What caused the moral decay in Eastern Europe?

     

1991 protests in Belgrade

     Looking towards Eastern Europe, one cannot but wonder- what has happened here? Was it the communism? Or was it the liberalism of the West that caused this? What is even this referring to? The truth lies somewhere in between. Our examination starts in the realm of communism, which is, in short, being a sheep in a herd of mindless workers that just repeat what is said to them. Years of looking up to the tyrants like Tito, and enjoying the mediocrity can be still felt today- Eastern European schools, for example, devoid of critical thinking and only focused on memorizing endless stream of facts. Critical thinking is highly discouraged, so much so that when I arrived at the American school, teachers were shocked at how my essays looked- gigantic info dumps, one paragraph after the other with no taught put into them. This is not to say that facts are unimportant- in a debate of scientist and a creationist t, scientists may have debate skills of Christopher Hitchens, but if he doesn’t know facts, he would lose even against pseudo-science. But, without critical thinking, knowledge is useless. They are the two elements that compliment each other, ultimately.

  Before we touch upon the next point, we should observe that “the United States of America” and “America” are two widely different concepts. First one refers to a country in North America and the second one refers to the idea of a state of constant decadence and lazy, overnight success, where authority is ridiculed. What contributed to this were the movies produced by the United States that portrayed it this way, and since they were the only way youth could get a glimpse of “a culture behind an ocean,” they presumed that it is the reality. The United States, from the other hand, is widely different from America, which is a country like any other, where you everyone has a potential for success, and if he or she is working hard enough, the chance of success increases, but is still not guaranteed. 

With this in mind, we can come up to a swift conclusion- a mixture of these two elements contributed to the state of constant moral decay in Eastern Europe, leading to toxic decisions such as Belgrade Waterfront, which I will be discussing in a separate article. Communism weakened Eastern Europe, and “America” led it to the wrong path. This moral decay has been, at last, somewhat diminished by the new generation of youth, but the scars of it remain apparent- youth now feels unconcerned about anything happening in their country- we barely saw any kind of intense student movements like the ones that caused Milosevic to decay. By being unconcerned and living cynically, one can definitely push away the moral decay, but this still remains concerning, because living a parody ultimately leaves a lot to be desired, because parody is ultimately a utopia.