Romania is becoming culturally sterile!

Many of you, the ones that don’t live in Romania, may find hard to digest the things that are about to be said here. The title is quite suggestive but it does not make much sense from a sociological perspective, every human society has a culture.

By culture I’m not referring to something elevated or high class by any means, but rather, all the behaviors, norms and material objects that the members of a society created as result of internal interaction(between the society’s members) and external interaction (with other groups/societies, natural environment).

 With that being said, I want to come back to Romania; our country has an interesting history of cultural evolution which is the foundation for the cultural anomalies that Romanians are struggling with today. I will list some of the top historical and social characteristics which eventually turned Romania in to a container filled with residual culture:

Major cultural discontinuities - We can see a historical pattern that consists of one regime trying to totally erase the marks which were left by the one that it was prior to it. On the long term this creates a lot of confusion at a social level because of the ruling’s side tendency to outlook or even ignore the accomplishments on the political power that was present prior to them, and they actually tried to destroy every sing left. This will dictate the idea that an achievement is legitimized only by the power that a party holds and not being analyzed from the perspective of its social contributions.

To all so growing influence of residual culture –  Romania still holds a lot of residual cultural elements in its mainstream culture, by residual cultural elements I am referring to those cultural aspects which were linked to a another historic period and which are not sustained by the social environment of the current society. Even more, they actually have no actual function left, and there present form does not match their original form anymore; it also should be mentioned that they usage inhibits social progress.

Symbols and disapproval towards substance and functions – People are more interested in getting diplomas then the knowledge which is associated with a certain degree. This is a result of the fact that of the distortion of the connection between receiving a title/social status and the work and efforts that it was backed up by.

A violent change of social status which was not backed up by worthiness – It can be connected to the previous point, a lack of a gradual transition from an inferior social status to a superior one which would be backed up by an effort and a struggle.

Artificial elements which characterize our national culture- Major lies and disconnection within our national history, the sovietization of the country brought with it a lot of culture elements that were unknown to the people here. Here we can talk about Romania – a soviet alike state, and Romania the Kingdom – an agricultural nation with a multicultural environment.

A national culture which is obsessively Romanian-centric and which lacks s wider perspective – A result of the over nationalistic perspective of Romanian identity and culture which was constructed by the communists to legitimize the superiority of the nation and of their ideologies.

A misuse of notions as a result of a very low education level – Connected with the affinity towards symbols and a lack of interest towards pragmatism.

Functional illiteracy – A result of a dysfunctional educational system and of the poverty which dominates the majority of social layers.

Making the social statuses a primary purpose - And not being conscious of the social expectations that are associated with them.

The general lack of interest that they youth has towards social issues – A result of a fucked up educational system which dictates and does not let people have opinions or freely think, and of the authoritarian and distant type of parenting which many Romanians find as desirable.

A social environment which is anti-success – Songs which sympathize and glorify the idea of poverty; a constant need to compare yourself with others when it comes to success and to create your idea of success from there.

The late and chaotic urbanization of the nation.

The rural essence of our national culture – conservative, traditionalistic, patriarchal, homophobic, inclined towards socialism, restrictive, lack of education.

The glorification of the stupidity of the people which live in the country side and promoting the idea that they can detain “ancestral knowledge” – a myth which was perpetuated as a result of the communist’s glorification of the inferior social classes; it can be linked to a certain extent to the idea of the “wisdom of the old” but it does not match perfectly because there we are talking about an agent and here about a social class.