We live in a highly particularized environment saturated with very compartmentalized views on malfunctions in social dynamics. When we say polarization we mean internal frictions down one single vector, within a particular group or a scene which is sharing common disregard for those who are not taking sides on that particular issue of concern. But these opposing parts of a particular cohort – they don’t see themselves as humans sharing a certain disregard for other humans and therefore carrying an even bigger burden of ethical responsibility to learn the lesser known aspects. The majority of those members of “field-specific poles” see themselves as particularly self-righteous outliers of the poor ignorant society’s distribution. Each of the cohort members believes that they are bearing the burden of responsibility to wake up the Serb world to the danger of the point professed by the opposing pole’s subset of the same cohort. It’s a kind of hate-based clustering of particular advocates for particular social causes.

Belgrade, Serbia – Shuttered – Valentine Salja

● People from the media vector-sector lament that society is too ignorant to see that the marginalized issue of the quality of journalistic life and work should immediately be brought to the epicenter of public attention [1]

● People from the civil engineering vector-sector lament that society is too ignorant to see the marginalized issue of changing the urban and infrastructural face of traffic in the capital and between cities [2]

● People in the weed-decriminalization/hyper-criminalization vector-sector lament that society is blind to see the marginalized issue of fighting vague anti-drug ideals [4a] (which excludes free sales of psychiatric prescription drugs on flea markets and elsewhere [3]) versus the elitist neo-liberal model of health-profiteering. [4b]

● People in academic circles are particularly marginalized and even chronically so. Just as their American or British non-identity-politics-oriented peers, they are in fear of losing their jobs. [5]

● The government wants more newborns and women want their maternal leave to be paid beyond a merely symbolic amount, etc.

Belgrade, Serbia – Peeping – Radio Kafka

We’re kind of a nation of outliers with huge gaps in normalcy because each pole within each cohort regards the opposing pole as totally crazy, and their own self as being totally victimized. A bunch of people gone crazy for being terrorized by a bunch of crazy people, multiplied by the number of particular industries within which they would very much prefer to operate freely. Alas, they linger where they are, oppressed by a bunch of wackos and deprived of the basic human right to function normally.

And where’s normal? That’s what nobody knows because the feedback loops on evaluating public interventions and comparing different models of opportunities and capacities to invest – they have been blown away.

Belgrade, Serbia – Recognize – Marija Zaric

“In public discourse, the term evaluation of public policy is hardly ever heard of. Take the policy of subsidies for foreign investors, for example:

There’s no way we could have an unbiased conversation on the feasibility of this government program because we have no input on the quantity of the subsidies granted: which companies within which industries were supported. Nor could we in any way learn how their business logic played out for the national treasury, GDP, job creation and for the economic power of the population. The same goes for the project of building a national sports arena, as with similar undertakings that are being announced. We’re still not presented with the projected benefits from building that stadium – no knowledge of the return on investment time frame, no intel on social benefits beyond financial ones.

Exactly this absolute absence of information that would serve as the basis for an estimate of the economic and social dimensions of a project has led me to believe that its whole purpose boils down exclusively to the political aspect: to satisfy and respond to the promotion and particular needs of certain stakeholders.” – Mihailo Djukić, economics mathematician [6]

Belgrade, Serbia – Revolving – Marija Zaric

But then, if politics were a bunch of self-appointed stakeholders in love with their mugshots in print and .jpg/.mpeg format in promo material, how on earth do we call politics as in the history of political science a kind of politics? How do we make up for the misappropriated word? If social welfare and economy don’t fall into the category of politics, what would be the name of the basket they belong to?

Then, who are the stakeholders and how do they want to view themselves?

● They believe that an independent coup of humanitarian intervention cheaper than $12k can root out a couple-of-decades-long accumulation of one social issue or another [7];

● The cash for infrastructure investment is, from their perspective, demanded as it is from a sugar daddy – be it an international investment fund offering an expensive loan or a national treasury offering a slice of the taxpayer’s collective givings – whatever. As long as nobody is bothered by the fact that the single price they are so connoisseur-ly talking about varies from $1 to $100 million within a couple of sentences of a single report [8]. And that is not the first miscalculation.

Serbia, Novi Sad – Reversed – Marijana Vasic

Naturally, such a social field inevitably produces new, creative and unorthodox job opening lines. For example, the “get mistrialed and then charge for the compensation” source of income [9].

What goes uninspected is the capacity of a transdisciplinary approach to reframe the issue underlying all industries and social strata: the shared problem of incapacity to observe a human as a human, and as a collection of experiences and insights.

“There’s an active notion of neutrality that people don’t understand. Transcendent neutrality isn’t an attitude of “I won’t take sides,” it’s compassion. Where you do see more than just what separates people or sides.” – Susan Sontag [10]

Beograd, Serbia – Flash – Ali Arif Soydas

What if this cultivated Serbs immunity to a functional tax and judicial system, unlocked by one neat observational study following evaluation parameters not as proposed by the Big Philanthropy standard grant application form, but within the “gratitude – compassion – acceptance – meaning – forgiveness” framework[11]?

Where would I be starting my forgiveness metric?

For one, there are those police squads who neatly perform regular raids in the refugee camps – the foreign war stricken emergent population’s temporary board and lodging which is (unfortunately, but I forgive) closed for those poverty-threatened and stricken domestic people who’d like to take refuge from domestic violence or from growing social suffering. [12]

Bezdan, Serbia – Birds on a wire – Nikola Johnny Mirkovic

● I would like to forgive all of those cops for, while raiding to find weapons and drugs, never simultaneously collecting the health survey feedback [13] and

● I’d forgive them for those refugee camps not having a cannabis plantation along with paper & textile production lines as well as bud-packing and a quality assurance lab in the Uruguayan format [14].

● Then I’d also like to forgive both those cops and their intercity peers for not coordinating buds to be delivered to the network of local social service centers and for not having organized all the hemp paper and textiles to be placed at the disposal of production facilities for super-durable textbooks and school uniforms for kids (age K12 and higher) to use, look after, maybe upgrade in design, and then inherit and exchange among each other. So I forgive them also for a typical Serbian parent having to assign 3 full monthly wages per year for their schoolkid in officially free compulsory education.

● Then, those same cops along with the ones who are servicing centers for social work, I forgive them for not opening the opportunity for the neediest to pay for the assistance they need [15] in buds that are home-grown, or (along with the health survey questionnaire) provided by the responsible social worker, or in cash as always.

Petrovaradin, Serbia – Droned – Paddy Walker

In the next step,

● I will forgive, to start with, my imaginary influential army of well accommodated social workers (who in the meantime have evolved into education/professional orientation/geo-social mobility agents for all-inclusive refugee camp temporary residents) for not mobilizing imaginary professionalized caregivers to report on non-hospitalized patients’ state of health, along with their own, and the health of the kid (aged 19 to 91) who helped with daily errands and got paid in bud which they sold to the first red-eyed tourist or postmodern deconstructivist and stayed safe with the pocket money for a day or two. Secondly, but seventhly, I forgive those imaginarily professionalized caregivers for not harvesting those same forms just filled out by all other neighbors and relatives who are also interested in building a vital system for delivering health.

Belgrade, Serbia – Contemplate – Marija Zaric

Before that,

● I forgive the Public Health Institute Batut [16], so the cops are not carrying the full weight of my robust forgiveness. As always, Batut is drowning in paperwork relevant to World Bank parameters, as global standards prescribe, while combating standard pandemic route vectors (with zero support from the arts & culture sector, oddly enough). I forgive them for having no resources whatsoever to invest in piloting the pot-powered inquiry on the social, economic, intellectual and emotional, thus spiritual state of public health, nor do they have any space to consider sky farming on rooftops of healthcare facilities – all that in the country of the sweetest smelling rich variety of herbs for medicinal use and veggie cuisine.

● I forgive the arts & culture sector for keeping their audiences in such low but easily irritable spirits. But first and foremost, I’m going to go finding forgiveness for all those self-appointed political stakeholders who are being too racist to learn from Indian or African experience [17].

Vuka [Vuka kao reka]

Footnotes

1 – Highly charged with emotion, name calling and brutal retribution https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/srbija-mediji-linc/29575412.html

2 – The president got sick and tired of mudslides ruining the road. Therefore, he decided to move the hill so the mud would have nowhere to slide from http://rs.n1info.com/a417142/Vesti/Strucnjaci-o-rusenju-brda-kod-Grdelicke-klisure.html – The president got sick and tired of low natality in tall residential buildings. Therefore, he has decided to have short residential buildings built https://www.danas.rs/drustvo/strucnjaci-nisu-culi-za-vucicev-recept-za-natalitet/

3 – “We used to exchange books with friends and neighbors, now we exchange happy pills” [05:45] https://youtu.be/Eg72kk4iRGc

4 a – The last debate between anti-drugers and pot decriminalization advocates was abruptly terminated because “the highly ideological ones” got physical and were spilling bodily fluids into opponents’ faces https://www.telegraf.rs/vesti/1297372-pljunuo-studentkinju-u-lice-incident-na-tribini-o-legalizaciji-marihuane-na-fpn-u

4 b – Some Czech-based business wants to monopolize cannabis use. Besides boasting that it has the longest (though futile) history of cannabis advocacy, they promote the superiority of self-medicating over professional healthcare opinions – all to be charged both as out-of-pocket personal spending and at the expense of the state healthcare fund http://irka.org.rs/

5 – The spectrum covers everything from Jonathan Haidt’s “Coddling of the American Mind” (The Atlantic) to Anna Fazackerley’s “UK Universities struggle to deal with toxic trans rights” (Guardian) and then translates into elitist and national chauvinistic vulnerability and reactivity.

0 – Blowing in the Wind https://youtu.be/DFvkhzkS4bw

6 – Mihajlo Djukić, full article http://bif.rs/2018/10/mihajlo-dukic-institut-ekonomskih-nauka-imamo-kompetentne-ljude-ali-ih-niko-ne-konsultuje/

7 – A typical call for applications for grants from domestic phylantropic outbursts; very similar to the Big Philanthropy formatted logic https://blog.vivifyideas.com/vivify-ideas-konkurs-dru%C5%A1tvenog-fonda-a90bec343949 Maybe some banks are too big to fail, but some companies are definitely too big to pay taxes – both abroad and in Serbia https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/26/dont-want-billionaires-philanthropy-pay-their-taxes

8 – Minister complains about road construction going awry, so she decided that the new investment has to cover the same from the start, and then, at some point, somebody will figure out what went wrong in the first place https://www.danas.rs/ekonomija/mihajlovic-moramo-ponovo-da-uradimo-vec-izgradjen-auto-put-koji-je-placen-100-miliona-dolara/

9 – The compensation for a mistrial can amount to €59 million: https://gerila.rs/cifra-ide-i-do-59-miliona-evra/

10 – Susan Sontag for Rolling Stone: https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/06/24/susan-sontag-middle-center-jonathan-cott/

11 Hamblin, James. “Attention: A Muscle to Strengthen.” The Atlantic. Jan. 22, 2015: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/three-neural-predispositions/384642/

12 Farmer, Paul. “On Suffering and Structural Violence: A View from Below.” Race / Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts. January 2009: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/241896604_On_Suffering_and_Structural_Violence_A_View_from_Below

13 – Something like http://healthpolicy.ucla.edu/chis/Pages/default.aspx

14 Le, Bryan. “Uruguay President Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize” The Fix. February, 10, 2014: https://www.thefix.com/content/uruguay-president-jose-mujica-nominated-nobel-peace-prize

15 Slaughter, Anne-Marie. “The Work That Makes Work Possible” The Atlantic. March 23, 2016: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/03/unpaid-caregivers/474894/

16 Institute of Public Health Serbia: http://www.batut.org.rs/index.php?lang=2

17 Jeevan, Sharath. “From ‘Lean Start-Up’ to ‘Lean Collaboration’” Stanford Social Innovation Review. Sept. 29, 2017: https://ssir.org/articles/entry/from_lean_start_up_to_lean_collaboration – https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisi_Silva

Credits

Snapshot 1: Belgrade, Seria – Walled – Marija Zaric (Unsplash)

Snapshot 2: Belgrade, Serbia – Shuttered – Valentine Salja (Unsplash)

Snapshot 3: Belgrade, Serbia – Peeping – Radio Kafka (Shutterstock)

Snapshot 4: Belgrade, Serbia – Recognize – Marija Zaric (Unsplash)

Snapshot 5: Belgrade, Serbia – Revolving – Marija Zaric (Unsplash)

Snapshot 6: Serbia, Novi Sad – Reversed – Marijana Vasic (Unsplash)

Snapshot 7: Beograd, Serbia – Flash – Ali Arif Soydas (Unsplash)

Snapshot 8: Bezdan, Serbia – Birds on a wire – Nikola Johnny Mirkovic (Unsplash)

Snapshot 9: Petrovaradin, Serbia – Droned – Paddy Walker (Unsplash)

Snapshot 10: Belgrade, Serbia – Contemplate – Marija Zaric (Unsplash)

Locations

Home: www.perypatetik.net

Social: www.facebook.com/Perypatetik

Cinemblem: Perypatetik youtube channel

The Syncretion of Polarization and Extremes

Alencar, Joana. Lack of Social Trust – Brazil. January 2019.

Baccino, Alejandra. Polarization within Ourselves – South America. January 2019.

Cordido, Veronica. Hanging by Extremes – Venezuela. January 2019.

Hernandez, Jonay Quintero. Extremism Is Now the New Hype? – Spain. February 2019

Montano, Osvaldo. Progress in the Face of Polarization – Bolivia. February 2019.

Romano, Mavi. Censorship and Cultural Survival in a World without Gods – Spain. January 2019.

Sariñana, Alejandra Gonzalez. Student Movements – Mexico. March 2019.

Sepi, Andreea. A World of Victims and Perpetrators? – Germany and Romania. February 2019.

Sevunts, Nane. The Era To Close – Armenia. March 2019.

Sitorus, Rina. Polarization in Politics: All a Cebong or Kampret – Indonesia. March 2018.

Wallis, Toni. Walls and Resettlement – South Africa and Angola. February 2019.

Forthcoming

CW 13 – Peru – Monica Valenzuela
CW 14 – Bosnia and Herzegovina – Aleksandar Skobic
CW 15 – Argentina – Julieta Spirito
CW 16 – Italy – Mary Ranaldo
CW 17 – Lebanon – Ghadir Younes
CW 18 – Cuba – Marilin Guerrero Casas
CW 19 – Ukraine – Evgeny Bondarenko
CW 20 – Uruguay – Andrea da Silva Escandell
CW 21 – Spain – Jazz Williams
CW 22 – Armenia – Mania Israyelyan
CW 23 – Poland – Pawel Awdejuk
CW 24 – Balkans – Aleksandar Protic
CW 25 – Italy – Daniela Cannarella
CW 26 – Serbia – Jelena Sekulic
CW 27 – Tajikistan – Nigina Kanunova
CW 28 – Portugal – Nuno Rosalino
CW 29 – Uruguay – Lillian Julber
CW 30 – Argentina – Javier Gomez
Source: The Codex of Uncertainty Transposed