Rating: 5/5 Havels Essay aus dem Jahr 1978 bezog sich ursprünglich auf die damalige Situation in der Tschechoslowakei und die Charta 77, ist aber ein zeitlose Klassiker. Havel analysiert, wie posttotalitäre Gesellschaften funktionieren, wie Macht organisiert und stabilisiert wird und wieso es so unheimlich schwer ist, in einer solchen Gesellschaft oppositionell (wobei er auch erläutert, wieso er das Wort Opposition für eine solche Gesellschaft ablehnt) zu agieren. Zugleich zeigt er aber auch Lösungsansätze auf, die seinen Analyse nach, durchaus Veränderungen bewirken können. Er schafft es dabei, diesen theoretisch durchaus anspruchsvollen Text äußerst lesbar und verständlich zu halten. Darüber hinaus, und das ist fast die größere Leistung, ist das Buch auch fast 50 Jahre später hochaktuell. Ich hoffe zwar nicht, dass ich seine Analysen mal selbst umsetzen muss, dafür geeignet wären sie aber auf jeden Fall. Alles in allem ein großartiger Text, den man mal gelesen haben sollte, sofern man sich auch nur im Entferntesten für Gesellschaftstheorie interessiert. ## Highlights > [!quote] Quote (17 %) One of the essential aspects of this traditional or classical notion of dictatorship is the assumption that it is temporary, ephemeral, lacking historical roots. Its existence seems to be bound up with the lives of those who established it > [!quote] Quote (17 %) I am afraid that the term ‘dictatorship’, regardless of how intelligible it may otherwise be, tends to obscure rather than clarify the real nature of power in this system. > [!quote] Quote (17 %) the same cannot be said so facilely about our system. For even though our dictatorship has long since alienated itself completely from the social movements that gave birth to it, the authenticity of these movements > [!quote] Quote (17 %) In the second place, if a feature of classical dictatorships is their lack of historical roots > [!quote] Quote (17 %) And although it quite naturally exhibits a number of local and historical variations, the range of these variations is fundamentally circumscribed by a single, unifying framework throughout the power bloc. Not > [!quote] Quote (17 %) In the first place, our system is not limited in a local, geographical sense; rather it holds sway over a huge power bloc controlled by one of the two superpowers. > [!quote] Quote (17 %) We usually associate the term with the notion of a small group of people who take over the government of a given country by force; their power is wielded openly, using the direct instruments of power at their disposal, and they are easily distinguished socially from the majority over whom they rule. One > [!quote] Quote (18 %) The principle involved here is that the centre of power is identical with the centre of truth > [!quote] Quote (18 %) One legacy of that original ‘correct understanding’ is a third peculiarity that makes our system different from other modern dictatorships: it commands an incomparably more precise, logically structured, generally comprehensible and, in essence, extremely flexible ideology that, in its elaborateness and completeness, is almost a secularized religion. > [!quote] Quote (18 %) give it undeniable historicity > [!quote] Quote (19 %) In terms of the physical aspects of power, this has led to the creation of such intricate and well-developed mechanisms for the direct and indirect manipulation of the entire population that, as a physical power base, it represents something radically new. > [!quote] Quote (19 %) Our system, on the other hand, has been developing in the Soviet Union for over sixty years, and for approximately thirty years in eastern Europe; moreover, several of its long-established structural features are derived from Czarist absolutism. > [!quote] Quote (19 %) Fourth, the technique of exercising power in traditional dictatorships contains a necessary element of improvisation. The mechanisms for wielding power are for the most part not established firmly, and there is considerable room for accident and for the arbitrary and unregulated application of power. > [!quote] Quote (20 %) If I refer to it henceforth as a post-totalitarian system, I am fully aware that this is perhaps not the most precise term, but I am unable to think of a better one. I do not wish to imply by the prefix ‘post-’ that the system is no longer totalitarian; on the contrary, I mean that it is totalitarian in a way fundamentally different from classical dictatorships, different from totalitarianism as we usually understand it. > [!quote] Quote (20 %) Finally, if an atmosphere of revolutionary excitement, heroism, dedication, and boisterous violence on all sides characterizes classical dictatorships, then the last traces of such an atmosphere have vanished from the Soviet bloc. > [!quote] Quote (22 %) The primary excusatory function of ideology, therefore, is to provide people, both as victims and pillars of the post-totalitarian system, with the illusion that the system is in harmony with the human order and the order of the universe. > [!quote] Quote (22 %) The manager of a fruit and vegetable shop places in his window, among the onions and carrots, the slogan: ‘Workers of the World, Unite!’ Why does he do it? What is he trying to communicate to the world? Is he genuinely enthusiastic about the idea of unity among the workers of the world? Is his enthusiasm so great that he feels an irrepressible impulse to acquaint the public with his ideals? Has he really given more than a moment’s thought to how such a unification might occur and what it would mean? I think it can safely be assumed that the overwhelming majority of shopkeepers never think about the slogans they put in their windows, nor do they use them to express their real opinions. That poster was delivered to our greengrocer from the enterprise headquarters along with the onions and carrots. He put them all into the window simply because it has been done that way for years, because everyone does it, and because that is the way it has to be. If he were to refuse, there could be trouble. He could be reproached for not having the proper ‘decoration’ in his window; someone might even accuse him of disloyalty. He does it because these things must be done if one is to get along in life. It is one of the thousands of details that guarantee him a relatively tranquil life ‘in harmony with society’, as they say. Obviously the greengrocer is indifferent to the semantic content of the slogan on exhibit; he does not put the slogan in his window from any personal desire to acquaint the public with the ideal it expresses. This, of course, does not mean that his action has no motive or significance at all, or that the slogan communicates nothing to anyone. The slogan is really a sign, and as such it contains a subliminal but very definite message. Verbally, it might be expressed this way: ‘I, the greengrocer XY, live here and I know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace.’ This message, of course, has an addressee: it is directed above, to the greengrocer’s superior, and at the same time it is a shield that protects the greengrocer from potential informers. The slogan’s real meaning, therefore, is rooted firmly in the greengrocer’s existence. It reflects his vital interests. > [!quote] Quote (23 %) The post-totalitarian system touches people at every step, but it does so with its ideological gloves on. This is why life in the system is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies: government by bureaucracy is called popular government; the working class is enslaved in the name of the working class; the complete degradation of the individual is presented as his or her ultimate liberation; depriving people of information is called making it available; the use of power to manipulate is called the public control of power, and the arbitrary abuse of power is called observing the legal code; the repression of culture is called its development; the expansion of imperial influence is presented as support for the oppressed; the lack of free expression becomes the highest form of freedom; farcical elections become the highest form of democracy; banning independent thought becomes the most scientific of world views; military occupation becomes fraternal assistance. > [!quote] Quote (23 %) 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. > [!quote] Quote (24 %) Individuals need not believe all these mystifications, but they must behave as though they did, or they must at least tolerate them in silence, or get along well with those who work with them. For this reason, however, they must live within a lie. They need not accept the lie. It is enough for them to have accepted their life with it and in it. For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfil the system, make the system, are the system. > [!quote] Quote (25 %) In societies where there is public competition for power and therefore public control of that power, there also exists quite naturally public control of the way that power legitimates itself ideologically. Consequently, in such conditions there are always certain correctives that effectively prevent ideology from abandoning reality altogether. > [!quote] Quote (25 %) If ideology was originally a bridge between the system and the individual as an individual, then the moment he or she steps on to this bridge it becomes at the same time a bridge between the system and the individual as a component of the system. That is, if ideology originally facilitated (by acting outwardly) the constitution of power by serving as a psychological excuse, then from the moment that excuse is accepted, it constitutes power inwardly, becoming an active component of that power. It begins to function as the principal instrument of ritual communication within the system of power. > [!quote] Quote (27 %) This inevitably leads, of course, to a paradoxical result: rather than theory, or rather ideology, serving power, power begins to serve ideology. It is as though ideology had appropriated power from power, as though it had become dictator itself. It then appears that theory itself, ritual itself, ideology itself, makes decisions that affect people, and not the other way around. > [!quote] Quote (27 %) Increasingly, the virtuosity of the ritual becomes more important than the reality hidden behind it. The significance of phenomena no longer derives from the phenomena themselves, but from their locus as concepts in the ideological context. Reality does not shape theory, but rather the reverse. Thus power gradually draws closer to ideology than it does to reality; it draws its strength from theory and becomes entirely dependent on it. > [!quote] Quote (27 %) Yet, as we have seen, ideology becomes at the same time an increasingly important component of power, a pillar providing it with both excusatory legitimacy and an inner coherence. As this aspect grows in importance, and as it gradually loses touch with reality, it acquires a peculiar but very real strength. It becomes reality itself, albeit a reality altogether self-contained, one that on certain levels (chiefly inside the power structure) may have even greater weight than reality as such. > [!quote] Quote (27 %) Under totalitarianism, however, these correctives disappear, and thus there is nothing to prevent ideology from becoming more and more removed from reality, gradually turning into what it has already become in the post-totalitarian system: a world of appearances, a mere ritual, a formalized language deprived of semantic contact with reality and transformed into a system of ritual signs that replace reality with pseudo-reality. > [!quote] Quote (28 %) Western Sovietologists often exaggerate the role of individuals in the post-totalitarian system and overlook the fact that the ruling figures, despite the immense power they possess through the centralized structure of power, are often no more than blind executors of the system’s own internal laws – laws they themselves never can, and never do, reflect upon. > [!quote] Quote (30 %) The greengrocer had to put the slogan in his window, therefore, not in the hope that someone might read it or be persuaded by it, but to contribute, along with thousands of other slogans, to the panorama that everyone is very much aware of. This panorama, of course, has a subliminal meaning as well: it reminds people where they are living and what is expected of them. It tells them what everyone else is doing, and indicates to them what they must do as well, if they don’t want to be excluded, to fall into isolation, alienate themselves from society, break the rules of the game, and risk the loss of their peace and tranquillity and security. > [!quote] Quote (30 %) By pulling everyone into its power structure, the post-totalitarian system makes everyone instruments of a mutual totality, the auto-totality of society. > [!quote] Quote (30 %) a small example of the principle of social auto-totality at work. Part of the essence of the post-totalitarian system is that it draws everyone into its sphere of power, not so they may realize themselves as human beings, but so they may surrender their human identity in favour of the identity of the system, that is, so they may become agents of the system’s general automatism and servants of its self-determined goals > [!quote] Quote (30 %) Their mutual indifference to each other’s slogans is only an illusion: in reality, by exhibiting their slogans, each compels the other to accept the rules of the game and to confirm thereby the power that requires the slogans in the first place > [!quote] Quote (34 %) The greengrocer has not committed a simple, individual offence, isolated in its own uniqueness, but something incomparably more serious. By breaking the rules of the game, he has disrupted the game as such. He has exposed it as a mere game. He has shattered the world of appearances, the fundamental pillar of the system. He has upset the power structure by tearing apart what holds it together. He has demonstrated that living a lie is living a lie. He has broken through the exalted façade of the system and exposed the real, base foundations of power. He has said that the emperor is naked. And because the emperor is in fact naked, something extremely dangerous has happened: by his action, the greengrocer has addressed the world. He has enabled everyone to peer behind the curtain. He has shown everyone that it is possible to live within the truth. Living within the lie can constitute the system only if it is universal. > [!quote] Quote (35 %) If the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living the truth. This is why it must be suppressed more severely than anything else. > [!quote] Quote (37 %) It is a bacteriological weapon, so to speak, utilized when conditions are ripe by a single civilian to disarm an entire division > [!quote] Quote (37 %) Initially, this confrontation does not take place on the level of real, institutionalized, quantifiable power which relies on the various instruments of power, but on a different level altogether: the level of human consciousness and conscience, the existential level. > [!quote] Quote (37 %) It seems that the primary breeding ground for what might, in the widest possible sense of the word, be understood as an opposition in the post-totalitarian system is living within the truth. > [!quote] Quote (37 %) It is from this sphere that life lived openly in the truth grows; it is to this sphere that it speaks, and in it that it finds understanding. This is where the potential for communication exists. But this place is hidden and therefore, from the perspective of power, very dangerous. The complex ferment that takes place within it goes on in semi-darkness, and by the time it finally surfaces into the light of day as an assortment of shocking surprises to the system, it is usually too late to cover them up in the usual fashion. Thus they create a situation in which the regime is confounded, invariably causing panic and driving it to react in inappropriate ways. > [!quote] Quote (37 %) The singular, explosive, incalculable political power of living within the truth resides in the fact that living openly within the truth has an ally, invisible to be sure, but omnipresent: this hidden sphere. > [!quote] Quote (38 %) The more thoroughly the post-totalitarian system frustrates any rival alternative on the level of real power, as well as any form of politics independent of the laws of its own automatism, the more definitively the centre of gravity of any potential political threat shifts to the area of the existential and the pre-political: usually without any conscious effort, living within the truth becomes the one natural point of departure for all activities that work against the automatism of the system. > [!quote] Quote (38 %) And so the post-totalitarian system behaved in a characteristic way: it defended the integrity of the world of appearances in order to defend itself. > [!quote] Quote (38 %) Solzhenitsyn’s expulsion was something else: a desperate attempt to plug up the dreadful wellspring of truth, a truth which might cause incalculable transformations in social consciousness, which in turn might one day produce political debacles unpredictable in their consequences. > [!quote] Quote (38 %) action preventively, even the most modest attempts to live within the truth. > [!quote] Quote (38 %) This, too, is why the regime prosecutes, almost as a reflex > [!quote] Quote (38 %) The hidden movements it gives rise to there, however, can issue forth (when, where, under what circumstances, and to what extent are difficult to predict) in something visible: a real political act or event, a social movement, a sudden explosion of civil unrest, a sharp conflict inside an apparently monolithic power structure, or simply an irrepressible transformation in the social and intellectual climate. And since all genuine problems and matters of critical importance are hidden beneath a thick crust of lies, it is never quite clear when the proverbial last straw will fall, or what that straw will be. ### X > [!quote] Quote (Page 59) I think that the origins of Charter 77 illustrate very well what I have already suggested above: that in the post-totalitarian system, the real background to the movements that gradually assume political significance does not usually consist of overtly political events of confrontations between different forces or concepts that are openly political. These movements for the most part originate elsewhere, in the far broader area of the ‘pre-political’, where ‘living within a lie’ confronts ‘living within the truth’, that is, where the demands of the post-totalitarian system conflict with the real aims of life. ### XI > [!quote] Quote (Page 64) If some of the most important political impulses in Soviet bloc countries in recent years have come initially– > [!quote] Quote (Page 64) comes from so many people in ‘non-political’ professions, this is not because these people are more clever than those who see themselves primarily as politicians. It is because those who are not politicians are also not so bound by traditional political thinking and political habits and therefore, paradoxically, they are more aware of genuine political reality and more sensitive to what can and should be done under the circumstances. ### XII > [!quote] Quote (Page 68) What exactly is an opposition in the post-totalitarian system? In democratic societies with a traditional parliamentary system of government, political opposition is understood as a political force on the level of actual power > [!quote] Quote (Page 68) which is not a part of the government. > [!quote] Quote (Page 68) In addition to this form of opposition, there exists the phenomenon of the ‘extra-parliamentary opposition’, which again consists of forces organized more or less on the level of actual power, but which operate outside the rules created by the system, and which employ different means than are usual within that framework. In classical dictatorships, the term opposition is understood to mean the political forces which have also come out with an alternative political programme. > [!quote] Quote (Page 68) in any case they cannot compete for power within the limits of some agreed-upon regulations. Or the term opposition may be applied to forces preparing for a violent confrontation with the ruling power, or who feel themselves to be in this state of confrontation already, such as various guerrilla groups or liberation movements. An opposition in the post-totalitarian system does not exist in any of these senses. > [!quote] Quote (Page 69) 1. Occasionally the term ‘opposition’ is applied, mainly by western journalists, to persons or groups inside the power structure who find themselves in a state of hidden conflict with the highest authorities. > [!quote] Quote (Page 69) 2. Opposition here can also be understood as everything that does or can have an indirect political effect in the sense already mentioned, that is, everything the post-totalitarian system feels threatened by, which in fact means everything it is threatened by. > [!quote] Quote (Page 69) the opposition is every attempt to live within the truth, > [!quote] Quote (Page 69) 3. More frequently, however, the opposition is usually understood > [!quote] Quote (Page 69) as groups of people who make public their nonconformist stances and critical opinions, who make no secret of their independent thinking and who, to a greater or lesser degree, consider themselves a political force. ### XIII > [!quote] Quote (Page 73) the term ‘dissident’ > [!quote] Quote (Page 73) almost never occurring > [!quote] Quote (Page 73) in democratic societies. Who are these ‘dissidents’? > [!quote] Quote (Page 73) citizens of the Soviet bloc who have decided to live within the truth and who, in addition, meet the following criteria: 1. They express their nonconformist positions and critical opinions publicly and systematically, > [!quote] Quote (Page 73) they have, > [!quote] Quote (Page 73) managed to win a certain esteem, both from the public and from their government, and thus they actually enjoy a very limited and very strange degree of indirect, actual power in their own milieu as well. This either protects them from the worst forms of persecution, or at least it ensures that if they are persecuted, it will mean certain political complications for their governments. 3. The horizon of their critical attention and their commitment reaches beyond the narrow context of their immediate surroundings or special interests > [!quote] Quote (Page 74) 4. They are people who lean towards intellectual pursuits, > [!quote] Quote (Page 74) 5. Regardless of their actual vocations, these people are talked about in the West more frequently in terms of their activities as committed citizens, or in terms of the critical, political aspects of their work, than in terms of the ‘real’ work they do in their own fields. ### XIV > [!quote] Quote (Page 81) section: you do not become a ‘dissident’ just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society. ### XV > [!quote] Quote (Page 82) not > [!quote] Quote (Page 82) every attempt to live within the truth automatically belongs in this category. > [!quote] Quote (Page 82) living within the truth covers a vast territory whose outer limits are vague and difficult to map, a territory full of modest expressions of human volition, the vast majority of which will remain anonymous and whose political impact will probably never be felt or described any more concretely than simply as a part of a social climate or mood. Most of these expressions remain elementary revolts against manipulation: you simply straighten your backbone and live in greater dignity as an individual. > [!quote] Quote (Page 83) The point where living within the truth ceases to be a mere negation of living with a lie and becomes articulate in a particular way, is the point at which something is born that might be called ‘the independent spiritual, social and political life of society’. This independent life is not separated from the rest of life (‘ dependent life’) by some sharply defined line. Both types frequently coexist in the same people. Nevertheless, its most important focus is marked by a relatively high degree of inner emancipation. ### XVI > [!quote] Quote (Page 87) that all the ‘dissident movements’ are explicitly defensive movements: they exist to defend human beings and the genuine aims of life against the aims of the system. > [!quote] Quote (Page 87) In terms of traditional politics, this programme of defence is understandable, even though it may appear minimal, provisional and ultimately negative. It offers no new conception, model or ideology, and therefore it is not ‘politics’· > [!quote] Quote (Page 87) The post-totalitarian system, after all, is > [!quote] Quote (Page 87) a complex, profound and long-term violation of society, or rather the self-violation of society. ### XVII > [!quote] Quote (Page 90) ‘dissident movements’ > [!quote] Quote (Page 90) Their work, therefore, is based on the principle of legality: they operate publicly and openly, insisting not only that their activity is in line with the law, but that achieving respect for the law is one of their main aims. This principle of legality, which provides both the point of departure and the framework for their activities, is common to all ‘dissident’ groups in the Soviet bloc, even though individual groups have never worked out any formal agreement on that point. > [!quote] Quote (Page 90) On the primary level, this stress on legality is a natural expression of specific conditions that exist in the post-totalitarian system, and the consequence of an elementary understanding of that specificity. If there are in essence only two ways to struggle for a free society–that is, through legal means and through (armed or unarmed) revolt–then it should be obvious at once how inappropriate the latter alternative is in the post-totalitarian system. > [!quote] Quote (Page 91) Conditions in the post-totalitarian system > [!quote] Quote (Page 91) are, of course, precisely the opposite. They are static and stable, and social crises, for the most part, exist only latently > [!quote] Quote (Page 92) All of this, however, is not the main reason why the ‘dissident movements’ support the principle of legality. That reason lies deeper, in the innermost structure of the ‘dissident’ attitude. This attitude is and must be fundamentally hostile towards the notion of violent change as such to the system > [!quote] Quote (Page 92) simply because it places its faith in violence. > [!quote] Quote (Page 92) ‘Dissident movements’, as I have tried to indicate, share exactly the opposite view. They understand systemic change as something superficial, something secondary, something that in itself can guarantee nothing. Thus an attitude that turns away from abstract political visions of the future towards concrete human beings and ways of defending them effectively in the here and now is quite naturally accompanied by an intensified antipathy to all forms of violence carried out in the name of ‘a better future’, and by a profound belief that a future secured by violence might actually be worse than what exists now; in other words, the future would be fatally stigmatized by the very means used to secure it. > [!quote] Quote (Page 93) The ‘dissident movements’ do not shy away from the idea of violent political overthrow because the idea seems too radical, but on the contrary, because it does not seem radical enough. > [!quote] Quote (Page 94) In other words, is the legalistic approach at all compatible with the principle of ‘living within the truth’? This question can only be answered by first looking at the wider implications of how the legal code functions in the post-totalitarian system. > [!quote] Quote (Page 94) The post-totalitarian system, on the other hand, is utterly obsessed with the need to bind everything in a single order: life in such a state is thoroughly permeated by a dense network of regulations, proclamations, directives, norms, orders and rules. > [!quote] Quote (Page 94) reason.) A large proportion of those norms functions as direct instruments of the complex manipulation of life that is intrinsic to the post-totalitarian system. > [!quote] Quote (Page 95) At the same time, however, it performs the same service in another indirect way, one that brings it remarkably closer > [!quote] Quote (Page 95) to ideology and in some cases making it a direct component of that ideology. 1. Like ideology, the legal code functions as an excuse. It wraps the base exercise of power in the noble apparel of the letter of the law; it creates the pleasing illusion that justice is done, society protected and the exercise of power objectively regulated. All this is done to conceal the real essence of post-totalitarian legal practice: the total manipulation of society. > [!quote] Quote (Page 97) As an aspect of the world of appearances, however, the legal code deceives not only the conscience of prosecutors, it deceives the public, it deceives foreign observers, and it even deceives history itself. 2. Like ideology, the legal code is an essential instrument of ritual communication outside the power structure. It is the legal code that gives the exercise of power a form, a framework, a set of rules. > [!quote] Quote (Page 98) Without the legal code functioning as a ritually cohesive force, the post-totalitarian system could not exist. > [!quote] Quote (Page 99) appeals. Demanding that the laws be upheld is thus an act of living within the truth that threatens the whole mendacious structure at its point of maximum mendacity. Over and over again, such appeals make the purely ritualistic nature of the law clear to society and to those who inhabit its power structures. > [!quote] Quote (Page 100) This section would be incomplete without stressing certain internal limitations to the policy of ‘taking them at their own word’. The point is this: even in the most ideal of cases, the law is only one of several imperfect and more or less external ways of defending what is better in life against what is worse. By itself, the law can never create anything better. Its purpose is to render a service and its meaning does not lie in the law itself. ### XVIII > [!quote] Quote (Page 102) another stage of this approach, perhaps the most mature stage so far, > [!quote] Quote (Page 102) the development of parallel structures. When those who have decided to live within the truth have been denied any direct influence on the existing social structures, not to mention the opportunity to participate in them, and when these people begin to create what I have called the independent life of society, this independent life begins, of itself, to become structured in a certain way. > [!quote] Quote (Page 102) What are these structures? > [!quote] Quote (Page 102) the concept of a ‘second culture’. > [!quote] Quote (Page 102) This ‘second culture’, quite naturally, has created elementary organizational forms: samizdat editions of books and magazines, private performances and concerts, seminars, exhibitions and so on. > [!quote] Quote (Page 103) such structures in other spheres as well: from a parallel information network to parallel forms of education (private universities), parallel trade unions, parallel foreign contacts, to a kind of hypothesis on a parallel economy. > [!quote] Quote (Page 104) Historical experience teaches us that any genuinely meaningful point of departure in an individual’s life usually has an element of universality about it. In other words, it is not something partial, accessible only to a restricted community, and not transferable to any other. On the contrary, it must be potentially accessible to everyone; it must foreshadow a general solution and, thus, it is not just the expression of an introverted, self-contained responsibility that individuals have to and for themselves alone, but responsibility to and for the world. Thus it would be quite wrong to understand the parallel structures and the parallel polis as a retreat into a ghetto and as an act of isolation, addressing itself only to the welfare of those who had decided on such a course, and who are indifferent to the rest. > [!quote] Quote (Page 105) situation. Such a concept would, from the start, alienate the notion of living within the truth from its proper point of departure, which is concern for others, transforming it ultimately into just another more sophisticated version of ‘living within a lie’. > [!quote] Quote (Page 106) Christianity is an example of an opposite way out: it is a point of departure for me here and now–but only because anyone, any where, at any time, may avail themselves of it. In other words, the parallel polis points beyond itself and only makes sense as an act of deepening one’s responsibility to and for the whole, as a way of discovering the most appropriate locus for this responsibility, not as an escape from it. ### XIX > [!quote] Quote (Page 108) The primary purpose of the outward direction of these movements is always, as we have seen, to have an impact on society, not to affect the power structure, at least not directly and immediately. Independent initiatives address the hidden sphere; they demonstrate that living within the truth is a human and social alternative and they struggle to expand the space available for that life; they help–even though it is, of course, indirect help–to raise the confidence of citizens; they shatter the world of ‘appearances’ and unmask the real nature of power. ### XXI > [!quote] Quote (Page 123) And now I may properly be asked the question: What is to be done, then? > [!quote] Quote (Page 123) Above all, any existential revolution should provide hope of a moral reconstitution of society, which means a radical renewal of the relationship of human beings to what I have called the ‘human order’, which no political order can replace. A new experience of being, a renewed rootedness in the universe, a newly grasped sense of ‘higher responsibility’, a new-found inner relationship to other people and to the human community–these factors clearly indicate the direction in which we must go. And the political consequences? Most probably they could be reflected in the constitution of structures that will derive from this ‘new spirit’, from human factors rather than from a particular formalization of political relationships and guarantees. In other words, the issue is the rehabilitation of values like trust, openness, responsibility, solidarity, love. > [!quote] Quote (Page 124) There can and must be structures that are open, dynamic and small; beyond a certain point, human ties like personal trust and personal responsibility cannot work. There must be structures that in principle place no limits on the genesis of different structures. Any accumulation of power whatsoever (one of the characteristics of automatism) should be profoundly alien to it. They would be structures not in the sense of organizations or institutions, but like a community. > [!quote] Quote (Page 124) Rather than a strategic agglomeration of formalized organizations, it is better to have organizations springing up ad hoc, infused with enthusiasm for a particular purpose and disappearing when that purpose has been achieved. The leaders’ authority ought to derive from their personalities and be personally tested in their particular surroundings, and not from their position in any nomenklatura. > [!quote] Quote (Page 124) established. These structures should naturally arise from below as a consequence of authentic social ‘self-organization’; they should derive vital energy from·a living dialogue with the genuine needs from which they arise, and when these needs are gone, the structures should also disappear. The principles of their internal organization should be very diverse, with a minimum of external regulation. The decisive criterion of this ‘self-constitution’ should be the structure’s actual significance, and not just a mere abstract norm. > [!quote] Quote (Page 125) As far as the economic life of society goes, I believe in the principle of self-management, > [!quote] Quote (Page 125) The principles of control and discipline ought to be abandoned in favour of self-control and self-discipline.