By Andrej Nikolaidis, CdM columnist
OK, we all saw that Boris Raonic, the head of the regime television, was booed off and practically chased from the football stadium in Podgorica.
My thoughts about Raonic’s management are similar to those of the fans of the Montenegrin national football team with whom Raonic had an “open and cordial conversation”.
But I think that the fans made a mistake and here’s why.
First of all, what’s a huge problem of this (and every previous Montenegro), in which even the greatest abominations are justified by the most sublime motives?
In order to figure out what we’re missing, let us recall one radical example of Kant’s ethical action.
Benjamin Constant, while arguing with Kant, states that “the moral principle, for example, that telling the truth is a duty, if taken absolutely and in isolation, would make any society impossible.” He adds that, according to Kant, a man with whom his friend hid from the murderers who chased him, if the murderers broke into his house and asked him if he was hiding his friend, would have a duty to say “yes”, because a lie would mean a crime according to truth as an absolute value.
In his response, Kant, who did not actually cite the example Constant ascribed to him, said that even in that case, a man should tell the truth, and went on to explain that the only ethical action is one in which “subject pathology” is not involved – his interests, preferences and profits. Kant’s minimum of ethical action is practically unattainable. Because the minimum is also the maximum: there is no partially ethical act. For the whole gray zone of the partial, there is morality, which defines by agreement when and under what conditions socially acceptable unethical action. Hence the democratic order, which defines itself as the least bad of all, as an order of consensus, transparency, control and environment, indifferent to the ethical (who can still tell the difference between ethical and fat free: both are just selling – so it’s possible to buy ethical clothing or coffee) which always tightens things up and splits the middle and pulls to extremes.
Our demands for truth are firm and principled, until the truth threatens to harm our comfort, our friends, relatives, the nation, the state, the ideological truth… whatever we hold on to. We somehow always expect the truth from others, while as a rule we have so-called higher reasons why we suspend the truth that could harm our cause. We expect others, like Aristotle, to love Plato, but to love the Truth even more. We, on the other hand, have our reasons for behaving like someone who is a friend of the truth, but an even better friend of his friends. When it comes down to us, it kinda turns out that it’s immoral to be ethical.
It means… If someone, like me, for example, criticised the Chetnik mob who attacked Nebojsa Sofranac at the Podgorica airport – then someone, for example – me – is going to perform a public harakiri, pierce my own integrity with a sword if only I dared to gloat over what happened to Raonic.
Finally: such things have been happening to me for decades. Just because I don’t complain about them doesn’t mean they don’t bother me or that they’re less disgusting. As far as I can understand, the people who sent warm greetings to Raonic, think that he deserved it. I, on the other hand, understand that those who send warm greetings of the Serbs to me think the same – that I deserved it.
Speaking of the public harakiri… As you know, seppuku is a traditional Japanese response to the loss of honor. Therefore, traditionally it goes in this order: first the loss of honour then a sword in a stomach.
And now just remember, it wasn’t a long time ago: when priests attacked Raonic’s journalists in front of the Cetinje monastery.
They did the same thing that fans did to Raonic a few months later. What did the director and the rest of the team running the regime public broadcaster do – did they try to protect their own journalists?
No, they didn’t. They rather bent down and kissed the church in the ass. And they threw their own people before the monster who ensured them positions in the company.
Retroactively speaking, from the perspective of what happened to Raonic at the stadium… What did he actually do then by sacrificing his people and principles?
Yes: he performed a public prepaid harakiri.
