After the Rain : how the West lost the East — John Shaqi
After the Rain : how the West lost the EastVaknin, Samuel
History
After the Rain : how the West lost the East
Vaknin, Samuel
Europe, Eastern -- Economic conditions -- 1989-; Europe, Eastern -- Politics and government -- 1989-
Historically, the rural units of socialization and social organization
were the family and the village. As villagers migrated to the cities,
these structural and functional patterns were imported by them, en
masse. The shortage of urban apartments and the communist invention of
the communal apartment (its tiny rooms allocated one per family with
kitchen and bathroom common to all) only served to perpetuate these
ancient modes of multi-generational huddling. At best, the few
available apartments were shared by three generations: parents, married
offspring and their children. In many cases, the living space was also
shared by sickly or no-good relatives and even by unrelated families.
These living arrangements - more adapted to rustic open spaces than to
high rises - led to severe social and psychological dysfunctions. To
this very day, Balkan males are spoiled by the subservience and
servitude of their in-house parents and incessantly and compulsively
catered to by their submissive wives. Occupying someone else's home,
they are not well acquainted with adult responsibilities. Stunted
growth and stagnant immaturity are the hallmarks of an entire
generation, stifled by the ominous proximity of suffocating, invasive
love. Unable to lead a healthy sex life behind paper thin walls, unable
to raise their children and as many children as they see fit, unable to
develop emotionally under the anxiously watchful eye of their parents -
this greenhouse generation is doomed to a zombie-like existence in the
twilight nether land of their parents' caves. Many ever more eagerly
await the demise of their caring captors and the promised land of their
inherited apartments, free of their parents' presence.
The daily pressures and exigencies of co-existence are enormous. The
prying, the gossip, the criticism, the chastising, the small agitating
mannerisms, the smells, the incompatible personal habits and
preferences, the pusillanimous bookkeeping - all serve to erode the
individual and to reduce him or her to the most primitive mode of
survival. This is further exacerbated by the need to share expenses, to
allocate labour and tasks, to plan ahead for contingencies, to see off
threats, to hide information, to pretend and to fend off emotionally
injurious behaviour. It is a sweltering tropic of affective cancer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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