The Revolution Happens Every Day

It is difficult to mutely observe how youth has become infantile in the eyes of the world. This is not a criticism of youth; on the contrary. Capitalism, being fluid and ergonomic, easily transmitted, has affected everyone. It has stuck like chewing gum to the pavement of all world squares, in whose shop windows tempting branded combinations are displayed. While glittering clothes are examined, something uncomfortably catches us as we walk. In this gooey walk, precious youth also passes. Continuous puerilization has led to us not having a clear line today between the young and the (slightly) older. Art may be deprived of this. In art, talent in most (e.g., in film) does not progress much with age, while tastes develop, leading to a collision of these two factors of artistic inspiration. I am twenty-seven years old and can rightly speak of youth. It is the diadem of my generation and a disenfranchised preciousness. It has been the subject of many philosophical pens to this day. What, however, arises as a question of a society that does not understand and openly despises youth, is the obscene equating of youth and immaturity. The world rests on the activity of those who belong to the older world, and that is a fact. When someone is said to be young, it is almost, as Hannah Arendt would say, "the banality of evil." In this context, youth would literally be, according to those who despise it out of fear, a crazy, closed circle of wicked gremlins and peculiar personalities lurking for a favorable moment, and they do not even know they are such. "Oh, you're the youngest here? You don't even drink coffee, do you? You're saving your heart, yes, it's young. Your education is certainly unimportant here because anything can be rendered meaningless... you're not even aware. The way of being in which you grew up and live, that does not recommend you for our argumentum ad baculum. We, we despise youth." It is paradoxical that youth today is consciously and unconsciously despised, while the old are not needed by anyone anyway. Of course, this is conventionally decided by those who are themselves on the verge of becoming old and "irrelevant," deeply despising youth and its "day that comes out of the night like a victory" (Hugo). One of the greatest philosophers of today, Alain Badiou, explained it simply. The threads of power, authority, and decision-making are still held in the hands of the elderly, but only up to a certain age. Beyond that limit, they are left, scorned, forgotten, and handed over to die "in peace." What happens within the boundaries of these "older hands," however, is essentially a convulsive fear of youth. The reason for this is that it (youth) is antinomic but also, like capitalism, unpredictable. The difference is that ideologies cannot so easily patch themselves onto youth's new dress. Many changes that, by someone's logic, would interest it, encounter complete apathy. There is no longer a defined boundary, or as Badiou would say, "initiation" (moments) that precisely determines when someone, being young, is simultaneously "mature." In Bosnia, there is a saying for a woman who knows how to "bake" a pie that she can get married. Behind this lies an ideology that, according to the old recipe, initiates youth to forcibly enter the world of those who have settled with it and determined it. These "initiations" used to be military service for a man, and marriage for a woman. I deliberately say woman because by doing so she would become a "woman," even if, as in the examples of Roma communities, she might be 12 years old. This avoided today's discrimination against youth and the stigma of immaturity, behind which fear is essentially hidden. Initiations still exist today, and they do not necessarily have to be bad in themselves. On the contrary, they are only distorted and abused. To the previous, in addition to marriage, one should add one that is quietly overlooked, although it should be more proclaimed. This mostly male initiation lasts longer than military service, and these are boarding schools, e.g., theological ones, five-year ones, which I myself completed in Belgrade. This topic requires a longer elaboration. In terms of new changes, some propose the concept of revolutions and the principle of the "rotten mare." I agree only to the extent that we recently saw in the Serbian city of Čačak. There, so wonderfully and unexpectedly, young men and women appeared at a protest against environmental degradation. This is the most positive possible example of how youth moves historical chromosomes. Namely, in Čačak, these were teenagers, and among them, a smart, young lady, a high school student, stood before her peers, like Vilma Espín, and boldly, in a few sentences, sublimated the topic before us: "I believe you have heard a million times from your parents, grandmothers, grandfathers that this is not our business and that we are very young. But this is very much our business! I would like to quote from the work "The Struggle and Victory of Labor": A revolution is not just a matter of great people, a revolution happens every day, a true revolution, to all of us. For whether we are young or old, black or white, in whatever God we believe, the future will not wait for us with folded arms, but we must run to meet it." The Apostle Paul speaks about this race of life to the Corinthians: "Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore, I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air." (9:24–26). Youth is disenfranchised. We are also witnesses to the desire of the world's number one tennis player, after the known events, to modestly join the revolution of youth, which touches his years as well, to enable low-ranked young colleagues to earn enough from their work and training. Badiou also spoke of this race into the future. However, a "rotten mare" implies bypassing those who decide until when you are young and from when you become mature, which can be dangerous (as in Novak's case), and after that, it involves uniting, in that same revolution, with those who are old, despised, and rejected. If only it were possible for youth and immaturity not to be theoretically synonymous, it would already be much easier for us. From its earliest beginnings, youth has such potential, that fertile ground of dreams, so important that it instills fear even in the most powerful. The reason is the elusiveness of youth, which, remaining such, easily penetrates subjects and otherness, taking over their role. Although it does not represent an ideology, it is the only alternative to all ideologies, especially wild, hybrid capitalism. There are not as many initiations as before, but precisely because of that, there is more youth than before. Outdated wisdoms that previously mistakenly created postulates and barriers for young people no longer exist. Now youth is in all pores of life, paradoxically even in those where it is fictitiously decided in which phase it is young and in which it is mature. Those who, as older people, wish to be younger, become so without problems through the consumption of wild capitalism. As children, they bought toys; now they buy big toys. Youth can rethink current ideologies to its advantage and rule. In the 1980s, the discrepancy between educated and uneducated in Europe bridged that gap and fear of youth. Here in the Balkans, in Serbia, for example, about 10% of the population is highly educated. An intellectual or a worker in France and elsewhere used to know their direction. Today's mass unemployment of the most educated leads to youth and intelligence being pushed into a collective Pascal's vacuum. I pray that it does not burst suddenly but is positively filled with youth that naturally captivates and transforms for the benefit of all. Youth does not exclude maturity but gives it freedom and beauty! "May our daughters and sons live!" Deacon Božidar Vasiljević