Don’t be arsey. Get behind ESK.

Arsey: (slang) unpleasant, especially in a sarcastic, grumpy or haughty manner. (source wiktionary).  Also, moody.

ESK: Europejska Stolica Kultury, i.e. Wrocław 2016 – a European City of Culture.

When I heard that Wrocław was competing with Katowice for getting the title of ESK, I hoped that Katowice would win.  I was irritated by the marketing of Wrocław (including by many of its inhabitants) as being a (multi) cultural city.  To add to this, when that video came out a few months ago by some unknown group of people portraying Wrocław as being the “European City of Racism”, I liked it, and shared it on the Czarny kapturek page.  As someone who’s been a bit involved with anti-fascism in Wrocław and scathing of the state’s response to NOP and ONR, my lack of desire that Wrocław gets Persil-washed (to use a specific historical term).

I then thought, I’m being arsey.

On being arsey – a brief political analysis

Little snide comments with regards to the Wrocław state, such as some I’ve done on this blog and on my Facebook page, have their function.  They provide the person doing them with a sense of superiority, a sense of being more reflected, more intelligent than others.  Jokes can be made, nobody finds them funny.   The telling of the jokes is not a demonstration of wit, rather of ones one impotence in a neo-liberal society.  Such jokes are simply demonstrations of impotence in the face of a society where the neo-liberal values dominate, the state is strong and where trust is massively lacking as a social function; the discrepency between that which the arsey person wants and what is actually in existence produces aggression against convenient figures in a manner that elevates ones own abilities/opinions.  The non-fulfulliment to ourselves of our values produces an anger directed towards ourselves, partly resulting from fantasies of being all-powerful, an anger which then gets projected outwards towards those who attempt to do something.

This arseyness is not limited to Wrocław or Poland.  I see and experience this in different countries, in a variety of languages, among different left-wing and anarchist groups, for the aforementioned reasons.  I have seen arsey comments by many different people from different people in Wrocław about ESK.

A dissatisfaction with ones achievements is not limitted to the left, however.  In the book “The happiness industry” by William Davies, it is pointed out that alone in the US, 500bn dollars per year are lost via unhappiness via lost productivity (including sick leave caused by bad mental health), lost tax receipts and health-care costs.  He goes on to purport that capitalism will not fall due to alternatives, rather through people losing faith in it and its claims; the huge rise in medication taken for stimulation or against depression is testimony to this.  In this case, I claim that this, tied to the growth in precarity, that lies behind the other forms of being arsey: anti-migrant prejudice and the putting down of people who try to do achieve things in life; a strong desire to find mistakes in the work of others, especially competitors.

We therefore need to be creative in finding answers to how people can find fulfillment and sustenance in life.  There is a great amount of creativity in Wrocław in the different fields of culture, be that in contemporary art, music, theatre or literature, fields that can lend themselves towards elitism.  I note however that talks I go to about social themes (say, about racism or refugees) are predominately attended by university-educated people, people who share opinions and feel nurtured by such events, something necessary in the strengthening of intellectualism.

The thing is, giving the massive problems that Poland faces at the moment (e.g. different forms of prejudice, the PiS attack on demoncracy, the growth in Neo-Nazi activity) and in the rest of Europe, it’s a mistake to stay in our own groups, making in-jokes, using our own jargon, making arsey jokes about things that are not perfect or don’t correspond to how we want them to be.  For all the strengths of Wrocław’s intellectual scene, cliques and an inflexible dogmatism are present.  Hence the arsey comments about ESK.

Listen, I’ve slagged off Dutkiewicz as much as anyone, and am no fan of the Wrocław state.  It is however prudent to remember that those who attend ESK events will be attended by a lot of people, not the elitist evenings attended by less than twenty people.  No, the creation of a better society requires the understanding of masses.  A real alternative to neo-liberalism, authoritarianism and prejudices against minorities requires of us the ability to talk a different language, to move outside our cosy cliques.

As I wrote here, the Wrocław as ESK year can be used positively to learn from what attracts people, to participate in events that strengthen the collective; to promote culture that is for everyone, not just small groups.  ESK will be more successful than other initiatives because the state is wholly behind it, but not just that, it’ll acheive things that others don’t, and we need to learn from that.  Certainly, part of ESK will be high art.  Nothing wrong in that.  It’s just that I believe that we should use ESK as a chance to ask questions about the connection between culture and society, and challenge ourselves to open ourselves to our neighbours and others we don’t usually associate with.  I believe that the events of ESK will lead to a greater feeling of togetherness among Vratislavians; we need to exploit this, steering discussions, not just standing on the sidelines in our ideological purity.

Let’s make 2016 as being the start of something a lot better and bigger for those who work for a better society.  Let’s start being open and pragmatic.

Starting on Sunday.  I’ll see you there.