We And I

This is a story I heard a few years ago from a gastarbeiter. A big automobile concern in Germany introduced additional bonuses for all its employees. Namely, all, even the smallest promotion of the production process entailed a solid award. Teams of experts on the ergonomics of work, engineers of human and automobile souls claimed that they had reached the ``ceiling,'' all the more so as robotics had been introduced and were functioning. The uncompromising battle on the automobile market and the enormous financial investments made the bosses of this automobile industry offer an individual chance to every one of the thousands of employees. In six months' time the results were overwhelming, there were innovators among the workers just as there were among the top engineers. Soon a study about them was made. The percentage of Yugoslavs among the innovators (then we were present only among the bluecollar workers) was much greater in comparison to the innovators of other nationalities. The experts underscored that ``our people'' came up with irrational solutions, as compared to the possible, expected ones which had escaped the experts. We took a shot at the robots and discovered a number of empty codes, even though the computers had programmed them for years to near perfection. An acquaintance, a Serb who told me this story, worked in this factory and he too ``made a small contribution.'' He is a modest, hardworking man and this certainly isn't a case of exaggerating one's own capabilities or a cheap promotion of one's nation. When I asked him if he had an explanation for this phenomenon, he said that he had come to the conclusion that it is so, because we have, compared to others, and inverted picture of the world and that this was the source of all our originality and madness.

I don't know if you're aware of the fact that the production of toothpaste has long been in the doldrums. New formulas have been invented, of exceptional quality, which even helped those who don't brush their teeth. The ad says that it's enough just to look at the toothpaste. But the number of toothpaste users did not increase, nor did the quantities which were consumed by the regular users. Then a compatriot of ours threw himself into this merciless battle for increasing toothpaste consumption, and sales went up by 20%. He didn't have a secret formula or new propaganda ideas. He just noticed that using toothpaste had become a routine, and that even a sleepy man will always squeeze out the same amount of toothpaste along the brush surface of a standard toothbrush. And that's where he came in. He suggested that the hole at the top of the tube be enlarged. The hole was made bigger and the result is familiar to all. The pressure exerted on the tube which has been acquired over many years cannot be changed overnight. But now the quantity of paste squeezed out is much larger, and three men could easily brush their teeth with the toothpaste on the brush.

These examples might strike you as bizarre, bearing in mind that hundreds of thousands of our citizens are respected workers and experts abroad. That's the whole point. Without going into the reasons why they went abroad, over there they are ME, while back here, they are WE. An expression of individuality is the condition of survival and advancement over there, regardless of the simplicity or complexity of the job, while we here view individuality as a physical deformity. I once made a propaganda film for an enormous factory. During the ten days I spent in the factory, I met practically everybody, all the best workers, the biggest phony, comrades, etc. And then in the end, when they were looking for the man who had the key to the box with the brandy, I met the inventor who, they told me, had saved millions of dollars for the factory. They said this in passing, while we were toasting the end of the filming. The innovator smiled, and was quiet, feeling embarrassed that he was different from the rest, who had expressed their trust in him by letting him look after the brandy box key. I read the other day that a wellknown innovator from Banja Luka, a multiple recipient of ``Eureka,'' the world's highest award in the field of innovation, asked the municipal authorities' permission to adapt his cellar in order that he might have better conditions for working on his innovations. He was turned down immediately. Had he by any chance discovered a quick and efficient method of removing mosques from the face of the earth (Serbian) perhaps the Banja Luka authorities would have approved his request. But who needs a serious creator, especially at a time when we are resolving the problem of our collective, i.e. nation. I am going on and on about innovators like a drunken sailor, only because they are highly visible. I know that we can't all be innovators, but from the theoretical point of view we can all be individuals, and we should be ME and only after that WE. But how can we be ME when all here are too embarrassed by something like that. For decades we have built up our collective cults consciously stifling our individuality in the name of a general interest. That is why mediocrity and vacuity are the AIDS of this environment. The absence of all competition, the deleting of all criteria have banished us from the world, and that is why we have leaders who are just big fish in small ponds. Their aim is not to create a modern civic society, just a state of subjects. The national state which is currently our bloody obsession, is just one step on the road to achieving this goal.

Do you remember the rebellion staged by secondary school leavers? There was a lot of theorizing for days, over the number of exams, if they would be oral or written, what did the children want and who was backing them? One day I was watching a TV program called ``Round Table'' devoted to the subject. A girl, with a turned up nose and the boy with glasses, who never missed a detail, was sitting there surrounded by professors, government officials and parentsthe staunch defenders of a petrified collective. Instead of demanding special benefits in school and life, bearing in mind all that the community has done to them in the past fivesix years during which they were growing up, instead of asking a hundred questions, they were brilliantly articulate and talked only of exemptions, treading carefully, so that they wouldn't step onto one of the collective taboos. A new generation has finally appeared, one without illusions that it will fix up this society. They will not repeat their parents' mistake, those made by the generation of '68. They aren't interested in why this environment renounced its intelligence and future in 1971. They will not rush into folds, either national, selfmanaging, religious, mythical, leftist or any one of those in which their parents remain immured. These kids will leave. They hunger for competition, knowledge, selfassertion, life, and all that does not grow or flourish in this collective. I have no explanation for the ``Jewish syndrome'' but I do have one for this. Have you noticed that the Jews have achieved all their success in exile. Great success as scientists, artists, the multipliers of money, while at home, in Israel, not exactly nothing, but... We have slowly started to share this fate. Many educated and brave people have left. And now the young will leave. Perhaps we really should be dispersed all over the world in order to preserve our own spirit and nation. We must be ethnically transplanted in individual packages as new cuttings to be grafted on the whole world. Because instead of helping make this a better world we have opted for a collective autistic whistling on the side lines in our self generated darkness. I am not ashamed of our irrationality, but because we manipulate it. An inverted view of the world is not fashionable, but the result of an enormous experience which we, unfortunately, have rejected, by agreeing to a primitive interpretation of our own history and spirit. I've been dreaming the same dream for days. I see a mass of whales who have intentionally stranded themselves on the beach. They are dying slowly before the eyes of the world. Science still hasn't come up with an explanation why these noble animals commit collective suicide. Perhaps our example will help them learn the truth. And, until then... buy some toothpasteit prevents decay and bad breath.