To write about these three psychosomatic characteristics means to conceptualize a word for only one condition which is called according to the Church-Slavonic term "ununie". These three concepts are undoubtedly interrelated and so intertwined that they represent an underlying phenomenon of everyday behavior. Behavior that is not characterized exclusively as individual behavior, but can even be associated with the social behavior of a represenative group of people and even a nation. This is exactly where we Macedonians are located. In our case as a nation, and because we are the leading and most numerous group in Macedonia, we obviously have a direct influence on the behavior of the entire Macedonian nation.
We should start this messsage with the term “hate”. I will not write about the meaning, because you can interpret it yourself without special scientific-professional consultation. I am talking about hatred being our national sport. And who is it that “hates?” This collective emotion is most often found among the ones who are the most frustrated. Frustration, happens as the result of unfulfilled ideas, desires and goals. Well, now, where are we as a people and a nation here? According to what we show in our actions, I will say that the people are filled with frustrations. Frustrations towards everyone, but in reality mostly towards themselves. Well, how were we not like some other neighboring nations? Why is it that we didn't stick together like the neighbors did? Why don’t we exalt our national and popular leaders like they do? Why wasn’t a state created in the 19th century or at least at the very beginning of the 20th, so that Macedonia was complete and whole. I find it very interesting that the psychological state of a nation strongly reflects on the social discourse and general behavior of the masses.
Namely, in order for a person-individual (as the nation is collectively made up of individuals) not to become frustrated and to rid the body politic of hatred, it must be necessary to have grown up on healthy foundations. It is best for a person to have been nurtured and to have grown into adulthood, within a healthy social environment. It is best to have formed a clean and healthy worldview with ethical and social norms that one will pass on to succeeding generations. And of course, it is inevitable that one acquired a normal and quality general education. This is the way to create healthy generations, useful citizens for the state and for its people. In this way, a normal civil consciousness is created. One that is not half-hearted, clientelistic and conformist and is ready to fight for civil, human, social, economic and above all national rights, and not for its personal comforts and delights.
Today, we actively and everywhere hate Albanians and Bulgarians, some of these people are our own fellow citizens. Before them, we hated the Greeks. However, since we vacation in Greece, we are indifferent to the extent that we forgot about their Byzantine cunning and persistence. Which is why after 30 years they managed to find a sucker who changed the name of our state and nation. For this we are not angry with the one who has been exploited or with ourselves. Instead, we misdirect our anger toward the USA and the EU. This is done completely without reason and in a discourse of public opinion created by the political oligarchy connected to the other centers of power. At one time, we also hated the Serbs. However, today we are really in love with them. All these loves and hates are not the result of our own civil consciousness or historical memory and experiences. They are just the result of the current and periodically created social-psychological conditions heaped on the Macedonian people by the media- oligarchic-political structure that rules our lives. Especially during the last thirty or so years. We are ready to have hatred for everyone and everything, pointedly between ourselves. We especially hate those who show a different social, political, civil thought about national or other socio-political issues. Especially, to those who are not marching in step with the wants and needs of the political oligarchy. At the same time, illiteracy, delusion, obedience and, of course, our readiness for discussion with arguments are expressed. Precisely if such a discussion occurs and the arguments support the other side then that person becomes a hated opponent as well as the arguments themselves. This is why it is difficult for us to make a historical retrospective of many events of Macedonian history. To not only look at them objectively and realistically from this distance in time, but also to understand them, and not to open the “disputed” parts of history.
That is why it is difficult for us to understand our Macedonian actors: those members of the Macedonian Divine Academy and their struggle for Macedonia during their lifetimes. Hate as a behavior occupies us so much that we become inactive in practice. We are inactive in social and political life, and even in our own lives. We wait for someone else to tell us what to do or worse, for that someone else to do our work or thinking for us. It is essentially a “a boiled frog done in the Macedonian way”. If we look back at our revivalists, we will see that in a state when they didn't have their own state, they did not even have their own education and church. Yet, they had a strong spirit and led an irreconcilable church-citizen struggle against the spiritual slavery imposed by Fanar. In no way should we recreate the experiences of St. Joakim Krchoski, or St. Kiril Pejcinovic who, even under death threats from the Phanariots, did not stop their activity and were supported by the people. Today, we have an autocephalous Macedonian Orthodox Church-Ohrid Archdiocese. Yet, we are in no position to reorganize the Church as a true autocephalous church, equal to all others. A church that, as a Macedonian nation, will represent us in a dignified and stable way in front of all the others in the Orthodox Ecumene. It is an unprecedented inactivity of the Synod (honor of exceptions) supplemented by hedonism, which is constantly waiting for an initiative for activity from outside or from “another.” Is it so difficult for the Synod of the MOC-OA to start direct talks and cooperation with the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the Albanian Orthodox Church? Today, we definitely need this kind of cooperation in many fields. But not before all of the departments and the way of social and educational activity of MOC-OA is effectively reorganized.
Civic inaction in the field of education and waiting for the “ministry” to arrange things for us without having our own opinion on how our children, our future, should be educated, is a glaring example of inaction that costs us dearly. We continue to neglect our future generations. Without ideas, as a reslt of inactivity, the development of the Macedonian people, the nation and the state come to a halt. In this standstill, we constantly expect the political parties to call us to some kind of activity. Of course, they will call us. But only when they need to show some political strength, and then only in their interest of the “godly leaders”. The people of the country will go out for a walk and shout and chant. Not out of foresight or as a result of some well-crafted plan. But out of personal interest, as hardened selfish individualists. Unfortunately, they will also be motivated go out of hatred for someone or something, and not for broader social or national interests. Then they will again go back to being inactive, and they will hate even the one at whose call they answered. Because the one who called them to “action” does not have the quick result they desired. And once again, here comes more frustration and deeper hatred. We are once again in the pot in which the frog is boiled in the Macedonian way. Once again, the media-oligarchic-political tumult will stoke the coals of the fire.
The result is a descent into apathy. Nothing can be changed, someone else has to do it. Why me? The bosses of the parties, the bosses of the state, and now the USA and the EU are to blame and so on, and so on, indefinitely. We should have to never ask ourselves, who is the boss of the state? Who is the sovereign? Who is the boss of the party? Which members make up that party? Who allocates for the local self-government and for the state? Most importantly, from who should we demand an account. That apathy and inactivity cannot be sustained by the spirit of our young people who want to keep up with modern times, with their peers in the USA and Europe. That is why they leave. The reality is that when they leave, they have no intention of returning, because in the countries where they are going, civil awareness dominates expressed with modern European terminology. These are orderly and stable democracies. The perceived image of Macedonia for their native land, for their and our Macedonia, remains as an image of a dark Balkan alley in which there is only hatred, inactivity, and apathy. The life of a man, and through him the life of the people, should be purposeful, spiritual, and beneficial. Beneficial does not mean the realization of personal lucrative goals. We are part of a greater community, the Macedonian people, not just individuals who only eat and produce… Hatred, which transforms us into the inactive and ultimately gives birth to apathy, does not represent a meaningful – orderly order of life (personal and social) through which we would organize the state. There is no orderly state without meaningfulness and a clear goal as a national project for a long period.
In the end, one comes to an essential conclusion for the Macedonian people. That above all else: Hatred, inactivity and apathy are among the most serious issues with which we live with". After all, we do not live in that nonsense. It is a half-world in which we wander not only as a nation, but each one individually. Those who are “led” by the politically blind, hypocritical, and lucrative people under a thousand masks.
The result of living in meaninglessness is fear. The existing fear of the meaninglessness of life, of the future that is not there and that is already over. That fear can be stronger than death. Certainly for those who know the essence and fruits of meaninglessness. For others, it is an imperceptible passage of time in such a half-world in which they feel no weight, no responsibility, and no concern. Therefore, the result is inactivity and apathy. After all, what should a person worry about if everything is pointless? Believe that in our Macedonia there are still enough Macedonians who are fully aware of the senselessness in which we exist as a nation. Or, filled with hatred and apathy, paralyzed for any activity, with anger at ourselves and intense frustrations, we rush towards our national doom. Who would perish for the senselessness of what is done in hatred, not only to ourselves, but even more to our future generations. A hate crime without the slightest conscience. Only an endless despondency, an endless meaninglessness, and with despondency there is no salvation. There is no salvation neither for us nor for future generations of Macedonians. Why are there no guards in the Macedonian part of hell?
Oliver Andonov