Renewal of mental life

Abstract

The democracy requires citizens with specific qualities.
It is important that they should be masters of themselves, jealous for their freedom and autonomy and keen in cooperating with others.
It is not democratic to spread hatred and fanaticism. This remains a very important principle of democratic society.
There is no need for lengthy comments, but I would like to cite an advice of Tocqueville for the European politicians, which he brought from the U.S. experience: “It is said that the sovereigns of our time require making great things with people. I would like them to dream a little more how to make great people; that they appreciate much more the work and the worker and remember continuously that a nation can not remain strong for a long time, when everyone is individually weak and has not found the social forms that can make a vigorous nation, but forming uncourageous and faded citizens”.
Albanian thinkers of the years ‘30 also sought this from the political elites of the time: the formation of the citizen.
They understood that democracy needed citizens.
But who is the type of man that is far from being citizen, whom they saw as an obstacle for social development?
He is the type of man who has developed in himself “the instincts of resentment and then those of admiration, and especially the instinct of superiority and enforcement on others. He is wobbly on every side. He does never care to learn what he should know and what he would nicely learn. Nevertheless, not knowing what he wants, what he does, what he says, he votes, shouts, requests, orders as if he knows what he does. Anywhere where he clings, it is the lowest point, self-conceited and half-witted. So, from the noisy lowland of his half-ness or of a quarter of his wisdom and of his knowledge, all lies and fraud, one day he will suddenly fall easily, without feeling, in blinding devotion and in the darkness fanaticism”.
All of this derives from the mental and moral poverty, from the lack of the sense of self-responsibility and the lack of a collective consciousness and which results in the “ criminal sleep of pride and cunning serpent of self-beguilement, having neither metaphysical concerns nor even patriotic ones.
“The Albanian, would Mitat Frashëri write, has a strongly developed personal ambition; this ambition is brother and sister of vanity”.
What is the worst of vanity for young people?
“Vanity provides human envy, which makes him not bear another one better, smarter, more affluent, more honorable than himself. Vanity is the vice, the much spread disease among Albanian boys; it is the seed from which will come the deficiencies and subsequent offenses. Vanity contracts the heart, and quenches the spirit, makes the man tough and wild, and departs him away from society and from the association”.
Unfortunately, until now, we have not taken from the politician the criterion of assessment – the effectiveness.
Man, who has not become a citizen yet, forgets this criterion and is confused in an absurd type of reasoning.
Failures are justified with the predecessor and the reasoning continues with the terms of the devil and angel.
We would have moved forward, but Satan hinders us. It is forgotten the basic concept of democratic governance: that of responsibility, which is personal responsibility and not a collective one, as it is being dealt so far. With the concept of collective responsibility, insecurity, injustice and corruption will increase and democracy, as a governance system, will be compromised.
The thinkers of the years ‘30 demanded more responsibility from politicians’ class, especially in conditions of poverty that prevailed at that time in the Albanian society.
Without a common work of the political thought and activity it can not be created a truly national social conscience and if people do not have such awareness, then, there will be no force to stop abuses.
The education of conscience remains a priority task for that time and for now.