We constantly hear about a crisis of values and a lack of authorities. What does this mean for us? According to surveys conducted by “Polityka,” 55% of respondents considered Jurek Owsiak an authority in 2008. What message does Jurek promote? A very simple one: Do whatever you want, but safely. And he does not consider himself an authority.
At the beginning of the new year, we reflect on the changes we would like to make in our lives. Who among us has not made at least one New Year’s resolution? But how can we change our lives and ourselves when it is so difficult to answer what we are like in this new century and what matters most to us? What are our priorities, our system of values, what and whom do we believe in?
When we have to make an important decision, take a side, or choose a course of action, whose words do we hear? Our mother’s? Our father’s? A former teacher’s? A philosopher’s? A poet’s? A writer’s? A friend’s? Superman’s?
An authority is a lighthouse that shows us the way. We can sail into the port it indicates, or move away from it. It is indispensable in times of storms, fog, and tempests.
Mr. Cogito, created in the 1970s by the poet and great authority Zbigniew Herbert, always faithful to his ideals, followed a straight path, himself condemned to destruction in an unjust world. Mr. Cogito had heroes in his ranks, and they gave him that extraordinary strength to persevere in righteousness. Do the great figures mentioned by Herbert—Gilgamesh, Hector, and Roland—still mean anything to us today? Heroes dying for a pure idea? For the idea of freedom, loyalty, and justice?
Today, authorities are an almost unknown phenomenon. The place they occupied is empty. And the world keeps offering us new recipes for life.
The Church proposes a return to a life of pure values. It has been doing so for years, and this proposal is becoming increasingly archaic, especially since the Church is supposed to be alive. Bodily purity until marriage, which we enter increasingly often after the age of 25, while we begin our sex lives after sixteen. The command to have sex in a relationship solely for procreation, when the family model is two plus two. Opposition to science and new medical advances. I mention only the most vital issues.
Advertising specialists and major corporations, in turn, offer us a life of eternal youth and flawless beauty. All we have to do is buy this world without wrinkles or fat, with a perfect athletic figure, these eternal holidays in a paradise land.
Politicians mix up all kinds of ideas, sometimes telling us to fight unjust rich people, and sometimes to get rich ourselves. Sometimes they tell us to take matters into our own hands; at other times they promise complete care and assistance. Sometimes they tell us to love Europe and its economic development, and sometimes to hate its moral decline.
And beyond all this, our lives somehow continue amid typhoons, storms, and tempests. Without an authority, we choose every new direction that shines more brightly than the others in its mirage. And we constantly lack the solid, steady, rhythmically pulsing light of a lighthouse standing on firm land.
That is why my New Year’s proposal is not to promise ourselves that we will quit smoking, get in shape, or devote more time to our families. My proposal is Socratic. Socrates believed that the most important thing was to ask the right question. So let us honestly ask ourselves about our views. And from the answers we obtain, let us create our own self-portrait. Perhaps then we will also find the answer to the question of who is an authority to us.
In today’s world, where everything is for sale and everyone offers us their own idea of how to live, it turns out that we cannot find the most valuable thing: our own personality. And authority is gone.
Grażyna Hanaf