Generations

On Macedonia’s 33rd birthday as a modern-day nation-state

Happy Independence Day, Macedonia!  It’s been 33 years since that beautiful day on September 8, 1991, when Macedonians asserted their right to form an independent modern-day nation-state.  It hasn’t been easy, and the work never ends, but take this one day (or, since it’s a weekend, several) to reflect.

What you have built up to this point in time is not just your own work, your own doing.  Macedonia has been built by those before you.  And it will continue to be built by those who come after you.  And it is up to you – the current generation – to make certain that both of those other generations – those who came before you and those who will come after you – get a vote in what you do today and tomorrow.  Your ancestors and those who have yet to be born get a voice in the governance of today.

The Anglo-Irish statesman and member of the British parliament Edmund Burke (1729-1797), famously wrote in “Reflections on the Revolution in France,” that there is a contract between generations writing “Society is indeed a contract … The state … is … a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”  In other words, each current generation is responsible for those past and those yet to come.

If this is true – and I think upon reflection any thinking individual must come to that conclusion – then the generations of Macedonians who have passed on, combined with the generations of Macedonians yet to be born – also have a vote in what direction Macedonia takes.  Now, this does not mean that we must live tied down to the past or daydream about the future. But we need to consider both.

Let’s start with the past, those who have come before us.  They bequeathed to us traditions and I know, from my nearly 30 years in and with Macedonia, that Macedonians have a love of tradition. And, as economist and writer Russ Roberts notes about tradition “Sometimes old-fashioned beats cutting-edge.” American-born, but British citizen T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) contributed a great deal on the subject of tradition to the political consciousness and as the late English philosopher and writer Roger Scruton (1944-2020) writes on Eliot’s thought of tradition, “….tradition is a living thing, and just as each writer is judged in terms of those who went before, so does the meaning of tradition change, as new works are added to it.” In other words, we continue our traditions, even though we add to them as time goes by.

Traditions are a part of our culture and “the purpose of culture,” to continue quoting Scruton, “is to retain that elusive thing called sensibility: the habit of right feeling.  Barbarism ensues, not because people have lost their skills and scientific knowledge; nor is it averted by retaining those things. Barbarism comes through a loss of culture, since it is only through culture that the important realities can be truly perceived.”

So, to recap at this point, those who have gone before us gave us tradition, which is part of culture, and culture is necessary for sensibility or right feeling or right living and necessary in order to avoid, not just barbarism, but the breakdown of society.

Again, Scruton: “And, Burke implied, it is only those who listen to the dead who are fit guardians of the unborn….The most important thing that future generations must inherit from us is culture. Culture is the repository of an experience which is at once local and placeless, present and timeless, the experience of a community sanctified by time.  This we pass on, only if we, too, inherit it.  And, therefore, we must listen to the voices of the dead.”   

Are you listening to the voice of the past, of the dead?  They fought, and sacrificed, and bled, and died for Macedonia so that the generations after them – including yours today – could continue on with their traditions and culture and pass it all on to the next generation, the generations of the unborn so that, in time, those unborn generations will pass on to even more future generations what they have inherited from you, this present generation.

Happy Independence Day, Macedonia, and for many years to come!