Bassim
VIP Member
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2008
- Member Type
- Student or Learner
- Native Language
- Bosnian
- Home Country
- Bosnia Herzegovina
- Current Location
- Sweden
I have written this text in a form of an essay just as an exercise. Would you please correct my mistakes?
When I read the texts about socialism written by the so-called experts and professors from the West, I often detect a hint of disparaging and gloating over that the utopia promised by the communists ended in failure. I also notice that the majority of these distinguished professors never experienced the ordinary life of people who lived in socialist society. The truth is that behind all that oppression, show trials, prisons and gulags for dissidents, secret police, and spying on each other, millions of people lived their lives filled with happiness, fun, love and petty or difficult problems. For some reason, the professors seem to have no much interest in that part of socialist living. In their texts, the ordinary people almost do not exist as human beings. They had turned them into a faceless mass of millions of brainwashed and frightened subjects, waiting day after day to be arrested and put on a trial. There is no doubt that the life of a dissident in any socialist country could easily have become a nightmare. You were ostracized and doomed to isolation. You were treated like an excrescence which the state wanted to cut off and bury deep underground so that you did not poison other people’s minds. But even under the worst persecution, human minds managed to create great works of literature, film, painting and music.
The mind rises above oppression because it yearns to be free. Through the centuries it fought bloody battles, was wounded, and on the verge of defeat, but somehow it managed to come out on top. If it didn’t, the world we know would have been much different, with different set of values, norms, beliefs and morals. The battle is still going on in the democratic world. There, the capitalism wants to turn a human into a commodity. It is interested in human beings as much as it can use their bodies and minds to generate more profit. It will have no compunction about using people’s most sacred feelings to persuade them to spend more of their hard-earned money. It will lure them into buying things they do not actually need, and give them a bad conscience if they do not part with their money. It will assault the mind with a deluge of entertainment with the goal to make it forget itself and lose its bearings. And the poor mind has to defend itself against this dangerous enemy using common sense, logic, wisdom, will and rationality. The struggle is going on and will continue as long as the system and the greedy people see the mind as an easy prey they can use for their own ends.
The distinguished professors and experts on socialism often deride socialist collectivism, as if the idea of sharing recourses and things was a flight of fantasy, the product of the communist mind, and devoid of any substance. But despite their mockery, millions of people spent the happiest moments of their lives living by that noble idea.
When I hear the word “collective”, my mind associates it immediately with collective holidays I experienced as a child and a teenager. Those were the most beautiful and interesting holidays I’d had in my life. After the school finished for the summer break, my main preoccupation was to know when we were going on holiday. Usually, in the last week of June, my father would get the exact date for our departure, and I would spend the next week or two in an anxious wait. I would visit my mother and tell my sister when we were going so that she could prepare herself. My parents divorced when I was six years old, and sister and I lived in separate homes, she with Mother and I with Father. We met seldom during a year and were more like two strangers than a brother and a sister. Thus, every holiday was a perfect opportunity to be together for two weeks.
TO BE CONTINUED
When I read the texts about socialism written by the so-called experts and professors from the West, I often detect a hint of disparaging and gloating over that the utopia promised by the communists ended in failure. I also notice that the majority of these distinguished professors never experienced the ordinary life of people who lived in socialist society. The truth is that behind all that oppression, show trials, prisons and gulags for dissidents, secret police, and spying on each other, millions of people lived their lives filled with happiness, fun, love and petty or difficult problems. For some reason, the professors seem to have no much interest in that part of socialist living. In their texts, the ordinary people almost do not exist as human beings. They had turned them into a faceless mass of millions of brainwashed and frightened subjects, waiting day after day to be arrested and put on a trial. There is no doubt that the life of a dissident in any socialist country could easily have become a nightmare. You were ostracized and doomed to isolation. You were treated like an excrescence which the state wanted to cut off and bury deep underground so that you did not poison other people’s minds. But even under the worst persecution, human minds managed to create great works of literature, film, painting and music.
The mind rises above oppression because it yearns to be free. Through the centuries it fought bloody battles, was wounded, and on the verge of defeat, but somehow it managed to come out on top. If it didn’t, the world we know would have been much different, with different set of values, norms, beliefs and morals. The battle is still going on in the democratic world. There, the capitalism wants to turn a human into a commodity. It is interested in human beings as much as it can use their bodies and minds to generate more profit. It will have no compunction about using people’s most sacred feelings to persuade them to spend more of their hard-earned money. It will lure them into buying things they do not actually need, and give them a bad conscience if they do not part with their money. It will assault the mind with a deluge of entertainment with the goal to make it forget itself and lose its bearings. And the poor mind has to defend itself against this dangerous enemy using common sense, logic, wisdom, will and rationality. The struggle is going on and will continue as long as the system and the greedy people see the mind as an easy prey they can use for their own ends.
The distinguished professors and experts on socialism often deride socialist collectivism, as if the idea of sharing recourses and things was a flight of fantasy, the product of the communist mind, and devoid of any substance. But despite their mockery, millions of people spent the happiest moments of their lives living by that noble idea.
When I hear the word “collective”, my mind associates it immediately with collective holidays I experienced as a child and a teenager. Those were the most beautiful and interesting holidays I’d had in my life. After the school finished for the summer break, my main preoccupation was to know when we were going on holiday. Usually, in the last week of June, my father would get the exact date for our departure, and I would spend the next week or two in an anxious wait. I would visit my mother and tell my sister when we were going so that she could prepare herself. My parents divorced when I was six years old, and sister and I lived in separate homes, she with Mother and I with Father. We met seldom during a year and were more like two strangers than a brother and a sister. Thus, every holiday was a perfect opportunity to be together for two weeks.
TO BE CONTINUED
