Re: Say Bye Bye to European Nationalities

>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]  (Lstrad33)

>>ÂPas de deuxÂ

>>> What, your electroconvulsive therapy not working?  The sooner you have a 
>>> lobotomy the better.
>>> 
>>> GK

muzikuntas:
>>Dirzu jam duoti.

What you socialist shit heads need to understand is that your socialism means
the end of individual identity. Frankly, I would prefer identity over the
chance to play doormat for socialist buddies..

Here, read something and become smarter:
................
"The Identity of Latvian National Culture
(Fragments from the essay "The Borders of Borderless Winds")
Imants Ziedonis, Latvian poet

Namable or Unnamable Identity?

          There is a problem whether national cultural identity can be named
if, with good reason, it 

has been said that national identity mostly is irrational, metaphysical and
elusive.
          I am a poet and am well aware that poems neither yield to translation
into prose, nor can 

they be grasped in any review in their entirety. At the same time, what happens
between two lovers on 

a honeymoon can be expressed in no love poem. Nor the feelings of a believer at
the moment when God 

reveals Himself. That is the presence of the Big One, the sate of
irreducibility, the riddle of 

existence â you name it. And yet love has its own schools and teachings, and
they can and have been 

expressed.

Between East and West.

          Latvians live along the line of confrontation between East and West,
occupying a space 

diffuse in the political, demographic and philosophical sense; a space where
the assessment and 

evaluation of our nation by the participants tends to be quite diplomatically
evasive. One could 

choose to trust this evasiveness or not to do so.
          Our historic experience has taught us caution, because the Latvian
nation has been placed in 

a critical demographic situation. The deportations of hundreds of thousands of
innocent people to 

Siberia during the years of Soviet assimilation, the escape of the wealthiest
Latvians to the West, 

the destruction of all the prosperous farms through forcible collectivization,
the eradication of the 

best young people through conscription in the occupation armies: all this
virtually destroyed the 

Latvian middle class. Of course, it was all done in a purposeful way and,
paradoxically, "a systematic 

annihilation of the identity of the Latvian state and nation was begun at a
time when the rest of the 

world celebrated the victory over Nazism; thus the Latvian land and people were
victimized by both the 

Nazi and the Communist regimes." That is how former president of Latvia,
Mr.Guntis Ulmanis, has put 

it. He also reminds us that no other country lost almost 40% of its population
during World War II; no 

other European country has seven cities where, as a result of post-war
russification, the indigenous 

population has become a minority. New demographic forces swiftly and freely
moved into this rarefied 

space. For the most part, these are Russophile forces that hope to transform
Latvia into a Russian 

satellite. All this should be kept in mind when we talk about Latvian cultural
identity. Culture, 

understood as a quality of national self-confidence, can achieve safety only in
a politically 

guaranteed space.
          But Latvian culture today is not a culture of complaint, despite the
fact that the world is 

undergoing a process of market erosion of national values. This erosion is
caused by objective 

factors: the increasingly ephemeral understanding of life; a heightened sense
of entropy; amplified 

pluralism, boundless relativism and anarchy, as well as sectarianism in manâs
search for God. In 

Latvia, all these factors have been intensified by the philosophical
unpreparedness (after long years 

of Soviet disorientation), attending our encounter with the intense and free
flow of new information.

Idiosyncrasy. The closed and open circles of culture

          A nationâs potential for survival is determined by its material,
social and spiritual 

welfare. When the first two prevail, our capacity for civility is manifest. As
we emphasize the latter 

two, it is culture we are talking about. Within the fields of civilization and
culture a nation 

possesses values of a more genuine, inherent, idiosyncratic and original
nature, as well as those of a 

more integrated, internationalized, reflexive character. Provisionally we can
speak of at least two 

layers of circles of values: those that are unique and idiosyncratic, and those
that have arisen as a 

result of international dialogue. One could call these "values of monologue"
and "values of dialogue", 

respectively.
          Contrary to common misconceptions, the more idiosyncratic values of a
culture are not always 

found in its most archaic features. One sign of Latvian idiosyncrasy is the
white stork. People 

respect this bird, they offer help in its search for suitable nesting places,
and the possibility that 

someone might hunt or kill a stork is inconceivable. One cannot imagine the
Latvian landscape without 

stork nests in trees, on top of posts, water towers and even the chimneys of
abandoned houses. The 

fact that this bird chooses to live in Latvia (with the greatest density of
stork nests in Europe) can 

only be explained by the biological and scenic variety of Latvian landscape and
by the healthy state 

of its ecology. At a time when the environment of European countries becomes
ever more homogenous and 

barren this wise bird has found in Latvia the most advantageous conditions for
its well being. It does 

not mean, however, that the white stork has been a permanent fixture of Latvian
landscape. Among 

Latvian folksongs, noted bearers of an almost encyclopedic record of our
peopleâs life ways, there are 

few where the name of the stork is mentioned alongside that of other birds.
This means that the 

density of stork nests, as a sign of Latvian identity, is a phenomenon of
recent history.
          Another idiosyncratic Latvian symbol is our national here, Lacplesis
(Lacplesis). 

Originating in the archetypal world of fairy-tales, he was actualized and
honored as our âmain heroâ 

only in the last century when the writer Andrejs Pumpurs, responding to
geopolitical necessity, sought 

to advance the cause of Latvian liberty by publishing his epic poem of the same
name. Lacplesis, son 

of a man and a female bear, is a figure from the ancient totemic world. He is
joined by Kurbads, the 

Mareâs Son, who may be an ancient remnant of the globally recognizable
centaur myth. In the mythical 

sense, he is better rooted than Lacplesis, seemingly more acceptable today than
Lacplesis, who as one 

who kills living creatures, is perhaps an ecologically dubious individual. Such
aggression is rare in 

Latvian folklore, where man appears tolerant, pantheistic, a harmonious and
caring part of nature. Why 

did the nation suddenly need a hero with the grasp and strength of a marine
soldier? After all, 

folksongs touch upon themes of war and warriors only with reluctance; the
harshest characterization of 

warriors is reserved for a few quatrains:

Winds blow over the hill
Churning water in the lake;
My brother rides off to war
Locking his heart up in stone.

          Latvia lacks those heroic epics, replete with bloody battles and
cruelties, that are common 

among many other nations. There is no glorification of revenge. So where arose
this need for a larger 

than life athlete, a warrior who can hold his own and even claim victory in the
cruelest of battles? 

My answer is simple. Lacplesis was born from our sense of being geopolitically
endangered. Andrejs 

Pumpurs, as a young poet and officer in the Russian-Turkish war, witnessed the
scope and cruelty of 

the battles. He produced his epic poem "in world likeness", complete with a
hero to symbolize the 

national defense force, an embodiment of national self-confidence and strength.
In the 19th century, 

ideas of national romanticism swept across Central and Eastern Europe. The
stronger and wiser among 

the activists of enlightenment, as counterparts to the great world heroes, put
forth their own. In 

Latvia, suffocating for centuries under colonial yoke, national self-confidence
had matured to the 

point that it could mobilize forces necessary for its national survival. And as
both East and West 

posed twin threats of assimilation to this newly self-confident nation,
wunderkind Lacplesis sprung 

forth. From that point on this figure grew in tandem with the fight for
national survival.

Cultural Identity means Living

          Identity means "sameness". Comparison needs two sides. And the two
sides are represented by 

our present, our present being and our understanding of that being, our
convention, our agreement. Our 

cultural identity is found only in that which is, lives, wants to live and
flourish. It exists and 

will continue to exist without our attempt to define it. Yet it will flourish
and become richer if the 

intellectuals and, first of all, the social scientists and humanitarians, from
their point of vantage, 

are capable of seeing how the two circles of culture overlap: the limited local
culture and the free 

flowing pan-culture of indeterminate boundaries. That will only be possible if
the wise induce, 

deduce, integrate, appeal, tend and transcend; if they dislocate, encyst and
insist, pragmatize and 

finance; if they do not drink or eat themselves to death. Moreover, if they
find the names for all 

these processes, values, models and methods for communication.
I would like to refer to the quotation from Rainis:

"Encased in a fragile shell,
Our soul joins the eternity of the worldâ
The soul does not know its own greatness.
But time will come
And it will know also the unknown."

          To get information about this Latvian unknown, this Latvian X, one
should start with what 

can be seen and acquired; with what can be given and taken, felt and enjoyed.
One should start with 

the livable. Cultural identity is living. That simple. It could be the
traditions that wholly or in 

part are still living today, or the application of inherited things and shapes,
symbols and rites in 

everyday life. It could be mythical, metaphysical formulae for which the modern
man feels some 

atavistic or saving future need. It could also be the tested values of
classical art or the 

contemporary creativity of contemporary personalities: cultural identity exists
only so far as it 

refers to the present.
          The main point of this article is that both local and pan-European
cultural politics should 

do everything possible to demonstrate the cultural idiosyncrasies of each
nation visibly, in the 

quality of mutual exchange and to our mutual benefit. A beautiful, visible
example can be found in the 

buildings by the famous Latvian-American architect Gunars Birkerts. When asked
if he felt something 

Latvian in himself, in his way of thinking and activities, he replied: "I have
always felt I am a 

Latvian architectâ But it is not a feeling I myself could identify. Others
have named it âthe Baltic 

flowâ. The destiny of an architect is to know his own history and culture and
his personal genetic and 

ethnic origin."
          This essay is not a systematic study but rather a set of proposals. I
point to a number of 

singular values, apart from the ones mentioned above (Lacplesisâ ability to
subsist and defend culture 

in a politically dual environment; the affectionate diminutive in folksongs;
the national power of 

concentration in a song festival hymnic chorus; small scale, ecological tourism
in a land of storks), 

that are present in Latvia (and only there) and that are capable of enriching
European society.
          Among these one could mention the great number of landscape
variations in one square 

kilometer of Latvian land; the Midsummer nightâs festival, Jani, with its
unique melodies and 

fertility rites already absent in the Dionysian festivals of other nations.
Another is the Latvian 

custom of drinking birch sap in spring and making beverages from it to be
consumed in the months of 

summer heat. Yet another is book publishing: the huge editions of poetry books
(up to 35 000 copies 

for a nation of 1.5 million) and the great number of choirs among which about a
dozen have won top 

prizes at international festivals. From the 18th century on, world construction
specialists have been 

aware of Pinus rigensis, the unique Latvian pine whose wood is considered
superior for construction. 

One has to mention the Latvju Dainas, eight thick volumes of Latvian folksongs
â laconic quatrains 

that, among many other things, contain essential formulae for building oneâs
character, formulae that 

are useful still â and perhaps particularly â today. One of these appears
to advise us to build 

personality on four cornerstones: vigor, wisdom, beauty and strength; no
personality is complete or 

harmonious if at least one of these components is missing; they should all be
present simultaneously 

and impervious to any outside influences. Latvju Dainas is probably the only
collection of ancient 

epic fragments that has not been translated into world languages and submitted
to international 

research, a collection that is unique in its Snaskritic timelessness and
presentation of encyclopedic 

information in a surprisingly modern way.
          Last but not least, there is the Latvian language, one of the last
two leaves on the Baltic 

Language branch that has retained its ancient ties with Sanskrit and deep,
philosophically harmonious 

word meanings. For example, consider the word razenais, used to denote "a man
of culture". Razenais 

has a whole range of meanings: "strong, fertile, well-to-do, rich, effective,
controlled, persistentâ" 

Razenais is a principle of guidance, empathy and assistance. The formula "a
political nation" is 

meaningless if it does not incorporate the riches offered by the notion of "an
ethnic nation". 

Politics is less than politic without an understanding of human values; a
nation is less national if 

it does not see and respect its inherent ethnic origins. This ethnic initiation
in no way contradicts 

the great futurist objectives: gene engineering, floating cities, three
dimensional television, 

electronic daycare, genetic code or voice as a replacement of fingerprints, a
global information 

network, etc., etc.
          It is commonly agreed that Riga is a convincing Jugendstil (Art
nouveau) city. As the 800th 

anniversary of Rigaâs founding draws nearer, it has become a favorite
conference subject, as has the 

so-called "green architecture" in Latvia, its parks, roadsides, country lanes
and landscapes 

surrounding country estates, or the phenomenon of Latvian song festivals that
take place on an 

unprecedented scale (choirs of up to twenty thousand singers under the guidance
of world class 

conductors).
          The list of cultural idiosyncrasies does not end here. The
aforementioned are just a few of 

the more visible ones. The whole range is quite impressive but it is â yes,
confined, in the same 

sense that a gulf attracts surfers from around the globe. It is as confined as
an ocean stream that 

nevertheless bears its own unique name. It can be likened to an ocean breeze on
the line where the 

earth meets the sea: never the same at the time of sunset and sunrise. Why
should we always assume 

that all that we have has been brought by impressive winds from faraway shores?
There are winds 

originating in Latvia that can be felt elsewhere. Winds are born in Latvia as
well. And we live within 

the limits of our peculiarities. Even if they are the limits of limitless
winds.

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 The Latvian Institute, 1999

This fact sheet can be freely printed from homepage of the Latvian Institute,
distributed and cited, 

on condition that the Latvian Institute is acknowledged as the source. The
Latvian Institute is a 

non-profit organisation (a State Corporation with limited liability)
established to promote knowledge 

about Latvia abroad. It produces publications, in several languages, on many
aspects of Latvia."

 http://www.latinst.lv/identity.htm
...

LS/