“The Lightness of Being”

Posted on July 5, 2009

Almost any professional in communist Czechoslovakia before 1989 wanted a USA passport to be able to move freely around the world. The character of Jakub is a single psychiatrist of about 45 of age and had just received his passport to travel outside communist Czechoslovakia.

In his youth, Jakub was incarcerated for “counter revolutionary” ideology; he was accused by his best friend. This “friend” figured out that this behavior would constitute the best proof of his “orthodoxy” to the communist regime.

The friend ended up being executed 7 months later, leaving orphaned Olga, a daughter of 7 years old. Jakub was released and he kind of adopted the bright girl of his friend so that she could resume her education.

Jakub thought that he was a man of high moral standing, far above and different from the rest of his compatriotes, whom were all the same. They were, if not active assassins, then the victims were also assassins or would have behaved as assassins aiding to victimize the prisoners if asked to.

After being released from prison, Jakub asked for a lethal pill to hold on to so that he would have at least total control over his death.  His university male friend, gynecologist Skreta was willing to fabricate an alkaloid-based bleu pill and offered it to Jakub who kept it in his jacket for 15 years.

Jakub was detached of people and avoided friendships.  Skreta was one of the rare friends and Jakub visited him occasionally at a health resort. Dr. Skreta was from a poor family and an orphan; he believed that he was not into politics; he contributed to the real well being of society through research and science, but was indeed an essential part of the aparachic system. 

Skreta is the main physician in the health village where most of the customers are women staying for water cure.

Skreta has a very prominent nose; poor eye sight, and large mouth and he was inseminating his clients with his sperm; creating hundreds of “little Skreta” and making many “sterile” mothers worshiping this “miracle” physician.

The same Skreta would say “I cannot fathom why ugly parents have this urge to give birth to ugly kids.”  Skreta believed that he was living outside of justice: Justice is inhuman, blind, and cruel. 

Skreta said “I would never collaborate with this repugnant power of justice” simply because there was no control on physician practices through human rights demands.

There is this discussion on motherhood and babyhood. Jakub cannot believe that many men would marry a woman they do not love, simply because they impregnated her to share the responsibility of raising a baby.

He said that those men would behave as defeated fathers and would turn mean as any defeated person who would wish the same suffering for the rest of humanity. Jakub is explaining the reasons why he is against marriages for procreation reasons.

First, Jakub does not like maternity; childhood is no longer the age of innocence; maternity is the biggest tabou that handles the gravest of malediction because it chains kids and mother and guarantees the crulest of suffering when falling in love with other people.

Second, he said “I love the body of women and I get disgusted when it is disfigured after pregnancy”. 

Third, physicians and nurses treat women who miscarry very badly out of naturel reaction to the cult of procreation. 

Fourth, “to which world would I send my offspring? To schools that would stuff brains with conformist ideas? Or will I teach him my own ideas and led him to suffer the same consequences as mine?” resume Jakub. 

Fifth, in this country , offspring suffer from the malediction of the disobedience of their parents to State ideology.  Most parents accepted to be cowed down just to protect their kids from persecution.  Thus, if you need to conserve some liberty of action and opinion then you should refrain from procreating.

Sixth, if I give birth then I am sending the strong message that life is good and merit to be repeated; a conviction that I lean to the contrary.

Skreta replied “You don’t like life because you didn’t experience real life. You were too focused on politics. Politics is the least essencial and the least precious in human activities. Politics is the dirty foam on the surface of rivers where life is hidden in the profound depth. Scientists and practitioners did far more to real life and the transformation of man than politics did.”

Jakub answered “Politics has been the main scientific laboratory for studying human behavior as cobayes. Politics does not create value but it teaches about human condition and moral limitations.  You learn that if you want to go on, you must forget and forgive because you are no better than another person under the same situations.”

In Kundera’s novels, sexual relationships are no solutions for changing social status or behavior.  The “lightness of being” reduces man to be constantly an object and not the subject matter as propaganda would like people to believe.

Note: (My impression is that the theme of human “conscience” is religious based.  It is the infusion of the existence of a Creator governing our behavior and rewarding/punishing our deeds that constitute the main defensive line against man natural tendencies for criminal acts.

Without this infused concept of conscience, if you give man an arm that kills at distance and he would kill without much regret anyone in isolated and discreet locations. 

Man finds it very difficult to kill at close range (body contact) and looking his victim in the eyes; man would not kill with witnesses around because he would be the next target for assasination by the witnesses in a world void of conscious. 

Without conscience, law and order procedures would be completely inefficient.  If communism survived for so long after abolishing religious rituals and clergies it is because religious faith survived implicitly in society. Actually, communism was an alternative religion, structured as a religion)