Péter Nádas

Nemesis and Fatum

I would like to recite some familiar words:
Defeat. Loss. Collapse. Failure. Destruction. Poverty. Hunger. Resourcefulness. Stench. Hopelessness. Helplessness. Sorrow. Sickness. Weakness. Pain. Re gression. Torment. Chill. Dust. Gloom. Despondency. Suspicion. Doubt. Despair. Trickery. Joy. Embarrassment. Resignation. Repression. Forgetting. Humiliation. Isolation. Accusation. Guilt. Reproach. Grievance. Anger. Revenge. Self-deception. Mendacity. Satisfaction. Dependence. Cowardice. Defenselessness. Re membering. Audacity. Rebellion. Fiasco. Injustice. Disenfranchisement. Capti vity. Tyranny. Restriction. Fear. Anxiety. Breathlessness. Shame. Reticence. De ficiency.
Suffering.

I could mention several other, even more painful, words: Interrogation. Beating. Torture. Execution. And deathly silence.

Now I would like to list some other words:
Consensus. Construction. Progress. Hope. Development. Employment. Expan pan sion. Order. Completion. Investment. Compensation. Profit. Success. Joy. Jealousy. Envy. Competition. Fraud. Caution. Attention. Ambition. Ability. Stand ard. Quality. Balance. Fragrance. Abundance. Well-being. Surplus. Selfish ness. En joyment. Fullness. Greed. Pleasure. Moderation. Excess. Criticism. Considera tion. Firmness. Ruthlessness. Openness. Strength. Cheer. Charity. Seriousness. Error. Renewal. Aloofness. Sophistication. Structure. Inde pendence. Sterility. Cool -ness. Solitude. Isolation. Self-consciousness.

To which I could add a few more crucial terms: Creativity. Sovereignty. Spontaneity. Liberty.

No one person could be characterized with these word-clusters, for no one can separate his failures from his successes, his sufferings from his joys, his stink from his sweet smell. These two groups of words may nevertheless be used to describe the essential conditions, the techniques of social organization that set the pattern for our lives these past forty years--not the principles and ideologies by which we lived, but the reality of our daily lives.

The first group of words suggests someone at the mercy of his fate, the second group someone in control of his fate. One tries to endure and outlast what the other tries to shape and rearrange. The difference between the two is great not only on the level of daily experience, but also when it comes to personal desires and goals, the models and means one chooses for oneself in life. I have no doubt in my mind that in the coming decades of our common existence, it's in terms of this crucial difference that we'll keep misunderstanding one another.

I would like to discuss a class of phenomena that an ancient Greek, thinking
along similar lines, may have termed predestination: action resulting from a god's will (tyche), or adroitness, craftsmanship, skill, cunning, wile (techne). Today we would use the words fate and technique to refer to these two categories. The person suggested by the first group of words lives his fate without being able to direct and shape it, he simply lacks the necessary technique for it, whereas the person implied by the second group possesses the technique, the know-how, but doesn't really know what it is he is shaping or directing. Within this single duality their priorities are very different: one sees too far, the other looks too close, so their chances of understanding the other are slim. I wouldn't say they have no chance: after all, they do perceive things in terms of the same duality; but their activities and thought processes will be guided invariably by their priorities. This means that not only will they have a problem understanding the other--their whole lives will consist of a painful series of logical misunderstandings. Which may lead us to the conclusion that what we are dealing with is not a simple communications problem but a type of miscommunication that stems from the fact that their self-knowledge and their knowledge of the world are so confused that they no longer see the duality--one of them gives preference to knowledge of the world, the other to self-knowledge.

The individual left to his fate looks upon events as natural occurrences; he is quick to universalize his own situation and sees his actions as the result of all-compelling forces, while the person in control of his fate carefully delimits the scope of his actions, individualizes his situation, and believes that through agreement and compromise events can indeed be controlled. The thinking of one who is left to his fate is regressive in character: he infers causes from effects, seeks explanations in the past, and as a last resort turns to justice. Whereas the thinking of one in control of his fate is progressive: he deduces effects from causes, seeks understandings in the present, and cites the law. The one left to his fate has a history but no individual life story; the one in control of his fate has an individual life story but no history. The former looks back to epochs preceding the French Revolution, if only because he needs to find morally justifiable models for his compulsively accommodationist strategies for survival, while the latter views the entire course of history as the story of individualization, and is not interested in periods prior to the modern age. One compulsively remembers, the other compulsively forgets. Accordingly, the language used by the one left to his fate is always personal, intimate, but not individualistic, while the language used by the one in control of his fate is invariably individualistic, yet he avoids anything that hints at intimacy or privacy. One likes to refer to tradition, the other only to what is timely. One is drawn to magic, mythic constructs, the other to intellection about myths. The diction of one is pervaded by a kind of irritating, archaic slowness, a provincial fustiness, while the other, just as irritatingly, flaunts his quickness, his facile knowledgeability and modernity. The one left to his fate finds his niche in a collective identity, the one in control of his fate finds it in an individual identity.

The communication difficulties of the two can be described fairly easily, one need only note the behaviour patterns and formulas of language behind each of the two different mentalities. It's not any more difficult than, say, remembering that Bulgarians shake their heads when they mean yes and nod when they mean no, or that the English drive on the left side of the road and pass on the right. The communication problem appears more serious, however, when we realize that the clash underlying these disparate behaviuor and speech patterns suggests not only differences in historical, cultural development and geographic location, but a larger confusion, having to do with both self-knowledge and knowledge of the world, that characterizes European culture as a whole.

It is this interrelationship that I would like to illustrate with a very simple example.

Somebody, out of simple courtesy, asks: "How are you?" The question is overused and hackneyed, of course, but never mind: behind it lies the duality of wellness and illness; the question implies not only curiosity but also the processes of cognition, control and self-control; and, depending on the nature of the response, truth and falsehood, sincerity and deception, rejection and sympathy, supposition and inference--in short, everything on which value judgments are based; everything that presupposes self-knowledge and knowledge of the world.

When two people left to their fate meet in the street and one of them, in
response to that trite question, says: "I am fine," he may cause great consternation, for his answer implies that in that wretchedness which is their lives he doesn't feel like commiserating with the other. So if these two people want to remain civil, they must describe in great detail, and outdo each other in proving, just how miserable they are. And they will do so even if they happen to feel
fine, because their collective identity, as expressed in this simple act of courtesy, demands that they do not burden each other with news of their well-being. Common courtesy requires just the opposite from two people in control of their fate. It's in their basic interest not to burden each other with their negative feelings, even if they happen not to be well. If they didn't do this, they would
impart to the other a piece of confidential information that would make it clear that they've mismanaged their fate, they have failed, they are losers, which in turn would bring into question the efficacy of the all-encompassing tenet on which their collective identity is based. In other words, the former engages in constant, compulsive acts of simulation, the latter in compulsive acts of dis-
simulation.

It shouldn't be too surprising therefore that when someone left to his fate meets someone in control of his fate, they are both shocked by the other's response to the commonplace query, for inevitably, they both get the impression that it's the other who is responsible for the breach of etiquette, even though their acts of simulation and dissimulation refer to the same thing: their fates. Yet neither one is able to recognize why, when confronted with a question of fate, he is forced to engage in acts of simulation or dissimulation. What to one seems like needless whining--for within the duality of wellness and illness he prefers the former--sounds to the other like unjustified boasting, because he prefers the negative half of the same duality. Their encounter becomes even more awkward when they try to give each other advice. That situation is a little like a confrontation between a dog eagerly wagging its tail and a cat with a stiffly upturned tail. It's inevitable that these two should pounce on each other, because what in the language of one means friendly interest, a desire to get close, in the other's language signifies mistrust and hostile intent

Until now I didn't mention, not even for the sake of simplicity, that one of these individuals could be an East European and the other a West European. Such a distinction would be justified only if the difference between the two would reside not just in their mentalities, or in the differing levels of their very similar development, in all the things that go under the heading, or are a consequence, of know-how, expertise, experience--if, in other words, I could say that we are dealing with two clearly distinguishable groups of people, who use different means to shape and rearrange their fate simply because they have different ideas as to what they should shape and rearrange. But in the case of our subjects, this, alas, is not so.

One of them knows what to shape and rearrange but lacks the technical know-how; the other has the technique but doesn't know exactly what he is shaping and rearranging with it. And for this reason it's not clear-cut differences that I see between them, but a system of distorted perceptions that stem from innate characteristics they both possess, and which they try to hide, from each other as well as the world, with acts of simulation and dissimulation, or by drawing simplistic contrasts between their geographical and political concepts.

I cannot consider it a mere coincidence that the national communities of people capable of shaping and rearranging their fate got ready to harmonize the legal and economic structures of their geographically separate existence just at the moment when systems of power aimed at universalization collapsed --systems that had rendered the life conditions of people at the mercy of their fate hopelessly unmanageable.

Perhaps what really happened was that an ideologically well-established universality had called into being an ideologically well-established separation. But this brand of separation tried to preserve within set geographical borders the same ideals--ideals it still considered universal --that the other ideology tried to spread to all nations and continents. The former separated geographically, but in its politics tried to preserve the universal appeal of its original, shared principles, while the latter lost the legitimacy of its universality, for it had to separate politically. Their remaining common characteristic is the unbridgeable gap that exists between their theory and their practice, their ideology and their actual reality--though, to be sure, one tends toward simulation, the other toward dissimulation. What became fairly clear as a result is that to create a unified Europe from the very absence of conditions needed to achieve unity, i.e., by denying the existence of a broad-based cultural community, is no less impossible than to create equality from an absence of fraternity, by denying the essential prerequisites of personal liberty.

I suspect there is a connection between the two phenomena. For the national communities of people in control of their fate did see fit to break down the boundaries of their national existence, and on the bases of political and ideological commonality create a new identity within a brand new legal and economic framework, at a time when the politically and ideologically separated communities of people abandoned to their fate had just about exhausted the economic and mental reserves they had built up while being subjected to supra-national forms of societal organization--with the result that they were no longer capable of creating a new identity for themselves. Separation had no more validity; universality had failed.

What collapsed in 1989 was not only communism's attempt to bring about, by means of aggressive expansion and by putting a premium on equality, the kind of universal liberty that at the same time denied individual liberty and therefore could not ensure fraternity among individuals, either--what also suffered a severe blow was the attempt to put into practice, at the expense of equality and fraternity and under conditions of political and geographical separation, a social order based on the primacy of individual liberty. The difference between the two appears to be great, for the collapse seems to be chiefly economic in character, while the blow appears to be political in nature. If this were really so, we could still place our hopes in the viability of at least one of these systems.

But the final account presented by a system in collapse to a system that had suffered a blow was not at all economic. It became clear, moreover, that the universalist principles preserved in geographically separate entities had also undergone change: the concept of liberty had been replaced by the concept of equal rights; the idea of equality had been supplanted by the notion of social equilibrium, and the dream of fraternity, in the practice of inevitable separation, had been totally forgotten. Precisely because their societies have become streamlined organizations run on principles of separation and reduction, the people intent on breaking down the boundaries of their national existence find it impossible to put into effect ideals they have proclaimed for forty years, and are still proclaiming--ideals the people in the Eastern part of the world would love to
finally cash in on, except that they find themselves collapsing back into limited national existence just as fast as the people of the Western world find their
universalist principles, adjusted to conditions of separation, to have become
inoperative.

Everything that happened, and keeps happening, between East and West is a sign of the failure of European culture, or at least an indication of serious disorder. And in all likelihood, the economic collapse will not be remedied on one side for the same reason that the communication problems cannot be solved by political means on the other. For what looks like an unmitigated cultural disaster from Prague and Budapest and perhaps Berlin, seems no more than a communication mix-up when seen from Zurich, Paris or Frankfurt. Whoever considers this communication mix-up a sign of cultural breakdown is really thinking in terms of fate, and whoever considers the cultural failure a mere communication mix-up is thinking in terms of technical know-how.

Fate implies at once temporality and timelessness; that which does happen as well as that which may or could happen. And the original meaning of the word technique is cunning, wile, clever know-how, artfulness--all the things that make what Clotho had spun on her spindle usable, what Lachesis measured out manageable, and what Atrapos rendered inescapable, still comprehensible. Seeing a connection between tyche and techne, a Greek, thinking along similar lines, might have said that there are things in this world that owe their origin to destiny, like the things of nature (physis), and there are things devised by human know-how (techne) and rendered useful by human understanding (nomos). But for the Greeks, nomos could never take precedence over nature, because they viewed the things of nature as being much more powerful. Similarly, it would never have occurred to them to give priority to techne over tyche, the way we do, or try to attain a true understanding of tyche, or an understanding based on skill and know-how, without being fully conscious of the power of nature.

For several thousand years the use of these overlapping twin concepts hardly changed, even though the role of destiny, in time, was taken over by divine providence. And while it's true that since about the seventeenth century there has been a significant shift in emphasis, we can still say that whether we use the word creativity, as do people in control of their fate, or inventiveness, as do people abandoned to their fate, we think more or less of the same temporality and timelessness that the Greeks had in mind when speaking of Nemesis, or the Latins when referring to Fatum. An individual arranges his affairs, now favourably, now unfavourably, but always in ways that cannot be contrived or calculated beforehand. However, it's no longer destiny appearing in the guise of things tied to nature that gets in the way of our contrivances and calculations; and neither is it divine providence that steers them in its own inscrutable way.

This shift in emphasis may be characterized as the ascendance of Nemesis over Fatum. For about three hundred years, thanks to the ideas of the En lighten ment, we have come to think of fate as that which we receive according to our deserts, or rather, owing to the notion of Bildung, that which we ought to try to shape even if it is predetermined. Before that, thanks to divine providence, we had to think in terms of a fate that was our portion, rigid and immutable. Bearing this in mind, it is perhaps easier to understand why the person who is left to his fate has to look back on epochs preceding the French Revolution, and why the person in control of his fate is more interested in what happened afterward. And it may also make more sense why the person in charge of his fate is befuddled and panic-stricken when confronted with Fatum, which he exchanged for Nemesis, and why the person left to his fate believes that personal merit is nothing more than vain self-delusion, since his life in any case is governed by Fatum. What also may become more clear now is why the greatest wish of one is a fate in the hands of Nemesis, and why the worst nightmare of the other is a fate in the hands of Fatum. This very subtle difference is only forty years old. But then, even the crucial shift in emphasis has only a three-hundred-year-old history. The movement of these period-specific ideas is also part of a thousand-year-old continuum, a tradition which has used these same ideas to distinguish itself from other traditions and cultures, and which indeed, in the name of these ideas, has forced itself on other cultures.

As far as their concept of time is concerned, there is no difference between a Westerner at the mercy of his fate and a Westerner in control of his fate. Whether he goes in for simulation or dissimulation, his problem is the same. While still eating breakfast, he would like to know what's for supper. In other words, his ideas about the future is determined by a wish that cannot be restricted to the present. So whether he believes his destiny is in the hands of Fatum or in the hands of Nemesis, he ought to possess a vision of the future, the kind neither Fatum nor Nemesis empowers him to possess.

With regard to this vision, Western culture, at the present moment, has one very general and one very specific problem.

Its general problem is that while it succeeded in widening somewhat the very narrow opening that the tyche of a city, a state, or even an entire, economically and politically integrated continent allows for human resourcefulness, wile and skill, nature retaliated, reasserting its power according to the degree and kind of technical restructuring and sophistication achieved. And technical sophistication by no means implies that the people of this culture are now in command of their fate; in fact they are far less in command than they had hoped three hundred years ago. They have forgotten about nature's power even as they succeeded in replacing divine providence with exclusively human arrangements.

And within this general context, the specific problem of the culture is that people at the mercy of their fate tend to think of Fatum when they speak of usable techniques for getting by, while people in control of their fate think of Nemesis, who portions out human lot according to individual merit.

I cannot say that man is in fact in charge of his fate and must therefore resist
the destructive elements; nor can I say that he is not in charge of his fate, and thus in his struggle with these elements can only rely on tricks and wiles. I can't even say whether level of technical sophistication is in itself a criterion of quality, though I am fully expected to say that it is. Forty years of Cold War and peaceful coexistence have only exacerbated the problem that our common culture has been dragging around unsolved for three hundred years. It is rather telling that during these three hundred years two political systems collapsed for lack of cultural coherence, and what remained in their wake is no less telling.

The fascist utopia is merely one ethnic community's idea for the future; for all other nations and ethnic groups it's a method of destruction. The communist utopia is an idea for a common future without a method. And democracies that distance themselves from two catastrophic ideas are partial to the kind of pragmatic thinking that does not yield an idea for the future, only a method. So if we speak about communication problems that make interaction difficult between those left to their fate and those in control of their fate, we might say that what we have here is disgust with utopia staring at no utopia in the face. And to offer a lack of utopia to those who are fed up with all utopias but would still like to know what to eat for supper, is at least as meaningless as to fill a blankness with disgust.

The only way to remedy the communication problem is to bear fate in mind while trying to control methodologies based exclusively on human arrangements, and to consider only those arrangements acceptable that acknowledge the primacy of nature. But if a small group of people continues to prepare for its supper by endangering everybody else's meal, then not only will the communication gap widen, the ecological crisis will worsen, too.

Ecological crisis, together with a communications breakdown, is what produces a cultural disaster.

---

Text of a talk given (in German) in 1993 to the Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft für internationalen Dialog in Frankfurt/Main, Germany.