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+postid: 00f
+title: A change of mentality
+author: Lucian Mogoșanu
+excerpt: Romanian mentality is changing, only not in the way we expect it to.
+date: September 18, 2013
+tags: asphalt
+---
+
+In the last five years or more, I keep hearing of such a thing as the need for
+"a change of mentality", in connection with all sorts of post-1989 Romanian
+stuff. Since we're here, I'll have to digress a bit.
+
+Romania is a fairly young country. We've been attempting (with more or less
+success) to remain cohesive since the 1800s and have been growing in the early
+1900s, only remaining stable from the points of view of territory and
+population after the Second World War. There have been said, more or less
+crackpot-theoretical attempts of "some powers" to destroy this cohesion in 1989
+and the first few years after, without any clear success, so Romania looks
+pretty much like a unitary state at the moment.
+
+Anyway, after almost fifty years of comunism, a lot of the post-89 events came
+like major blows to the head of the masses. For example, we saw that once
+markets opened, most local industries proved to be uncompetitive, so they
+became extinct[^1]. Similarly, many banks were nothing more than Ponzi schemes
+run by crooks who became rich in a really short period of time, and other
+businesses were started by ex-secret services guys that well, had the info,
+while the stupid masses did not. Long story short, the last twenty-four years
+or so of "Romanian democracy" have been some kind of bizarre circus, and now
+things don't seem to head in any clear direction.
+
+So, as I was saying, in this context people start suggesting changes, most
+notably "a change of mentality". It certainly sounds good to people who've
+never been abroad but somehow seem to think that the countries to the West are
+more "civilized", and everything is just great there and dogs are running with
+pretzels on their tails[^2]. People there seem to have so much better
+mentalities, at which point Romanians start believing that trying to mimic them
+would be a pretty good idea. As a matter of fact, it's a really bad idea. The
+why behind it might not be obvious, so I'll have to explain.
+
+Changing a collective mentality as a whole would be a good idea if it didn't
+destroy the subjects, at least from a cultural point of view. It's similar to
+what Orwell was describing in 1984: modify concepts, news and everything else
+so that people start having a new conception of life. It's the exact opposite
+of what nationalists aim to do, replacing the Romanian person with its German
+or Swedish or Whateverish equivalent. The thing is, mentalities *do* change in
+time, only they do it really slowly, so we rarely take the time to notice how
+much the mentality of your average Romanian has changed since 1989.
+Supermarkets, television, Internet, all the "un-Romanian" things changed
+Romanians' mentalities more than one would expect. Yesterday's Cartoon Network
+kids are today's English-speaking (almost-)adults who pay taxes. Eighty-year
+old grandmas spend a couple of hours a week on Skype, chatting with their
+nephews in Spain, which, I'll tell you, was *unimaginable* twenty-five years
+ago. And I could go on and on with the examples, but I'll stop here.
+
+The thing is that absolutely no one wants to completely destroy Romanians'
+national identity, not even anarchistoid youngers who deserve a good beating
+for being such hipsters. Surely, the state is bad, politicians are bad, but do
+we like Romanian food, nature, pussy and other stuff that them westerners only
+wish they had[^3].
+
+Besides that, after working for some time with technology, I've learned that
+paradigm shifts almost never lead people where they expected. What I mean is,
+back in the '70s computers were used mainly for maths and no one could have
+conceived then that pockets could fit a machine capable of games, music, movies
+and instantaneous communication forty years later. I'll consider this example
+relevant, however unrelated it might seem.
+
+In Romania's case, the sudden shift from communism to democracy was exactly
+that, a major paradigm shift. As I was saying, we still have problems dealing
+with it. So there you have it, our dearly beloved paradigm shift, that's
+changing our mentalities whether we like it or not. Is that any good? We seem
+to think not, but we're forgetting that in '88-'89 people were sitting all day
+long at queues fighting over two kilos of expired meat. Is that any bad? Maybe,
+but once again, we're forgetting that Romanian education kept the bar high in
+mathematics, engineering, gymnastics and a few others, which is a great
+performance for a country of twenty million people.
+
+My opinion and mine only, and you can do with it whatever you wish, fellow
+Romanians, is that you can stick your "change of mentality" in places that
+hurt. It's ceased to have any relevant meaning, all we need now is to focus and
+*maybe* get out of this mess we're in.
+
+[^1]: The same crackpot theorists believe that "some powers" from the West
+systematically sabotaged Romanian industry, agriculture and pretty much
+everything that was productive in the country. I, for one, believe that we
+sabotaged ourselves, mostly due to the fact that we had, and still have, no
+idea in the world of how the so-called "Romanian democracy" is supposed to
+work.
+
+[^2]: The saying is a rough translation of a Romanian expression, "fug câinii
+cu covrigi în coadă". You might have an idea of what that means if you've ever
+been to Bucharest: it's one of the cities that are choc-full of dogs; now, if
+only they had pretzels on their tails, every lazy ass could get a piece to eat.
+Basically, it's a popular representation of socialist utopia.
+
+[^3]: Yes, these are mostly fallacies. It's not like Romania is the only
+country in the world where they serve good food.