POST-COMMUNIST NATIONS STRUGGLE WITH POVERTY BECAUSE OF "TOO MUCH" FREEDOM

*What do bees and Japanese have in common that post-communist countries (most probably) will never have? And no, it’s not rhymes or AI. *

Freedom is the most vital and wonderful feeling in the whole world. Sometimes it’s necessary to be deprived of it, to be aware of its true value. Freedom is our basic human need and without it, we are unable to express our full potential in helping our society thrive.

I remember driving through cities, in May 2020, going from Tirana to my hometown, during the time of total quarantine. The roads were empty. No one was around. The cities looked lifeless and I had the roads all to myself. I had the luck to get granted work permission and since I stayed 3 months alone locked down in a city apartment, I needed an escape and finally breathe some fresh air in the heart of nature. I had my father stuck in our cottage house in a village, 5 hours away from civilization, so I could finally meet him after 3 months. I drove immersed in full enjoyment mode, glowing from happiness as I was about to take a beautiful enthusiastic solo trip.

It was just the first moment when I stepped inside my car that I realized how thrilled and emotional I was. For a second there, I nearly felt I had forgotten how to drive. Three months of lockdown and not stepping foot outside, have surely been exhausting for everyone.

Even though the road was long, I didn’t feel even the slightest fatigue along the way. Even the policemen down the road didn’t stop me to ask where I was going (there was a checkpoint at every city entrance), they were just looking strangely at my face, cause I couldn’t stop smiling.

I was happy to see the road, to see people, to see trees, nature, birds, everything. I was free! Nothing tastes better than freedom.

Kilometers went by and I noticed fields and gardens filled with new crops, flowers, and trees. I noticed how clean the roads were. Now, at this time of dullness and ghost towns, the roads weren’t just in lack of people but also… garbage.

I grabbed my phone and googled “Why do people litter?”. I checked the shortest answer “People litter because they want to”.

This answer wasn’t at all enlightening.

If society would function based on “desire”, it probably wouldn’t have lasted even a month. It must be something else, I mumbled. What allows us to act, to fulfill a desire? The answer is simple… freedom.

I googled again “What is freedom?”.

According to the simplest Google dictionary, “Freedom is the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants.”

Is it correct? Is it righteous for one to behave and act based only on their neediness or want? I mean… the fields and gardens down the road were filled with trees glooming with cherries. No one was watching or picking them. I could’ve stopped the car, grabbed a bag, and taken as many as I wanted. Why? Because Google consented to me with the right of freedom, which in its explanation I had the right to do as I pleased. I knew that I was drooling for some cherries at that moment, so why not have some?

Because of reason, that’s why.

Furiously I googled again “Kant’s perception of freedom”. Here is the real explanation.

“Freedom is the ability to govern one's actions on the basis of reason, and NOT desire”.

I grew up in a family with shared values, that taught me how to conduct myself in society, how to respect other’s properties, how to say thank you and please, how to control my reactions and how to treat others, how to be respectful, helpful and responsible for my acts, my behavior and the environment I live in…. BUT… according to Google, I still had the opportunity to push my limits, step on my own values and principles and do something that I've never even imagined doing before. I could have stolen those cherries, could have picked up those flowers, or throw the bag of potato chips out of my car window. I had the most mind-washing power in my hands that no one around me had, I had freedom.

The good news is a lot of people are reasonable. The bad news is that even more aren't. The thing that creates this whole mashup, is the wrong perception of liberty.

As time went by, I saw a beautiful spot and I stopped the car. The moment I was stepping out of the vehicle, I crushed a wrecked can of soda, as it splashed that little liquid left in it. The can was whitewashed from the sun, as were all the other fellow squished cans thrown all around the place. That spot was beautiful. You could see an enormous forest, that covered fields and hills, and yet, that spot was filled with trash.

The same questions popped again into me. “Why THE HELL, do people litter?”

All I could think about was laziness, ignorance, freedom and not caring about the environment. Not caring about the environment, translates to “not caring for the common good” a.k.a “others”.

Cringed recalling an episode not too long ago, when I was getting back from a training session, with 3 of my ex-colleagues in the car. The one that was driving, (who also held a very important position in the company), finished eating a snack and threw the plastic container out of the car window. The drive continued smoothly as if nothing happened. Shocked, I looked at the faces of my other colleagues, but nothing seemed to have surprised them.

“What did you just do?”, – I screamed at the driver. – “Are you crazy? Stop the car and go pick it up!”

They all looked at me with contempt, while he annoyingly asked me, “Why should I do that?”.

Let’s try to analyze him a bit. He was lazy, that’s for sure. He was also ignorant, obviously. Had freedom (more than he deserved), and mostly, he didn’t care about others.

As part of a nation that suffered for 47 years under dictatorship, trying to break down the “why factor" of people acting very different from what they’ve “been taught” a generation of 50 long years,… is ridiculous to me. How can people of a post-communist country, develop such a high level of apathy? Wasn’t communism all about “togetherness and community”? It’s impossible for a generation of people to divert so much from a previous deep-rooted mindset? So, who’s to blame?

According to Karl Max's perception, “Every person within the society works for a common good, and class struggle is theoretically gone. The communist system would succeed capitalism as humanity's mode of production through the workers' revolution. Communism is not an inevitability, but an economic necessity.”

The latest sentence sounds like somebody telling us “the lemon is sweet”, cause Sir, we’ve tasted it and it is sour AF. But the first sentence is what stuck with me, “Every person works for a common good”. Yes, that is what amazes me. If for 50 years, communism promoted the “common good”, how come people now are socially irresponsible?

The answer is Immediate Total Freedom. But let’s break it down below, into three key points.

1. Lack of information

The communist propaganda highlights the “common good”, but that doesn’t require the freedom of choice. People have to take care of the commonwealth because they do not have any other option.

People do not work for the common good ideology, because they believe in it, but because they are forced to do so, without being educated or informed about the reasons and benefits of a specific task. There is a lack of personalization. The message is shared in a generic style of communication and tends to have its audience uninformed. The fewer people who know, the better for the government. Thus, social gatherings and teams created during communism are only circles of people, with no shared values or real beliefs between their members.

Even modern marketing strategies don’t work in post-communist nations, albeit decades have passed. Because it still aims to force the audience to do something (cause the company says so), without informing people, and being in lacks of personalization and content. The “call to action” type of strategy.

2. The snail factor

Communism has no tolerance, no social responsibility, creates short-lasting circle groups with no shared logic, and is based on subservience. You have to be a bootlicker toward the party, your friends, your neighbors, coworkers, superiors, and sometimes even toward your own family. Communism inspires distrust and doubt about everything.

These traits, rooted under people’s skin for 50 years, tend to melt and be part of their mindset, character, and personality. That’s why the majority of people from post-communist nations feel more suspicious, are traditional, and do not trust novelty.

This is the reason why modern marketing maneuvers don’t work and innovative enterprises fail in their first years in the market.

3. Stress-free

During a dictatorship, people live under controlled conditions, follow a stable predetermined line, and do what they are told to do. They do not have the freedom to think, speak or do what they please. When living under this struggle, people tend to surrender and agree to sacrifice their basic human rights, in exchange for a peaceful, directed life.

Freedom represents choice, and choice consists of a high level of stress. Stress on the other hand is perceived individually, thus making it the root source of indifferentism. It’s understandable that when you’re troubled by a lot of important personal matters like food, shelter, wealth, jobs, education, etc., don’t bother to be preoccupied with the common good right?!

You may have heard your parents say that back in the days of communism, they were happy even though their basic human needs weren’t fulfilled properly. Why, because of the lack of stress that came with the lack of choice, lack of responsibility, and lack of freedom.

Now, imagine these types of people, having all this baggage of mistreatment and restrictions, being exposed in front of total immediate freedom. A person who has never had the benefit of a choice, the right to speak, think, and do as they wish; is suspicious, uneducated, misinformed, oppressed, and frightened. Think, how would an entire nation in those conditions, would react or feel when getting total access to full freedom? Chaos, utopia, anarchy. This is the first stage. After that follows the so-called stabilization as the nation embraces capitalism.

But here we meet our second problem.

Post-oppression (communism) met with individualism and freedom (Capitalism) creates indifferentism. The view toward the fallen system and everything about it will be perceived as bad. As a result, people will behave and act opposite of what they perceive as a symbol or a representation of communism.

Since the “common good” was the center of communism’s propaganda – people will see social responsibility as a communist leftover. So, that’s why they litter, why they don’t collaborate with their neighbors, colleagues, and acquaintances, to fill up holes in the road, fix the parking lot signs, obey their supervisors, and respect the rules; that's why they stop the car in the middle of the road, cut forests and trees uncontrollably, throw their trash out of the window, and not care about the environment - because as long as that’s not their property, they no longer care, because they have the freedom to do as they please and they do not reason.

They do not follow the logic of Kant, but Google's logic.

Do you know what bees and Japanese have in common? That’s right. Social responsibility.

That is the fundamental core of their lifestyle and mindset. That’s why their community thrives socially and economically because they care about each other, their environment, and their common welfare.

Japanese people are considered the most socially responsible people on the planet. An example for all other nations. But what about the bees? The bees, without question, are the smartest creatures on earth. Way more intelligent than humans. (My fascination with them, made me write an entire novel.).

What amazes me more are the rules that they follow. They follow a purpose and work together in full tolerance and agreement with each other. Each and every one of them has a duty and task to fulfill every day, so they willingly chose to complete that.

Interesting trivia, when the new Queen is ready to take her throne, the colony leaves the house willingly, to find another shelter. Every member of the colony has a purpose and a task. Even the Queen has the task to produce eggs and create a working force for the communities’ survival. They have rules, but the Queen doesn’t imply or force them on her population, they willingly obey because of a sense of duty, reason, and social responsibility. Sure, they have the freedom to leave if they want to, but they chose to stay, because of the comfortable and amazing culture they’ve created in their communities.

That’s the reason why post-communist people will never understand. Because they lack the value of social responsibility and have the power of freedom in their hands. The problem is not just about littering, it's much much bigger than that. It escalates to the economy, country's wealth, healthcare, education, culture, work environment, way of doing business, integration, and more. It is all connected. when we stop caring about our community, we stop the evolution and development of society. There can't be economic growth at that stage, but only a downgrade. Thus, it all happened just because we couldn't manage freedom.

We lost the chance to solve the problem, beforehand, cause we didn’t know. But now we do and need to be more aware of our footprint in the environment, society, and economy. These are all tied up with one another and if we want to fix the mistakes of our previous generations, we need to use the freedom we have in our hands. Not just for traveling and writing comments on social media, but for making an impact on our culture and the future of our pre-capitalist nation, by helping it pass this long transitional phase, once and for all.