THE Czech philosopher, Václav Havel (1936–2011), rejected Jean-Paul Sartre’s mish-mash of existentialised communism in favour of a more authentic form of phenomenology and had a very interesting way of interpreting life under Soviet occupation.

Regularly victimised by the Red regime that ruled what was then known as Czechoslovakia until 1989, Havel discussed ways of conducting oneself under such repressive circumstances and, in one particular example, said that even if a dissident greengrocer was instructed to put a communist sign in his shop window and neither he nor his customers gave a damn about the slogan or what it stood for, people still had a duty to prevent the unconscious endorsement of a system in which independent thought and personal responsibility is constantly being eaten away. In other words, he argued,

“people simultaneously suffer from the system and perpetuate it, while telling themselves that none of it matters.”

This structure of complicit banality runs from the very bottom of society all the way up to the top and ensures that people remain in a state of enslavement. Havel’s solution to this state of affairs, therefore, was for people to concentrate on what is actually real and authentic by making an attempt to see what is right before their eyes. This, after all, is the classic phenomenologistic method.

Such thoughts also contain important ramifications for modern European society, too, because if people continue to suppress or ignore those things which they regard as either disagreeable or inconsequential – i.e. mass immigration, usury and political corruption, to name just three – the daily illusion of identifying oneself with a contrived and transient system based on control and domination, however subtle and inadvertent, must eventually be replaced by an authentic experience based on what is actually real and meaningful.

Sadly, when Havel became the first post-communist leader of his country, his proposed ‘existentialist overhaul’ never materialised. Nonetheless, I hope these thoughts will convince some of you that simply turning a blind eye to things like media brainwashing, political correctness and academic obfuscation is not enough to stem their debilitating, long-term effects. Wherever one finds resignation and disinterestedness, therefore, one also finds collusion and tacit acceptance.

Let me give you just one small example of how to start thinking in a different way. Although some people find it amusing whenever Christians ask what Jesus “would have done” in certain situations, this is really a practical application of phenomenology and denotes a profound ability to look at things in a detached manner. I often use the same approach when I stop to consider how people are living today and how they are really supposed to live. Not those based in modern societies, necessarily, but people who live or have lived in tribal communities. That, after all, is the natural and organic state of humankind but most people still find it impossible to see the wood for the trees. The need to think outside of the box has never become so urgent.