Naivete or Dissidence?

Ever since I returned to Serbia 1.5 years ago, I've been bombarded by people's perceptions of my child-like naivete, experiencing constant criticism from others for my lack of understanding "the rules of the game" when it comes to politics, money & business, pressure groups and especially secret societies and espionage groups that "rule the world"... My brother has been a champion in this type of criticism! Since I respect his opinion, I started building up this complex that even though I am very well educated, I am in fact "all theory", and when it comes to the ultimate understanding of what makes world go 'round, I am totally incompetent. I am not claiming that my brother was trying to make me feel bad, he just wanted me to "shake up and understand the world as it really is", embracing all the conspiracy theories this understanding came to involve, so that I can stop being an idealist fighting for a better society and worry about protecting my own interests in this cruel world. I can't make a difference either way, he argues.

Excitingly enough, an article on espionage and prejudice in the April issue of Cord magazine helped me put some of my frustrations into perspective. One of the author Ljubodrag Stojadinovic's observations is that there is a significant level of paranoia w.r.t. espionage activities and foreign interests in Serbia and he argues that instilling such paranoia into the general population has served to maintain state power during the Socialist regime. This argument which ascribed part of the espionage paranoia in Serbia to the Socialist legacy helped me realise why I wasn't percieved as so naive living in London, and it also further strengthened my belief that the biggest challenge of transition are not economic and political reforms, but reforming the mindset of the population.

The other day I read an in interesting observation in an article by Dacher Keltner called The Power Paradox: "A person's power is only as strong as the status given to that person by others". These two articles helped me put my own idealism and naivete into prespective, as I believe that the same goes for all types of social groupings, institutions and governments - their power is only as strong as the status given to them by others. Therefore I reached the conclusion that failing to, or in my case refusing to believe in the invincible power of certain governments, pressure groups and secret societies makes me some sort of a social dissident who is more likely to bring about the ultimate destruction of this power. Therefore, from now on I have decided to take pride in my naivete, thinking of it as an effective weapon in fighting this defeatest attitude that nothing can be changed because it all depends on some secret interests of powerful dark forces. Although, I don't rule out that I may be naive for thinking so...