Our main pain and the reason we started this site was the presence of the un-Told festival in our city, the city of Cluj-Napoca. Perhaps our conclusion may seem harsh about what this festival means to us, namely, selling freedom for profit. But our society undertakes many other actions that subscribe to the same approach. I think it would be too dramatic to talk about the trafficking and sex industry that is taking more and more children into it. Some of them with the ink still not yet dry on their birth certificate, as discussed in this recent film, Sound of Freedom, a film that enjoys major resistance from Hollywood critics, which also credits it as factually true. It would be too dramatic, too removed from the context of our normal lives. That is, a lifestyle that, for many of us, doesn’t involve visiting the dark corners of this world. So I’m going to talk about carelessness, about what Scott Peck so creatively calls, in his book People of The Lie, the group evil. I’m sure this is an abstract term, but let me roll it out before you to give it meaning and relevance to today’s society. Namely what it means to sell out our freedom to act for what is right because we are too afraid of losing our comfort. In this case we are talking about financial comfort.
It is worth mentioning, however, that what the author of The Psychology of Lying calls evil is rooted in the basic lie of narcissism. So, the one who is fixed on himself, strictly at the level of external manifestation, ends up promoting himself as a manifestation of the force of individual desires. And so, in the violence of their display, he annihilates anyone who gets in his way. He who enters into such a psycho-social logic, imposes his individual value, only by superiority over another. He uses control in a pathological manner and finds self-confidence strictly through domination. The real tragedy is that these abusers actually have an inner self of extreme fragility and are overwhelmed by shame at a very deep level. In their mindset the only way to get around this sense of fundamental lack of worth is to humiliate others.
I want to begin explaining the notion of: group evil by making a short reference to the main example that Scott Peck uses to formulate this category of evil. The concept of group evil is developed around what happened during the My Lai massacre, an action undertaken by American troops during the Vietnam War. So on March 16, 1968, American soldiers executed 504 unarmed villagers in a single day. There have been many more such crimes over the years, such as the Katyn massacre, the Night of St Bartholomew, the Night of the Long Knives or the Iasi Pogrom, if we are to return to our Romanian homeland. And unfortunately, many other examples, far too many to mention in such a short text. Scott Peck was American and he chose such an example because the United States chose not to talk about this massacre publicly for a long time, and moreover there was even a silent agreement among those who participated in the massacre not to reveal the reality of such horror. Soldiers raped women and killed almost all the villagers, including many children, women and elderly people. All animals were also killed. Only a few soldiers refused orders to kill, including American helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson, who was on a scouting flight and forced the soldiers to spare eleven women and children. The helicopter crew were honored for their intervention. Immediately after the massacre, senior officers tried to cover up the incident. According to official reports, “about 20 civilians died unintentionally” in Mỹ Lai as part of hostilities against the Viet Cong (National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, a communist-backed insurgent organization).
I cannot call such an incident a mistake, it was a real mass murder! And the cover-up afterwards, the one initiated by the main actors, those who pulled the trigger, but also by the responsible authorities, puts before us a very tangible facet of the evil and cruelty of which man is capable. This voluntary group-wide silence speaks very loudly of a massive lack of ownership. About a suppression of individual moral conscience behind the responsibilities that you, as a mere member of a group, attribute to the band of membership. Concrete examples have to do with denying the responsibility you have as a human being and avoiding the feeling of guilt by entrusting others (public institutions, the church, the state) with the power and duty to solve the problems you observe. That is, someone abstract, someone who is not you. Yet, through this mental trick, you come to hope that the problem will be solved, even if in reality you are too afraid to take it upon yourself. This is simply because such an initiative risks destroying your public image, shame, and obviously, loss of comfort. Whether we are talking about social status, which brings a lot of relational comfort, whether we are talking about large sums of money, which gives us access to another level of life, or whether we are talking about political influence and hierarchical power, which induces the illusion of a superior self, etc. All this lack of initiative has to do with the cowardice of the wise, those who always repeat to themselves that: what is in your hand is not a lie…
We don’t want to assume responsibility for the evil whose possible correction is primarily directed at us. And so we turn through voluntary ignorance the scream of justice into a weak voice, one worthy of being mocked for its childish initiatives. Fear of losing our image in the world, which is a very airy one anyway, turns us into cowards. We become some who, having abused others and degraded them, also abuse the victims’ right to memory, by choosing to remain silent, to defend the lie we have so long sold to others. This is the collective evil, it is that kind of evil that continues to exist through our actions, actions where we choose not to give up our comfort for the sake of a greater good. And if we don’t choose the good, obviously we will choose the evil, because an undone good becomes an inevitable evil in the end. But this is too painful to accept, so we choose to deceive ourselves that others will do what is right, that others are responsible and not us, for us to do the good in question is too great a price to pay. I say that it’s full of such forms of evil, on every road, wherever you stop to really look.
Man defends himself against pain, it’s normal to do so. He does so because he intuitively knows a fundamental truth. That there is far too much pain in the world for him to bear alone, and that he can only control what happens in the world to a very limited extent. And the apparent meaninglessness of what he can do makes him filled with discouragement, even passivates him from the pain he initially feels. And so man comes to believe that ignorance is the solution to happiness.
St. Mary Theresa of Calcutta says in her Nobel Prize speech that: “And so my prayer for you is that the truth may bring prayer into our homes, and through prayer may we believe that Christ is in the poor. And if we truly believe, we will begin to love. And we will naturally love, we will try to do something. First in our own home, in our next door neighbor, in the country we live in, in the whole world.”
This quote is a broader way of saying that change for the better starts from where we are sitting now. We don’t need to make big changes to lovingly fight the evil that keeps stalking us. But from where we feel safest, from our homes, let’s start practicing the freedom to do good where evil stands in our way. If we choose instead to turn a blind eye, if we sell out our freedom because we are too afraid to lose the illusory comfort of our self, then we will betray reality and ourselves along with it.
And now, from the heights of this moralizing discourse it’s time to dive into the midst of our daily struggles. Here in Cluj, many of us silently or less silently consent to the un-Told festival. If we study how this festival appeared on the local landscape and what the organizers’ initial approach was, we will see that they had an approach based on deception and false documents. Even in the trial after the illegalities committed by the Share Federation, more precisely by Vlad Pop, he being the chosen scapegoat, the Cluj City Hall did not declare itself an injured party. Even though the money necessary for the first organization of the festival were fraudulently extracted, the city hall adopted a typical Romanian attitude, that of a resigned victim. What can I say, these high servants of the people seem to be the disciples of the Moldovan shepherd in the folk poem Miorița, full of submission in front of an implacable destiny, without useless struggles in front of fate. Our pain, however, is that many of these officials are followers of the other side of the plot in the Miorița poem. We are talking here of the Hungarian shepherd and the Vrancian shepherd, those who do not hesitate to wrong, even to extort, the one who stands between them and the treasure that fascinates their eyes. And let’s not forget, the money used to organize the first Untold festival is public money, not the city hall’s money, because the city hall is the administrator of that money and not an autonomous investment company, capable of investing its capital according to its own wishes. A local newspaper in Cluj uses the following phrase to characterize the city hall’s actions: ‘Cluj Napoca city hall fooled and without demands’.
Many of us turn our eyes away from such actions, after all history is full of injustices and the chronicles of history are written by the winners. They mention only their triumphs and contributions, and in no case actions that would deny their status as demigods. And yes, Cluj has many victories. It is one of the most beautiful cities in Romania and there are many advantages here that you don’t find in other Romanian towns. And that, along with unreasonably high food and rent prices, in other words, it costs to let others see your glitter, nobody denies that. One vlogger even used the phrase “Romania’s Romania” for Cluj at one point. A sort of Olympus, a little corner of abundance in the poverty of the Romanian landscape. Even un-Told can be presented as a real financial contribution to this thriving city. A lot of money is pumped into the budget every year by what happens in August, merchants sell out during the event, people rent out their homes and make an extra profit, and maybe most importantly perhaps, if we’re looking at the long term, Cluj becomes famous. And from an identity based on the idea of a prestigious university center, Cluj comes to be associated worldwide with ecstasy and sensory bliss, accessible to anyone with festival ticket money. After all, isn’t it worth donning the carnival clown’s coat if that’s what sells? Money is money, and the shine of gold has fascinated the human eye since man first discovered this precious metal. Even if that means promoting a culture based on sensuality and addiction, and certainly not on freedom and reality. Even if it means the destruction of the local heritage (the park is devastated every year), and the city is filled with the rubbish left behind due to the consumption of party goers. Those who come here for an intense dose of pleasure, a state accessible to them only beyond prejudice and oppressive rules. Even if it means turning a blind eye to the sick who are housed in huge numbers in city hospitals. Even if it really means embarrassing ourselves as citizens of such a beautiful city. Selling out the honorary status we have by simply living in this place for a handful of money that stains the value we already have. And by choosing to remain passive, we choose to open the path to match the name of Cluj for the new generation with the fluorescent advertisement of a brothel. A fast-food imitation of Vegas, a place where all your sensory dreams can come true, if you pay the necessary price, and this price is always the price of your freedom.
It’s sad, it’s even shameful, that we choose to sell out our freedom and the opportunity to become a truly prosperous city with a stable high standard of living for a quick enrichment, but one which diminishes our value as humans.
I will end my text with a poem written by Radu Gyr about silence and captivity. You should know, even the desire for quick enrichment can be a tight cage. Staring only at the brightness of what you think will make you count, to have value, you will inevitably end up pushing away the freedom to be satisfied with who you already are, which is what makes us all equal as humans. Don’t sell your freedom for money, the price is too high!
We keep silent( verse II)
“We’ve been keeping silent for ages
Like ancient lake bottoms.
And locked in the gray darkness,
For thousands of years we’ve been keeping silent.”
Sources:
- Sound of Freedom – Official Trailer (2023)
- People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil
- My Lai massacre
- American Experience: My Lai Massacre (Vetinam War Documentary HD)
- Mother Teresa Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
- The first Untold, funded on false documents by the Cluj City Hall.
- Napocalypse after Untold. What Cluj’s Grand Park looks like at the end of the Untold festival
- The SHARE Federation, “organiser” of the sulphurous UNTOLD affair, in bankruptcy: Vlad Pop ordered to pay over 6.5 million lei.
- Convicted of cheating Cluj Napoca City Hall, the president of the Share Foundation is a business partner of a liberal local councilor
- Radu Gyr We Keep Silent
- Miorița, a popular poem by Vasile Alecsandri
