Vaclav Havel: His Revolt is an Attempt to Live Within the Truth
He rejects the ritual and breaks the rules of the game. He discovers once more his suppressed identity and dignity. He gives his freedom a concrete significance. His revolt is an attempt to live within the truth.” (Vaclav Havel)
Vaclav Havel (1936-2011), the former president of the Czech Republic, who moved to another dimension on December 18th, had analyzed that:
There are good reasons for suggesting that the modern age has ended. Many things indicate that we are going through a transitional period, when it seems that something is on the way out and something else is painfully being born.
It is as if something were crumbling, decaying and exhausting itself, while something else, still indistinct, arises from the rubble.
The distinguishing features of transitional periods are a mixing and blending of cultures and a plurality of intellectual and spiritual worlds. These are periods when all consistent value systems collapse, when cultures distant in time and space are discovered or rediscovered. New meaning is gradually born from the encounter, or the intersection, of many different elements… Politicians are rightly worried by the problems of finding the key to ensure the survival of a civilization that is global and multicultural: how respected mechanisms of peaceful coexistence can be set up and on what principles they are to be established.
Vaclav Havel went on to suggest the principles: “All my observations and all my experience have, with remarkable consistency, convinced me that, if today’s planetary civilization has any hope of survival, that hope lies chiefly in what we understand as the human spirit.”
It is only during rare periods such as ours of the transition of historical eras, that we observe the merging of philosophy and politics. Such a period requires action based on the intellectual resources of philosophical and spiritual thought.
Havel, who had to live many years under a repressive government, was well aware of the need for nonviolent, spiritually-motivated revolt. As he wrote in an important essay concerning the role of opposition in a repressive society:
Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past; it falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to persecute no one. It pretends to prevent nothing.
In such a situation, a revolt is first of all an effort to live within the truth.
When I speak of living within the truth, I naturally do not have in mind only products of conceptual thought, such as a protest or a letter written by a group of intellectuals. It can be any means by which a person or group revolts against manipulation: anything from a letter by intellectuals to a workers’ strike, from a rock concert to a student demonstration, from refusing to vote in a farcical election to making an open speech at some official congress, or even a hunger strike.
A revolt based on the human spirit must also lead to a positive framework for a planetary society. Today, we are slowly and with difficulty building such a framework for peaceful and creative co-existence. There are still too many doors shut, too many ideas rejected because they do not fit into a culturally-formed mindset. We still see too many violations of the human rights of those who have too little power, influence, or money to have their views taken seriously.
I had first heard Vaclav Havel speak in Prague in October 1990 when he addressed the founding meeting of the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly. The Assembly had brought together some 800 people from peace, human rights, ecology, feminist, federalist movements, many of whom had been active in efforts to bridge the East-West Europe divide of the Cold War. This was the first chance for such a large group of activists to meet after the radical changes in Eastern Europe. Havel was both a key actor and the symbol of these changes. Yet his remarks were not turned toward the past but toward the challenges that faced us. He echoed what the Polish writer and activist Adam Michnik had said: “The greatest threat to democracy today is no longer communism. The threat grows instead from a combination of chauvinism, xenophobia, populism and authoritarianism, all of them connected with the sense of frustration typical of great social upheavals.”
Seven months later, war broke out in what was to become ex-Yugoslavia and the new civic structures that Havel hoped would be forces for peace and creativity were not able to break the hold of aggressive, narrow nationalism. In fact, since 1990, after a first fire of hope, civil society throughout Central and Eastern Europe has grown progressively weaker. There are few of the post-Havel generation with as broad a vision or a willingness to act.
I met with Havel when he came to the United Nations in Geneva to speak at the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He was always open to the representatives of NGOs. His role as president had not basically changed his nature — a creative intellectual open to the ideas of others (1). In his talk, he stressed that there are many treaties and declarations that use the term international, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the only one that uses the term universal — a sign that the writers of the Declaration wanted to include all countries and all individuals. The principal aim of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is to create a framework for a world society which needs universal codes based on mutual consent in order to function. It is its universal character which makes it a base for relations among peoples across national and cultural frontiers and a basis for the healing of nations.
I had been active in unsuccessful efforts at mediation in the Yugoslav conflict and was worried at growing national-ethnic tensions in Europe. I think that he shared my concerns but mobilizing trans-frontier civil society was difficult, and civil society groups were not up to the challenges that history presented Yet, he stressed that even in dark periods which he had experienced more than I, we must also see the growth of new institutions preparing for the future — institutions which are open, which break down social divisions, which are sensitive to all voices. It is our task to be aware of the growth of these new forms, to participate in them, to add our energy to theirs, and thus to speed the manifestation of the new era.
René Wadlow, a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, is representative to the United Nations, Geneva, of the Association of World Citizens. He lives in Gravieres, France.
Photo: By Ondřej Sláma [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
FOOTNOTES:
(1) For a good overview of his pre-president thinking, see Vaclav Havel’s Open Letters (1965-1990) (London: Faber and Faber, 1991). This collection includes his best-known theoretical statement “The Power of the Powerless.”
A bonus for ending the war?
I am regularly reminded that humor is a relative concept: my idea of a funny twist on the political ills of the moment often offends the next person. Working at the Fellowship of Reconciliation, I have learned that although most progressives agree that we need to have a sense of humor when grappling with the pains of society, we often can’t agree on the right tone, words, or images to do so.
Political cartoonists, therefore I would argue, have one of the hardest jobs in media. How can you not only be relevant and timely, but capture the right take on these terrible issues, often in just a single pane of artwork? Jeff Danziger, an artist whose work is syndicated through The New York Times, manages to walk that line as well as anyone. His latest entry, “Iraq War Ends,” powerfully reflects the confluence of war and economic madness that bedevils our nation.
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FOR to receive $24 million!!
We are elated to send supporters of the Fellowship of Reconciliation some amazing news! FOR has been informed that we are to receive several gifts totaling $24 million!
Will you help us build on this unexpected good fortune and make your tax-deductible donation now?
The news came to our staff this week in a series of unexpected email messages. To our great surprise, FOR’s work for peace, nonviolence, and human rights is apparently supported by people whose family names we would not usually associate with those values and commitments.
FOR’s mysterious benefactor?We are being offered lump sum multimillion dollar gifts from people who have self-identified as:
- a stepson of Idi Amin
- a sister-in-law of Imelda Marcos
- a niece of “Papa Doc” Duvalier
- a cousin of Muammar Gaddafi
- and a former hunting partner of Dick Cheney
Wow!
Wait, you have also received some of these messages? (Should we split the money 50-50?) Oh, you think these are spam?!
OK, OK, yes, this is a hoax. (Although we are still hoping for a gift from Cheney’s hunting partner!)
Throughout the past century — since 1915, to be precise — the Fellowship of Reconciliation has survived and thrived thanks to the gifts and pledges of everyday, ordinary people like you.
While a multimillion dollar gift would certainly be enticing, we at FOR are exceedingly proud that our support has consistently come in checks of $10, $25, and $100 — making our work for human rights, interfaith understanding, and active nonviolence possible.
Thank you for your support, which we need more than ever today.
Donate now: Help us demilitarize life and land in 2012 with a financial gift or a monthly pledge.
