiberal democracy, autocracy or some other cracy. All the same, it is a time and state when society dies out. When there no longer is life and everything is pointless.

People are inclined to spectacles and circuses. They live in the moment, they need some kind of sensation, to push through the ever more complex everyday life. That is why, often without thinking, people “buy” the tricks of the propaganda that performs all kinds of manoeuvres to draw and keep their attention.

Yes, people like that circus, they easily and self-willingly surrender to it, and upon the invitation of the clowns in the arena, they joyfully jump around and join the extras on stage. Some even realize they are surrounded by big and small, but certainly greedy political animals, but remain on the stage, fixated by the light and noise of the circus arena.

Hence, the small and big political animals make a circus out of the people who, without thinking, have bought tickets for the circus show. Blinded by the light, deafened by the noise, they can no longer recognize their own and the interest of society (public interest). Absent-minded, they have nothing left but to continue jumping around and to frantically applaud the clowns on the stage.

After the show, the cleaners will come, to collect the values, hopes, dreams and plans that the people from the audience forgot in the middle of the euphoria with which they joined the clowns and political predators. In the meanwhile, those who will recognize the game, will leave the circus tent, to withdraw in their shelters (distrust, selfishness and fear), in order to survive.

Only the empty seats will remain in the midst of the silence and darkness, to play society.

Translation: N. Cvetkovska