Dr Vladimir Kostić, Ph.D. neurologist, university professor and academic

In my father’s village, only the teachers were called “sir”. We today pay them poorly, underappreciate them, and sometimes even beat them – they are beaten by us or our poorly raised children if they don’t go out of their way to satisfy our parental nonsense. Are we approaching the point at which only masochists will be interested in teaching our children and youth? ~ Vladimir Kostić

The educational system requires radical transformation, says neurologist, university professor, former member of the National Council for Higher Education and former president of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts Vladimir Kostić, speaking in this interview for CorD Magazine. According to our interlocutor, any debate on this important topic should start by answering the question “are we even interested in the future?”, and what kind of role education is intended to play at this time “when knowledge and intellectual work are disappearing like other “quasi-values”, consigned to the margins of the sentimental enlightenment epoch and towards which even the “market” is becoming disinterested. Addressing the lack of discussion of important social issues in Serbia – not only education, professor Kostić notes that “the government, which perceives any disagreement and difference of opinion as interference in its own prohibition, is highly unlikely to agree to a debate.”

In Serbia, which is considered a very divided society, there has been an announcement of a dialogue on the vital issue of mining, given Serbia’s new reserves of so-called critical materials, including lithium. Do you believe it’s possible to have a real debate and to reach a decision that’s in the interest of citizens?

— Unfortunately not. Although I was taught that two parallel lines will nonetheless come together in infinity, a radical divergence and mistrust has emerged between those two lines (if there are only two?), many dreadful and unforgivable condemnations and lies, finally arresting and detaining those from “broken gangs”. If we also initiate mutual conversations, they shouldn’t be limited to discussing “lithium mining”, as a relevant quo rum can’t be achieved through detainment – the dialogue only makes sense if entered into voluntarily. And that’s why I’m sceptical.

One of the ruling party’s well-known figures (frankly, well-known for having switched parties), appeals to citizens from the “small screen” to also trust their leader unconditionally on this issue. That is interesting, because, at the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, unquestionable faith is being offered (the inquisition comes later, when cracks appear) in a place where it is necessary to critically assess everyone’s opinion, including one’s own. Along these lines, one ministry instructs indubitable acting and artistic greats not to meddle in their own fears and dilemmas, not to advertise themselves (which we have the right to do even when wrong). It is its choice to recite other people’s songs in performances, and they will take care of us and everything else.

To be honest, similar advice was given during the period of some other governments and is a certain recipe for immobilising society or, for me not to be a doctor in this interview, for putting a plaster cast on society, with the advice to rest up.

On the other side, the opposition or potential opposition side, I unfortunately see a grotesque blossoming of an imposed and lengthy anti-political campaign with the simple mantra “all parties are the same, and therefore the worst”. With the possibility of being sorely mistaken, I see this as a self-harming boomerang shot, as I’m sceptical that such political and ideological heterogeneity of dissatisfied social groups could find a solution at some “Cossack Assembly”. Finally, if I were in power and wanted to hold on to it at all costs, this “anti-partisanship” philosophy would suit me perfectly. Thankfully, I’m not!

During the most comprehensive discussion on mining to date, organised by SANU while you were its president, we heard warnings that decisions on new undertakings in this area must also consider health ramifications, apart from economic calculations, by gauging the consequences of this kind of economic growth on the health of people in Serbia, who are threatened by numerous factors. Is the issue of the nation’s health understated or overexaggerated?

— As you’ve mentioned that meeting, I must emphasise that we tried to invite all relevant parties to attend, with the idea of firstly posing the right questions and possibly receiving, among other things, the right answers from the interested company. We didn’t receive a series of answers, so the questions logically multiplied.

We realise slowly and with terror that social media platforms, naively perceived as electronic marketplaces, are commonly used as instruments to recruit likeminded people and some unclear and insufficiently understood evil

When discussing resources, with a demographic situation that’s critical at both the regional level and across the majority of Europe, during years when ever fewer pupils are being enrolled in year one of primary school, departures from the country mean that people are also becoming an increasingly limited resource in our country. In this case, the health of the nation, to use that jolting term, should be placed on the pedestal of general interests, and healthcare and medical protection should be treated as a highly cumulative branch of production. Because that’s what it is, in its own indirect way.

You’ve stated that we live is a hectic time in which the priority is to “get the job done”; a time characterised by the hyperproduction of information, on the one hand, with a lack of critical thinking and introspection on the other. One could say that we are successfully “climbing the slopes of artificial intelligence”, as you once noted. Do you fear that kind of future?

— I’m personally only able to fear the near future.

We were fascinated when we received weekly reports on our phones about our own movements or the places where we’d spent an hour or two – and then we came to the slow realisation that this wasn’t so innocent; that our privacy was being seriously limited and that we were ultimately being monitored (feel free to dub that paranoia). They recognise our faces even when we wear masks. Recently, at the airport in Frankfurt, where my wife and I were trying to find an alternative for a lost flight, we were only able to communicate with an intelligent machine.

In response to us noting that the proposed new flight was logically nonsensical given the explanations we’d provided, we received a fantastic response: “Please, if you could address us using shorter sentences!” I instantly realised that we’d found a weapon: against the machine, use loquaciousness and long, flattering sentences, and not rage (at least for a while). Perhaps even poetry.

A sentence remained imprinted in my memory from the conversation between Umberto Eco and Carrière: “Is the abundance of information showered on us by the internet every day not just a cover for a loss of meaning?” Unchecked data, half-truths and lies stand side by side with reliable facts. There is no established hierarchy among them… Apart from this, we are also coming to the slow realisation of the planetary ruse that information (whether accurate or not) isn’t the same as knowledge. That’s why these authors believe that proper culture represents a long process of selection and triage. But the genie has been let out of the bottle. We realise slowly and with terror that social media platforms, naively perceived as electronic marketplaces, are commonly used as instruments to recruit like-minded people and some unclear and insufficiently understood evil. Is that evil inherent in man, in the same way that we’ve long believed that he is inherently good? I don’t know! But I have a feeling that he won’t surrender.

You stated something in one interview that could resemble a diagnosis of society: “Deep into middle-age on average, we embrace opportunism and life passes us by like on some tedious carousel – we spin round in a circle to exhaustion. We’ve convinced ourselves that we deserve for the future to be delivered to our address by someone else… some delivery service”. Does a cure for such a condition exist?

— As I answer this question, I just happen to be turning in my hand my “lifetime public transport pass” – I suppose the City Public Transport company has also determined that, considering my Survival prospects, that won’t be an excessive expense. And with this question you, as an outstanding journalist, are actually indirectly interested in whether a 70-year-old has a “lifetime public opinion pass”. I don’t and shouldn’t have one, because like all dinosaurs (perhaps it would be more apt to identify me with some smaller and less significant reptile) I am ever less able to handle the environment and time in which I live. Presumably with age, most people accept the motto “just for it not to get worse” (and it will!). I get particularly annoyed by my peers who have a keen desire to teach younger people how to position themselves regarding the emerging future, using antiquated and shabby associations and comparisons, as if they’ve already lived in that future. I don’t have anything to say to those younger than me, except maybe: “Be braver and more decisive”, though even in that case I’m not sure that suggestion doesn’t hide a more sincere message: “However you’re able, avoid being like us, your passionate advisors!”. That is one possible cure.

Every summer for many years, following university entrance exams, we hear the same statement: that there’s ever less interest among young people in studying their native language, mathematics, biology, chemistry… In one public appeal proposing the Platform for preserving the education system, University of Belgrade professors state that the system is “seriously violated and shaken to its core”. Do you see a way to make education an actual state priority, and not merely a declarative one?

— Aristotle allegedly said “if there are no shoemakers, Athenians will go barefoot; and if there are no teachers, there will be no Athenians”. But it’s as though we missed that point. At the last SANU symposium on all levels of education in Serbia, there was a presenting of numerical data that would lead a decent person to at least serious concern, if not despair. And let’s not fool ourselves: this isn’t about us preserving the system, but about us reforming it radically. The government, which perceives any disagreement and difference of opinion as interference in its own prohibition, is highly unlikely to agree to a debate. I’m afraid that there are also many who have reached their positions without previously exerting educational efforts – why would such people be interested in something that proved neither essential nor necessary in their own sharp trajectories of advancement?

And, just so it doesn’t turn out that I’m only blaming the government, when several colleagues, including me, resigned as members of the National Council for Higher Education in disagreement over the new Law on Higher Education, no one asked why we did so, believe it or not. In my father’s village, only the teachers were called “sir” (one of them deserves the most credit for my family’s educational emancipation). We today pay teachers poorly, underappreciate them, and sometimes even beat them – they are beaten by us or our poorly raised children if they don’t go out of their way to satisfy our parental nonsense. Are we approaching the point at which only masochists will be interested in teaching our children and youth? I would reiterate that a debate on reform is essential, but at this time when knowledge and intellectual work are disappearing like other “quasi-values”, consigned to the margins of the sentimental enlightenment epoch and towards which even the “market” is becoming disinterested, is it even clear to ourselves what role is intended for us? And are we even interested in the future?

ProGlas, which you co-initiated, was presented as a call for society to become more actively engaged in discussing important issues. It nevertheless seems as though the public expects an answer to the question of whether ProGlas is a new political option or part of an existing one. What do you think the future of ProGlas should be?

— Firstly, politics is a job that’s too important to be left to politicians alone, and that would be one of the key axioms from which we generally launched the story of ProGlas. No, ProGlas isn’t a new political option in the narrow sense of the word – in the end, we don’t have identical stances on all issues (that was finally seen recently). On the contrary! We aren’t even hierarchically structured – ProGlas has no “boss”. To the question of whether we’re part of an existing political option, the answer is again “no”, though there have been matchmakers and even those who claimed to know what stood behind our “alleged” independence. I don’t know if anyone from the ranks of ProGlas has even shown indirect interest in any functions or gains. If, hypothetically some of us “succumbed” to such temptations, I’m afraid that would spell the end of ProGlas.

We don’t see that Europe also suffers (and doesn’t know how to handle those migraines) from the same plagues that torment us: hypocrisy, democratic deficit, countless differences (which are called advantages in celebratory speeches), the lack of a common identity, old political resentments, migrations etc.

I see the future as a tenacious effort to encourage civic participation, to explain to our fellow citizens that they are obliged (and don’t only have the right) to consider their own lives and future, and to fight for them. Communication with a wider network of civil movements and initiatives will be a particularly delicate challenge, but I’m of the personal opinion that there’s no substitute for this type of undoubtedly important engagement and organisation, nor some kind of imposed simulacrum of political life, in which parties undoubtedly play the most important, key role. Finally, it will be a challenge to overcome the duality between what I would call an enlightening mission, with an awareness of the pretentiousness of such a self-proclaimed role, and the unwanted tribune role, which we are often cunningly directed towards, or which is naively demanded of us.

EU relations are among the issues proving the division of our society, and conversations on this topic most often shift between apologetics and complete denial. How do you think the EU and the European integration process should be viewed from Serbia’s perspective at this juncture?

— It should be viewed in large part as an issue of testing reality. Our relationship with Europe (and we are part of it whether we, or they, want that or not) is an issue of geography, and geography is our destiny. We aren’t a rowing boat that accidentally ended up in a preposterous harbour, then – feeling dissatisfied with the time spent in the harbour – sits in the boat again and rows towards more promising meridians. This persistent and often irrational denigration of Europe has lasted for a long time (because, as we know, they’re “all against us”) and then I recall Zmaj’s verses “Europe, harlots”. We present Europe as some kind of compact, homogeneous threat, and that’s somethings it’s never been (homogeneous). We have to find our own place on our own continent – instead of that our mouths are full of things in which we’re the only ones, the last ones etc. etc., naturally in the shadow of unquestionable moral correctness, among stumbling neighbours.

We don’t see that Europe also suffers (and doesn’t know how to handle those migraines) from the same plagues that torment us: hypocrisy, democratic deficit, countless differences (which are called advantages in celebratory speeches), the lack of a common identity, old political resentments, migrations etc. With such an absence of a shared identity, one sinks into artificial self-determination by excluding others who “aren’t like us” (and what kind is that?). In this unfortunate juncture of global confusion, on both sides, we all seem to be opting for “xenophobic distinction”, which could prove fatal for us, given how few of us there are.

I also saw as ominous the most recent visit of European powerbrokers and bureaucrats, who were joined – in truth only through an announcement – by an official from across the Atlantic, who in all of Serbia see only lithium. I wondered whether it’s possible that they are also so arrogant. I can’t remember the name of whoever referred to such “intense diplomatic efforts” as the “skilful and nasty smoking out of bees”. Finally, stupidity – that invincible constant of human civilisation – is today exclusively a privilege of the powerful, while we need wisdom like never before.

An impression has been created among part of the public whereby “European” and “national” are seen as being mutually exclusive. Do you think resolving to have a future in the EU must go “hand in hand” with the acceptance of Kosovo’s independence, under the conditions dictated by the ongoing dialogue and agreements reached under the scope of that dialogue?

— The first dilemma was over whether “national” and “democratic” are mutually exclusive, while now that’s applied to “national” and “European”. In both of these dichotomies, exclusivity occurs when either endpoint malignantly hypertrophies to the extent at which there’s no room for anything else. It doesn’t matter whether that’s our ritual nationalism or the sleepwalking of those who only see Europe through the imaginary contours of a non-existent Camelot. Nothing has to go hand in hand, if we reach agreement. But when it comes to the dialogue that you mention, and the agreements that may or may not have been reached, I know nothing or, more precisely, almost nothing. Like most citizens of this country! Finally, and feel free to call it demagoguery, instead of “recognising” or “granting” independence, we should today prioritise the public formulating of a way to protect our fellow citizens in Kosovo. They have been held hostage by general hypocrisy for far too long.