Modzelewski: Material enrichment impoverishs us spiritually

The fact of the last 2 100 years in our country was a kind of symmetry: the material mizzeria of most of our citizens was frequently accompanied by spiritual or intellectual wealth.

Conversely, with the increase in the wealth of certain individuals or even of full social groups, their spiritual or intellectual poorness either deepened or they were subject to degradation. It was besides possible to observe a akin correlation between poorness and attachment to Polishness: the escape from poorness active (to this day?) besides abandoning Polishness. 1 can even formulate a circumstantial relationship: Polishness is simply a circumstantial “god of poverty” and enriched elites frequently cease to be spiritually Polish. Let us ask you, for example, where did the children of sanitation dignitaries, then communist nomenclature and elites formed after 1989 of the 3rd Republic of Poland? We know: in the West. This was a pass for better citizenship and even for a fresh European pseudo-identity. But it's a different communicative for a separate essay.

But let us return to the first correlation between poorness and spiritual and intellectual wealth (and vice versa). Is it just our Polish condition developing since the Stanislaw era? After all, historians teach us that elsewhere (knownly, “in the West”) was the opposite. The enrichment of the powerful Italian families of the medieval and Renaissance cities has "exploded" their spending on art, cognition and beauty. Without their money, there would be no flourishing Renaissance and Baroque culture, and later Classicism. besides without the fabulously rich Russian factories of the late 19th century there would be no revolution in French painting (because they considered it their art not recognized by the avant-garde academy of the time).

And our financial elites are wasting money on fresh works of spirit or mind? As far as we know, they buy “majbachs” and even better yachts and apartments on warm seas. To comfort we can only add that a akin phenomenon concerns the property elites of Russia and Ukraine (Belarusini does not, due to the fact that there the people are kept in an egalitarian property regime).

What are the causes of this phenomenon? The answer to this question is not the simplest, but it may be universal. In the nineteenth century Congress, after the January Uprising, the national awareness of the peasants is emerging, increasing rapidly with the demographic boom and group self-consciousness (classic). The peasants saw the possible of spiritual and intellectual nobilitation through the education of sons (or even daughters), i.e. an alternate way of social promotion emerges without going “to the another side”, i.e. becoming landowners. The mediocre Mazovian walls of the frigid garden nobility increasing demographically in the late 19th and early 20th centuries besides play an underestimated function here.

From these places comes an crucial part of the 20th century authoritative and teaching intelligence, which is simply a long support of Polishness – inactive in the times of People's Poland. Social promotion combined with a very average material promotion: possibly it was poor, but there was a wealth of thought and spirit. The top contribution to this historical work was the education and accessibility of culture during 45 years of People's Poland, although present it is not only allowed to say that, but even to think (it was the time for “occupation” and “slavery”). The exception to that period was part of the dignitary elite (today called the “communist”) who wanted more to the West than the East. I don't think anyone said it quantitatively, but it was actually the margin of our population.

Some say that Poles raised by the People's Poland had a tiny national awareness and identity of Polishness, which I cannot agree with. The material promotion of a tiny part of our society in the last 30 years ("new wealth elites") has been unprecedented. The story of the erstwhile 100 years fell that “the education and work of men become rich.” In addition, the offer of imported material culture as well as the ease of emigration to (many) richer countries (the erstwhile centuries were not so comparatively inexpensive escape opportunities) limited or even eliminated the desire to search intellectual, aesthetic and spiritual. Since all that is good and attractive is already “in the West”, why dig around in “Polish rubbish” which is subdued as “the PeeReLu legacy.” After all, nothing first and interesting can be created here, after all, we must only “modernize” to be as “as in the West”.

This is 1 of the answers to the question asked at the outset. There is another possibility: or possibly a new, reborn from poorness in the second half of the 19th century, Polishness is simply a weak “intellectual capital”, which we simply gotta abandon with material promotion, and we have neither the strength nor the thought to keep our identity? possibly simply the enrichment (greater than getting out of poverty) did not prepare us for the function of being rich, which is not only limited to the consumption of abroad goods. There have been times in past that are filled with forgotten nations.

Witold Modzelewski