Václav Havel (1936–2011)

Vaclav Havel's essay, titled 'The Power of the Powerless,' is a powerful piece of writing on the unequal relationship between a dictatorial regime and its citizens, who are stripped of their strength.
I read the essay in one sitting, so I confess every lesson did not sink in. However, while reading the book on my Kindle, I visited Amazon's website and bought the print edition. This book offers invaluable lessons, so I got a paperback copy as a reference for my future writing.
Vaclav Havel's writing style is direct, assertive, spare, and accessible to everyone, unlike academic writing, which uses one hundred convoluted words where one will suffice.
He started the book by comparing traditional dictatorship, which relies on force, to modern totalitarianism, relying on force, persuasion, and 'thought control.' Even though he did not reference George Orwell's book, '1984,' you will discern shades of the dystopian novel's lessons in this excellent essay.
Timothy Snyder's excellent introduction is a helpful bonus and sets the stage for Vaclav Havel to take over and speak in his voice. I recommend reading the introduction (many people avoid reading the introduction) because Timothy highlights a few critical spots in the book. For instance, when Vaclav Havel writes about consumerism, the reader can relate his concerns to the rampant growth of destructive consumerism and its havoc in society. When he wrote about the insidious influence of media (the internet was not then the force it is now), you ought to relate it to how politicians, businesspeople, and anarchists use the net to spread their messages.
I am unfamiliar with Czech history, so I confess to being bemused when he used examples of Czech politics or when he wrote about Russian interference in his country. However, don't let this bog you down: relate the lessons in the essay to what is happening in your country.
If you are merely curious, buy the Kindle version, and if you wish to reference the book, buy the print edition.… (more)

As a person continuously humiliated by mental torment, when with my mind deprived of privacy (as in -voices), deprived of freedom (as in - obsessive compulsive thinking), I found the same values that Havel found in dissidents whose inner truth did not allow to compromise with living a lie. Of course one should not compare a mentally ill person to a dissident, but often dissidents in Soviet Russia were branded as 'mentally ill' and stuffed psychiatric drugs (Haloperidol et al) to destroy their intellectual capacities. Years later, when my situation got stable, I found that after a human being is stripped of everything - pride, dignity, valor, merit, he discovers what remains - pure ideas, whether it be freedom, love, nobility, responsibility, compassion, commitment. These and other ideas are the exit from the Platonic cave. They become a measuring rod of everything around, they make us reach for the humane and the Divine. This is the pre-political, the state of genuine humaneness which is difficult to define, but a person consious enough knows when it is lacking. Havel's work is a super-structure in which the main theme - the pre-political in the humane is equally valid and timelessly important in the modern post-democratic times. It is very important to bear in mind what is it that defines this humaneness, and where exactly we turn into political cyborgs, in a delayed notion of collapse of the human spirit into a wretched digital manipulation of the cognitive cybernetics of mass media and power structures and 'system of rule' of the modern age, that by the means of inverted totalitarianism introduces exactly the notions of post-totalitarian rule, yet in reverse - leading back to totalitarianism by slow, hidden steps, in bright-daylight and a reshuffled sense of concepts of a different economic order.… (more)

I'll preface by stating that I revere Vaclav Havel, an astoundingly courageous & brilliant playwright, writer, revolutionary and finally, after degradation & imprisonment, President of his country.

This book is a selection of speeches he made after becoming Czech President, but these speeches are more than exhortations. They are clear, insightful statements of what political & moral acts should be, and how to accomplish them.

Oh, would that each country contained one person of his character & capabilities.… (more)