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Chapter Four: Culture and the Capacity to Cope with Complexity
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5 5 Greater societal fitness would make it easier to moderate ethnic conflicts and to advance human development. How to move in this direction? Culture matters. As Daniel P. Moynihan noted, conservatives believe that culture determines the success of a society, but liberals know (or hope) that politics can change a culture and save it from itself (L Harrison 2006; L. Harrison and Huntington 2000). In most societies both culture and politics needed enlightened change. Myths and Mythmaking Myths make nations and nations make myths. Within each culture, behavior is shaped by beliefs nurtured by myths. Orthodox Christianity combined with political mythology to shape Balkan identities through the sacralization of politics, a process rooted in the Byzantine concept of symphonia between Orthodox religion and the state (Leustean 2008). In the erstwhile Yugoslavia, mythology served not to unite but to divide three religious communities, for each had its own myth of national origin (Perica 2002, 5). For centuries, Serbs have been raised to believe that they are a “heavenly people” led by saints but oppressed by infidel Turks, harassed by heretical Catholics, and often betrayed by perfidious Russians. Like some Shiite Muslims, many Serbs have acted as though, suffering from a persecution complex, they wanted pity and expected to be martyred. Their “Kosovo Pole” and related myths bespeak “a land of ceaseless resentment inhabited by eternal losers” (Perica chapter four Culture and the Capacity to Cope with Complexity 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 16 17 18 19 20 5 6 C O M P L E X I T Y S C I E N C E A N D W OR L D A F FA I R S 2002, 229). Serbs have been taught to fight and kill for their just cause even when the odds are stacked against them. Believing they have been wronged, but confident that God is with them, they expect sooner or later to regain Serbia’s former glory. Obsessed by such myths, many intellectuals such as the writer Dobrica Ćosić (first president of rump Yugoslavia, 1992–93) abetted atrocities against other ethnic groups (Zimmerman 1999, 93–94, 201). The 1996 Serbian film Pretty Village, Pretty Flame1 depicts a Bosnian Serb soldier, his unit facing extermination by Muslim fighters, proclaiming, for all to hear, that Serbia is the “oldest nation.” Undaunted by time or circumstances, a Serbian choir entertained the United Nations General Assembly in January 2013 and ended with the song March on the Drina. First written to honor Serbian soldiers killed in World War I, the march became a kind of unofficial anthem among Serbian forces that carried out massacres of Muslims at Srebrenica and other sites in 1995. Not understanding the words or the background, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and other UN officials gave the choir a standing ovation. The General Assembly president at the time, Vuk Jeremić, a former Serbian foreign minister (with a Harvard Kennedy School of Government degree, Master in Public Administration in International Development) stated “We are very proud of it [the song] and wanted to share it with the world” with a message of “reconciliation [sic]” (New York Times, January 18, 2013). The upshot was that Serbs and some others in the Balkans have hoped for glory and valued honor far more than Balts. Like Iranians, many Serbs have expected to die fighting as martyrs for a just if losing cause. Of course Serbs are not alone in such feelings. Some nationalists in Croatia, Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine, and elsewhere have also indulged in self-pity—portraying their own nation as the ultimate victim. Some Polish historians described their Poland as the “Christ of nations”—victimized by its neighbors. Many Romanians, like Serbs, spoke about their nation’s destiny to save Christian civilization from Ottoman invasions and their differences with Russia. After all the established certainties have been shattered, nationalism has offered a soothing balm for a disaffected community (Tismaneanu 1998, 84–85). Far from the Balkans, some U.S. patriots take comfort in putative American values and virtues. For Romanians, Transylvania occupied a role in historical mythology similar to that of Kosovo for Serbs. Transylvania was said to have been the cradle of the Romanian nation, where indigenous Dacians mingled with Romans many centuries before the arrival of Hungarian speakers. In point of fact, however, this “cradle” was ruled from Budapest for long periods of time, giving rise to irredentist sentiments...