We talked with playwright and theater director Péter Gágyor about wars, helplessness, the transience of geopolitical maps, and what the national minimum should be.
The Russian-Ukrainian war has been going on for almost a year, do you see a historical pattern, is it possible to draw an analogy?
Sure, it's been going on for almost a year, I'm waiting for the miracle, every day. To what extent this war is a Russian-Ukrainian conflict is another question. Analogies? There are also some tragic moments from our own history, which rhyme in their motifs with this proxy war. Another interesting aspect is which war in history, and even which declared or concealed declaration of war until now, was not a proxy, i.e. a lie.
What do you think of the ending?
I hope so.
I would prefer to spread the pictures of the hundreds of dead soldiers and civilians, widows and orphans with withered smiles in front of the politicians who are in a crucial situation, project them on the walls of the meeting rooms and studios, thus making the political "results" public.
As for the realistic background of the statements of big words politicians...
How does this affect your personal life?
My helplessness makes me passive. I'm not in the mood to write, and I'm slowly starting to read. Sometimes I escape into the bushes of music, covering my eyes and ears for minutes. But that doesn't help either, it just dulls it for a while.
Photo: Péter Gágyor's collection
They say that the great powers are just now rearranging the geopolitical map. What consequences do you expect?
The great powers are doing what they have always done. While they chant benevolent phrases, they live out their eternal indifference to our detriment. All new geopolitical maps are temporary. The Holy Alliance, the Trianon, the "Peace Camp" were bloody provisionals.
And the next construction promoting world peace will be no different. It can't be.
The point is to make profit at all costs, as well as its future desires and plans.
What could be the role of our country in the new world order, in good and bad cases?
There is no good case and no good role. With common sense, we can try to survive this momentous international card party. We know that, as always, the cards are still messed up. Our only goal is the smallest possible loss. Making sure that the uniform does not get dirty, we must preserve as much of our decency as possible in the shadows of various strategies and forced measures. Maybe it will work.
If a war next door and its all-encompassing effects are not enough, what else would have to happen to have a national minimum?
For us, the national minimum is also the human maximum.
We should face ourselves every moment as before the divine judgment seat.
After all, there is only one ethos, which does not have ordinary and festive versions.
What could be the role of the weakened EU in the new world order?
The EU is a structure that carries all the disease symptoms of the well-known veterinary horse. We can criticize, and this is an ethical task on our part, along with our possible mistakes, it is ethical and moral at the same time, but we seem to be unable to change this unsolicited state at the moment.
Even before the current corruption scandal, some telltale features of the Brussels administration were visible. There are far more lobbyists than employees in the EU's top institution. More than two hundred representatives of the European Parliament are on the list, so they can also be classified as lobbyists.
What is a lobbyist? - this is the question.
The lobby is a strange invention, in reality it is only a "salon-worthy" cover name for well-organized universal corruption, which is always directed against the interests of the community from the outset. This is a clear formula for everyone, even if we don't talk about it openly.
The European politician is a rare white raven at the EU summit, in the president's advisory board, and the president's family members all work in the interests of the USA and mostly live there. In the opposite case, this phenomenon would be unimaginable in the first place, say in the White House. The EU's anti-Russian sanctions are mostly harmful to the Union, barely to the Russian Federation, while they provide significant commercial advantages to the United States.
The language of politics would call this phenomenon a dictation, if it dared.
If this is the current recent corruption scandal, in addition to the vaccine text messages of the president, or the suddenly enriched private bank account of the Cypriot delegate, or the open-air busts reminiscent of dilettante gangster movies, for example in the case of the suitcases stuffed with millions of euros carried by the vice-president's father - and the other "little things" , which we still don't know about - so if, as a result of these events, there would be some clearing in the bureaucratic jungle, it would be a miracle.
But our new century is unfortunately characterized by dilettante political and media control.
And it is not only the organizers and shapers of the methods of the "new" historical times who are responsible for this bottomless well. All of us, citizens capable of thinking, are part of this responsibility, which was realized in the completion of the dilettante tsunami of the 21st century, while we cowardly wallow in the intoxicating comfort of consumerist thinking.
Because it's not good to think, because it's not worth suspecting, and it can be dangerous to think. That's fine, just don't let their fate get worse - we foolishly think.
However, day by day, and now, our fate is really getting worse.
Featured image: Photo: Péter Gágyor's collection
