List of gratitudes 2020

 This year was hard for everyone. For many of us from the first world (EU, USA but not only) this was the worst year since 1990.  However, in a longue durée historical perspective, it is obviously not even comparable to the most terrible years of the 20th century (1914-1918, 1939-1945 and many more, even in the 1990's for some countries). Our society was living in such a beautiful, calm and luxurious abundency, that we lost our connection with the reality of nature, the reality of life and the proximity of death. The reaction of the human race for this pandemic - not the first and not even the last one we face - was unusual and odd: on one hand it proved that we are now fully a global society, a unified homo sapiens  which resonates as one in deep crises too. It proved also, that science, politics and the new industry (industrial revolution 4.0) are strongly working together in a symbiosis where one can hardly separate the opinion of a politician, a specialist and an industrialist. This pandemic - although far from being the most severe and most dangerous in the last 100 years - provoked unprecedented changes in human history, which necessity will be put on the ballance of history in the future. We will see, if this paradigmatic year will change indeed the evolution of the homo sapiens and its relation with planet Earth. It is rare in history to have a great comet and the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction too in the same year: that would have been a clear sign for ancient societies that this year was a very, very unusual one. 

On a much more micro-level, the society was atomized, deconstructed, individualised, isolated and virtualised or digitized. Our feelings and interpersonal relations were transformed into digital zoom, google meets, teams and skype meetings. It was a hard year for everyone, in a way or another. For me personally it was a terrible one, but it could be much worse too. At least 70% of what I consider important in life (dynamic social life, meeting friends, interaction with university and academic environments, conferences, travelling, cultural tourism, nature, walking, urban life, research in the big libraries of my field) was digitized,  limited or forbidden in this year. It is enough to see my last year: 16.000 km in 4 countries, meeting 30-40 friends in dozens of cities. This year that was impossible. This created a strong anxiety in me, a struggle which I often failed to negociate in my inner world, not really famous for patience and stoicism. Online education is a total mess, a tragedy as well as online research which limited my work and made it impossible to finish many of my chapters of the book project I am working on. All my planned conferences was cancelled and I became basically a robot speaking with my power points 5-6-7 hours daily, spending 10-12 hours daily on digital media. Despite of this inner struggle - which was connected with the collective suffering of humanity this year - I tried to focus on some good things of this year for which I am very grateful. 

- I am happy that in February I spent two weeks again in Berlin, meeting amazing friends (old and new too) there again. I love that city and a big part of my heart is already there since ten years now. 

- glad that I had at least 1,5 month to teach in real life in early spring. That cannot be replaced by online spaces

- glad that I met in February my friends and colleagues from Szeged. I hope that we can spend more time in the future 

- happy for my few, but good friends from Sibiu who helped me a lot in these difficult times with their presence, company and patience. That helped me through this year. 

- glad that I spent so much time in parks, nature, forest. I had some really nice moments there, helped me during lockdowns. 

- glad I visited some local touristic sites and the Szeklerland (Székelyföld) too

- happy for the most spontaneous meeting with my Alterego and his family. That was a shocking meeting in Csikszereda.

- I was lucky to spent some long nights with friends in search of Jupiter, Saturn and the comet Neowise.

- I am happy for my 10 small articles and studies which are in press now. Although it is not the product of 2020, my book on András Bodor was finished in this year too. 

- I am happy for some new gastronomic experiences I made home, lot of new music, films discovered. 

- greatful that in the time of crisis I realised who are those really close to me and who are the people who fail to stay close in these difficult times. 

- glad that despite of my hypochondria and few hundreds of euros spent on medicine this year I am still alive at least, even if I am not healthy anymore. 

I hope for myself and all of us for a better, happier year with real hugs, real interaction and lot of physical meetings too.

List of gratitudes 2019

Every year of a life is a small, individual journey, which needs a retrospective summary and personal sum up. The advantage of having a birthday in the very end of the year is that special day in the last few years is always a great opportunity for kind, calm and sweet nostalgia of the past year.  2019 was a hard, but not unusual year with important and nice – small or big – moments of happiness, but also with lot of stress, lot of minor conflicts and challenges in my personal life and life-journey. I have travelled around 16.000 km in 4 countries. It is a year, which continues strictly the big events of 2018 and there were no major changes in my life in this year, however my unsure health issues certainly will need a more careful attention next year.

Here is my list of gratitude for 2019:

• -          I’m thankful for visiting Erfurt in January and meeting my old friends there, finishing finally the journey of my PhD certificate too
• -           I’m grateful for my friends and dear colleagues in Sibiu and Szeged, some of them helped me a lot and certainly will represent an important pillar in the following year too in my uncertainties and quests
• -          Grateful for my work and project on András Bodor and the opportunity to study his heritage. This project gave me also the possibility to visit twice this year London and to spend 10 days in Oxford. Happy to have amazing friends in London, Greenwich and now in Oxford too
• -           Thankful for my friends in Budapest – old and new too. It is a city I feel as my second home since many years, although it is a transit city in my life since a decade now. Somehow, similar to Cluj, city I visited often this year too.
• -          Happy to meet this year some really nice friends in Bucuresti and Constanta too
• -          Thankful for the amazing opportunity to visit again Rome, the Urbs, city of cities spending there a month. After 3 years it was again, fascinating to feel, touch, smell and study the Grande Bellezza of my life. Grateful for my research in the German Archaeological Institute and to some new and old friends from Rome too, who made my stay there marvelous.
• -           I feel happy to visit this year Pompeii with some friends: an amazing, unforgettable moment for me
• -          happy to finish and publish two popularizing books, 2-3 articles and reviews, although most of my big works I proposed for this year is still under work
• -          incredibly grateful to meet again – for the third time – pope Francis in Bucuresti and Nils Frahm in Budapest
• -          Grateful for my students and their energy. I had some seminars, where I met again the feeling of catharsis
• -           Finally, grateful for my family, for their patience which is often challenged.

This year marked also some intense ideological conflicts with some colleagues, friends or others. Often, virtual life is different from reality and our fast, changing society is also in a transitional period of changes. Hopefully, these quests I have as individual and the macro-issues as we face as humanity will get a bit clearer next year at least.

I wish for myself and for all of you more awareness, slow-time and good health and the amazing message of S. Hawking: just keep talking.

List of gratitude 2017

I write a list of gratitude since 4 years now. It’s a great opportunity to summarize a year and its events and to select those precious moments, which worth to remember for our short, personal „eternity”.

This year – in contrast with the last one – was less stressful in the world and in my life too, however important changes occurred in my personal life in 2017. It was the first year since 2012, which I spent entirely in Cluj again: a challenge for me indeed after 4 years abroad. It was also the first year, when I was trying to maintain my academic activity while working outside of academia. While this year was a terrible one for the country I choose to live in for a while again, 2017 was kind of a year of transition for me, with 2-3 milestones or big decisions.

Despite of this, I had numerous amazing experiences and moments in this year for which I’m really grateful. 

Here is my list of gratitude of 2017:

- I’m thankful for my relatively good health

- Thankful for my colleagues and my supervisors who helped me in my doctoral defense and my last month in Erfurt.

- thankful for my first ever visit to Denmark

- thankful for my present job and the help of those kind colleagues, who helped me to accommodate to the new situation

- thankful for the publishers, sponsors and all the great people working on my latest book and those who worked with me in the book presentations during this autumn

- thankful for the amazing moments at the Depeche Mode and Moderat concerts

- thankful for my colleagues who contributed to the first proceedings focusing on the histories of archaeology in Central-East Europe and for my colleagues from Cluj who worked extremely hard for it

- thankful for the faith of my few but amazing friends in Budapest, Cluj, Erfurt and my family for their kindness and patience

- thankful for those short, but amazing meetings with some special friends I met this year

- and finally, I’m thankful for my 30^th birthday and the hundreds of good wishes. Once, someone told me, that at this age I will have my biggest dream already come true: I will work at a university. Well, this is not a reality yet, but just few weeks before my birthday I was asked to be a lecturer of two courses.

I hope, next year will be similarly rich in nice moments or even more dynamic and we can enjoy our short earthly walk together more often, more peaceful and more mature too.

I wish you all a beautiful 2018 and all the joy you need!

List of gratitudes 2015

As I did also last year, I decided again, to write a very personal post in my blog. Nowadays, when some people find  "boring" or lazy to write a personalized letter for birthday and human relationships became more and more superficial, real values such as old friendships, fidelity, responsibility, hard and persistent work, kindness and devotion need a special care for survivor. 

So, here is a list, why I'm very grateful and thankful in this year:

• grateful for my relatively good health and the fact, that I had no serious injures in this year (although I found my limits in this sense)
• grateful for my amazing friends, especially those who I know since 15 or even 20 years now. Biggest gift of the human adventure to have so long interactions and relationships
• grateful for all the new friends and nice colleagues who I met in this year and we are keeping our friendship also now. They made much easier my stay in all the foreign countries I visited or where I need to live 
• thankful for visiting 15 cities in 5 countries in this year and all the cool people I met there
• thankful for my colleagues from Erfurt, who still represent the best spiritual and intellectual support to survive a cute, but for me, too provincial town 
• thankful for the colleagues from Alba Iulia and my friends there, helping me to write the book about Cserni Béla 
• thankful for all the conferences, colloquiums and seminars where I had the opportunity to meet so many amazing names and personalities. A memorable moment of the year was the Lived Ancient Religion panel at the IAHR, where at least 20 of the best scholars from my field were present in a small room.
• and finally, I'm thankful for my struggles and painful experiences in this year too. They helped me to learn my limits, to be more confident and sure, what I want and what I like. My stay in Germany proved also, that I value more emotions, passion, devotion, fidelity and the old, Central European values than some so called liberal or Western ideologies.  And I'm proud of that. 

  

  One of the big discoveries of this year: the beauty of Prague

Arról, hogy mi számit ma értéknek: In memoriam Hankiss Elemér

Obituary of a calm,elegant and always "individual"intelectual, leading sociologist of Hungary, Elemér Hankiss.

Hankiss Elemér jobban érezte magát külföldön. Pedig egész életét arra áldozta, hogy „kitaláljon” egy élhetőbb, jobb és pozitívabb Magyarországot. Neve egybeforrt az értékkutatással és a szociológiával, amelynek nemzetközi hírű mestere lett. A maga izgága, sovány, kellemesen szerény és összetéveszthetetlen megjelenésével magával ragadta a közönségét, amelyhez mindig húsba maró kérdéseket tudott feltenni. Ezekről a kérdésekről érdemes még sokáig elmélkedni.

Értelmiségi családból, hét nyelven beszélő filológus apától és zenepedagógus anyától származott. A kálvinista

Róma cívis hangulatát szívta magába a méltán híres Debreceni Egyetem kampuszában, ahonnan tudományos pályája elindult. Kezdetben irodalomtörténészként, majd szociológusként, politológusként végül filozófusként tevékenykedett. Munkássága minden tudományterületen maradandót hagyott, de a nagyközönség számára kétségtelenül szociológusként és ún. „érték-kutatóként” maradt meg. Kérdései és könyvei – Érték és társadalom, Az emberi kaland, Az ezerarcú én, Félelmek és szimbólumok – rémisztően hathattak egyesekre. Különösen azokra, akikhez eleve szólt: a félelemmel, kétségbeeséssel, szomorúsággal, elkeseredettséggel, reménytelenséggel teli pesszimistákhoz, az Ady-Karinthy-féle „Moslékország” magyar proletárjaihoz. Olyan évszázados sztereotípiákat, sebeket próbált felszakítani, amelyek egyféle „mentalitástörténeti takarítóvá” tették őt egy nagyon koszos és kormos épületben, amelyet Magyarországnak hívunk. Számos nemzetközi tudományos fórum, így a világhírű Stanford University professzoraként azonban kérdéseit utolsó éveiben már nemcsak a magyaroknak szegezte, de a világnak is: mi számít ma értéknek egy olyan Európában, amely már legalább egy évszázada önmaga pusztulásán siránkozik, ahol a régi, két évezredig társadalomformáló szerepű keresztény etika és morál elértéktelenedett, és ahol Huntington féle kulturális összecsapásoknak vagyunk naponta tanúi? Hol lehet boldogulást találni, vidámságot, pozitív gondolatokat, értéket teremteni egy olyan világban, ahol muszlim muszlimot öl, mecsetet rombol, belgák és franciák egykori keresztény templomokban teáznak, és ahol a „mi” helyett az „én, csakis az én” az érték. Félelmek és szimbólumok című zseniális könyvében többek között arról is ír, miért találta ki az emberiség az ördögöt, a kollektív rossz fogalmát, amely ilyen vagy olyan néven, de ma is öröklődik. Most épp iszlámnak hívják a franciák. Holnap katolicizmus lehet a neve. A vallás, a mosoly, a hit, a templom, a tízparancsolat, az empátia abszolút értéket jelentett évezredeken keresztül. Egy jó ideje ez megváltozott. Új „katedrálisok”, a bevásárlóközpontok jelentek meg – írja Hankiss. Ezekben pedig az olyan pesszimista, önmaga hazugságában élő nép, mint mi is, a magyarok egyre szomorúbbak leszünk.

Hankiss Elemér azonban nemcsak külföldi egyetemi kampuszok elefántcsonttornyából mondta egetrengető jóslatait, szociológiai elemzéseit és Magyarország képeit, de legfőbb célja az volt, hogy tükröt tartson. Tükröt egy társadalomnak, hogy az „kitalálja” önmagát, megtalálja saját útját, értelmét, jelenét és jövőjét. Helyét a világban.

Sikerült-e neki? Egyik interjújában arra a kérdésre, hogy mi az életének értelme, és mit hagy ő maga után azt mondta: a kvantumfizikában, ha csak egy aprócska tárgyat elmozdítunk az asztalon, a teljes univerzum anyagi kompozíciója megváltozik. Soha többet nem lesz olyan, mint volt. A szellemvilágban azonban már nehezebb megmondani azt, hogy milyen hatást is gyakorolt egy ember egy társadalomra. Remélte, hogy ő megtette a legjobbat.

Mi pedig csak reméljük, hogy munkásságát továbbviszik és a „turáni” és más átkokból végre kitalálja magát Magyarország. Az az ország, amelyet ő egész életében megszeretni és megszerettetni akart.

Megjelent a Szabadság, kolozsvári napilap január 15 -i számában.