Nae Ionescu gathered a group of despairing young men about him and began to theorize. These men would later speak about the impossibilities of speaking to everyone around them.
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Mircea Vulcanescu died insisting that there could be no true revenge-- that no action possessed the power to create a hero, that the struggle for freedom was its own prison. The communists arrested him in 1946. Convicted as a war criminal, he was sentenced to 8 years in prison.
Fellow prisoners told the story of his death: he and a group of 12 other convicts form his cell were all punished to stay naked, without any clothes or chairs, in a very cold and wet cavern in the prison's dungeon, for reciting poetry (poetry was very popular in prisons that communists used to condemn people just for being intellectuals; it was one of the few resorts of resisting the mental torture). An young man fell to the floor, risking to die of a lung disease, and Mircea Vulcănescu practically forced him to stay on top of him, rather than on the wet stone floor, and thus saved his life. He said: "I'm an old man, how can I let a young man like you die?". Yet he was only 48, an age many do not regard as "old". Soon after this, the young man was better, but Mircea Vulcănescu developed pneumonia, and soon after he died. His last words to the world were: "Do not avenge us!"
His death, of course, remains unavenged. As he wished.
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Constantin Noica believed Romanians fell under the spell of determinism. Some things were fated.
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Stan Farnya sees an organic connection between Romanian fatalism and the rise of what he calls the "new fascism". From the fomer fascism of the Ionescu school to the "new fascism" stands a great gulf. But Farnya sees the seeds. And he believes the soil is well-nourished.
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The Filter, citing the Romanian response to a pile of rotting meat, can't see the fatalism for the trees.
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The Union for the Reconstruction of Romania, goes so far as to limit membership to applicants who do not subscribe to the tenets of "Romanian fatalism". Members argue on sidewalks about the complacency of the pensioners perched on park benches.
If people only undertook those initiatives whose success was guaranteed we would all still be living in caves and pick fruit with sticks. The only guarantee we have is our name and reputation. You can believe us and come with us to take action to solve the many problems our country faces or sit on the fence to see what happens and wait for guarantees. Skepticism is a legitimate attitude but, unfortunately, not at all constructive. This precise attitude of the people allowed the political class to degenerate to the parasitic stage it is in today. Sociologists call this a "self-fulfilling prophecy". This means that if you strongly believe that something, good or bad, will happen then the chance of that event to happen significantly increases. The explanation is very simple: what you believe will influence the way you act and your attitude influences the events around the particular event. In our particular case, skepticism and fence-riding generates inactivity and negative thinking which in turn makes one see more the mistakes than successes which in turn produces inactivity and more inactivity. But changes don't come by magic, they need activism and energy. So the initiative will fail: bingo! You were right! "Just another political party, did I not tell you?" Isn't it wonderful to be always right? Even if it serves no purpose? This is the Romanian fatalism at work and it has already turned us into a spectator nation.
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In An Ontological Definition of the Romanian National Identity, Mihaela Alexandra Pop cites Vulcanescu's view that Romanians tend towards a "theophanic" identification rather than an individualist one-- they accept what comes as part of the universal order in which struggle is just the other side of foolishness. Rather than nourish a Protean self-understanding, Romanian folk tales and stories reward the man who sits back and thanks God for the troubles in life, as well as the freedom from responsibility for the outcomes.
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An executive study entitled "The Evolution of Mentalities in Eastern Europe and the Future of the European Project" from a summer school session asserts:
Romanian intellectuals such as Mihail Sebastian, Emil Cioran, Panait Istrati have described Romanians sometimes as fatalistic but also slightly megalomaniac, subdued, endowed often with a low self-esteem and a tendency to blame others for their mishaps. Romanians often see themselves as having good humor, as being optimistic and hospitable people.
One of the big thinkers at this session was Mircea Malitza, who served as Ceausescu's ambassador to the USA in the 1980's. Malitza knows a lot about the Romanian national psyche, and how Romanians can be broken into a thousand tiny pieces, so tiny that the edges fray. Malitza was a good servant to the communist regime. And fate was on his side. He now maintains an illustrious career as a member of the Romanian academy and an expert on Romanian national identity.
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Z. Ornea looks at Cioran's contribution to Romanian fatalism via his book, The Transfiguration of Romania. Ornea quotes Cioran extensively:
Truths sprung from compliance are not a matter of glory. No historic act was borne by wisdom; wisdom can only be manifest in sub or trans-history. Wisdom can be the negation of history, for it is distance taken from life, whereas history reinforces it. The daily truths of Romanians are paralyzing. They tend to strip man of any responsibility. Fatalism is an a-moralism of evolution. I can well understand the drives of individual and internal fatalism, translations of the dynamism of the inner demon, but it is a deviation and an anthropological blasphemy to cede to times… The fatalism of our people is a curse we shall have to rout in thunder. To the heart shall the lightning strike us. I want another people! The centennial plague that has befallen the Romanian is skepticism… A skeptical soul is not a creator as any structural skepticism implies exhausted sources, original sterility… Romanian skepticism – superficial in its scope and the nature thereof – is nonetheless deep-seated by its enrootment in the popular soul.
