The most dangerous prison is the one we cannot see

Anxiety is spreading among the Czechs and, as the other side of the coin, aggression. It is a reaction to seemingly unsolvable situations. Whether personal or the whole company. There is a growing demand for simple solutions to problems whose structure people often do not understand. It is perhaps only a matter of time before radical political fascism grows in our country as a response to the decline of the state, the breakdown of social consensus and feelings of hopelessness and helplessness among a large part of the population.

Some problems, such as the quality of Czech political elites, are objective. Others may be the product of collective emotions, often triggered by political propaganda and targeted campaigns. And almost none of the problems we face today are inevitable and fatal, not to mention the ways to solve them. We just need to start thinking about them "out of the box", or to think critically about the situation in which we find ourselves as individuals or communities. We have one advantage. Europe does not only represent a decaying culture of progressive ideologies and Brussels bureaucracy. Above all, we have inherited a rich tradition of thought already rooted in antiquity.

Let us therefore say with Socrates: "I know that I know nothing." It was this great Greek philosopher who systematically broke the obvious. He knew that it was necessary to think critically and question what so-called "everyone knows". In the modern age, René Descartes, for example, followed it up with the motto: put aside all assumptions and start from scratch. Or Francis Bacon, describing delusions of the mind as "boxes" that distort thinking. There were also critics of the frameworks themselves. Immanuel Kant pointed out that the mind has a priori structures (space, time, categories). So there is a paradox: the "box" is partially unremovable, but we can still reflect on it. Friedrich Nietzsche claimed that there are no facts, only interpretations. In the 20th century came Ludwig Wittgenstein and Michel Foucault. For one, the limit of language is the limit of the world, and out-of-the-box means changing the language game. For another, out-of-the-box is the revelation of hidden structures. And we must not forget the representatives of creative thinking (applied philosophy/psychology) Edward de Bono or Arthur Koestler. Concepts such as lateral thinking (systematic "sideways" leaps outside the logical line) or bisociation (combining two unrelated frames as the source of a new idea) help us understand the potential of bold thinking outside the stereotype.

Albert Einstein: "A problem cannot be solved at the same level of thinking at which it arose."

Marcel Proust: "The true journey of discovery lies not in the search for new landscapes, but in a new perspective."

However, there is one catch. Thinking "out of the box" is not without costs. If a citizen chooses to defy the mainstream, he must be prepared to bear the cost of that deviation. Courage is therefore a necessary condition for going beyond the normal framework. There is a social risk. New ideas violate norms and face sanctions ranging from ridicule to isolation to criminalization. Furthermore, if proven heuristics are abandoned, a person is exposed to a higher probability of error. And these necessary mistakes and dead ends lead again to the denigration of the principle itself. The existential risk is also significant. Consistently doubting stereotypical "truths" often leads to questioning of one's own beliefs and disruption of personal identity. With Socrates, it is literal: questioning led to a fundamental conflict with the polis. However, without the willingness to bear these costs, most people remain stuck in that limited and seemingly hopeless "box".

The question arises whether people are just lazy and don't want to look at the world with their eyes open out of pure convenience. However, convenience is not just laziness, it is deeply related to the human psyche. It is a set of adaptive mechanisms. By default, the brain minimizes effort and sticks to established schemes (cognitive economy), people prefer familiar things and situations (status quo bias) and, last but not least, social conformity works - a normal person strives, often subconsciously, to harmonize with the environment. Comfort thus keeps the "box" functional and stable, acting as a defense mechanism rather than a neutral preference. Courage opens doors, convenience closes them. If we want to get out of the "box", we have to overcome ourselves, our fear. (Immanuel Kant associated the Enlightenment with "Sapere aude" - the courage to use one's own reason.)

If we want to overcome the apparent hopelessness of the situation in which the Czech Republic finds itself and think outside the "box", we must avoid two dangerous traps. The first is the appearance of inevitability. As a theme, it appears over the centuries under different names: determinism, fatalism, historicism, structural necessity. It left a deep mark on how generations of Europeans perceive the world in which they live. For Marcus Aurelius, the world is determined by a rational order. The appearance of inevitability is thus not an illusion, but a correct understanding of necessity. According to Baruch Spinoza, everything flows from the necessity of the divine substance. Freedom is the understanding of necessity. For Hegel, history has an internal logic of the development of spirit. Events seem necessary in retrospect, and necessity is often recognized only in retrospect. And then of course there is Marx.

But the criticism of this thought trap is just as strong in our tradition. Karl Popper criticized "historicism", the illusion that history has a predictable, lawful course, as proclaimed by Hegel or Marx. And existentialists Jean-Paul Sartre and Hannah Arendt literally scattered the appearance of inevitability. The world is not necessary but contingent. There is no predetermined necessity. Political and historical processes are interruptible. According to them, the appearance of inevitability is often a misinterpretation of freedom and contingency.

Unfortunately, even today the "appearance of inevitability" remains one of the key tools in political propaganda. It is not just an interpretation of the past, but an active construction of the fact that a certain state of affairs had to arise and must continue.

It's called retrospective teleology - "that's the way it's always been." An outcome (eg alliance, conflict, empire collapse) is chosen and history rearranges as a linear progression towards it. The current state then looks like the "logical end of history". This is precisely the mechanism described by Karl Popper in his critique of historicism: the backward reading of history as a lawful trajectory.

Another effective propaganda technique is selective causality - the selection of "necessary" events. A few key moments are highlighted and alternative branches (broken deals, coincidences, individual mistakes) are ignored. History looks like a chain of necessary steps, when in fact it is a controlled selection of causes, not a complete causal model.

Naturalization of relations is also a popular tool of propagandists. Terms such as "traditional or natural alliance", "historical rivalry" or "eternal conflict" are used. This will move the relationship from political variability to the category of natural fact. This is a key ideological trick. Politics masquerades as geography or the biology of history.

Both human memory and propaganda work with reduction. They transform a complex relationship into a simple story and many variables into one motif. Whether the motive is "threat", "liberation" or "historical wrong". This gives the impression that relationships are not the result of decisions, but the (inevitable) state of the world. Geopolitics retroactively rationalizes unforced actions. After the formation of a certain configuration (alliance, war, bloc), a history is subsequently constructed that "justifies" it. This mechanism is close to what Daniel Kahneman describes in psychology as hindsight bias at the collective level.

Some systems even go beyond the level of an engaging story. It tells people that relationships are determined by "structure" - geopolitical, civilizational or economic. Here, "inevitability" no longer appears as history, but even as a systemic necessity.

The appearance of inevitability has a clear political function. It eliminates the idea of ​​alternatives, reduces the space for resistance ("it has to be this way anyway") and legitimizes the current arrangement as "historically correct". This is why it is so often used in the justification of alliances ("natural partner"), conflicts ("eternal enemy") or in the integration and disintegration of states.

A typical propaganda construction looks like this: "we have always been different" - "conflicts are centuries old" - "if there is peace, it is an exception" - "the current state is natural". At the same time, it is an interpretation, not a necessity, at every step. In the Czech Republic, this is perhaps the most widespread model of influencing public opinion, which comes at citizens from all sides. It is used to explain the conflict in Ukraine, the position of the Czech Republic in Europe or to explain our relations with other countries, starting with the USA and ending with Russia. At the same time, it is an illusion: what is looks like what must have been.

On the perception of the Czech Republic's membership in NATO, it is possible to show very precisely how the "appearance of inevitability" arises. We can see three main layers in it: a retrospective historical narrative, a security argument and a civilizational framing. A retrospective historical narrative that we felt particularly strongly after 1989 was the "return to the West". In the Czech public space, a strong story about interwar Czechoslovakia as a Western-type democracy, about the years 1948–1989 as a "deviation" (occupation/unfreedom) and the subsequent return to natural space has stabilized. In this framing, joining NATO appeared as the logical completion of an interrupted historical trajectory. However, this narrative completely ignores alternative geopolitical options after 1989, such as neutrality or a different security architecture in Europe.

The security argument emphasized the collapse of the USSR, when the entry of the Czech Republic into NATO was supposed to be "inevitable". According to this interpretation, the collapse of the Soviet Union created a security vacuum and uncertainty in Central Europe, and NATO could function as the only realistic guarantee of our security. The impression was created that the Czech Republic's membership in NATO was not a political choice, but a reaction to objective pressure from the environment. The classic illusion of necessity worked here, i.e. a reduced set of visible alternatives. In reality, there were other concepts of European security.

And we must not forget the catchy civilizational framework "we belong to the West". Especially in the 1990s, the West was synonymous with democracy, stability and prosperity. On the contrary, the East represented instability and authoritarianism. This framework transforms NATO from a political military-security alliance to a civilizational identity factor. This created the impression that NATO membership is not a choice, but a return to the natural state of civilization. This is a typical naturalization of a political decision.

For example, Václav Havel often framed integration into Western structures as a moral and civilizational orientation or a return to Europe. This shifted the geopolitical decision from the realm of strategy to the realm of identity and inevitability. Even with Václav Klaus, who otherwise emphasized a more pragmatic dimension, NATO gradually stabilized as the only realistic option. With some exceptions, the vast majority of Czech political elites today live in this illusion of the inevitable. At the same time, the entire chain of arguments was created only in retrospect. Even in the 1990s, there were strong debates about the neutrality of our state, part of the elites preferred the "bridge between East and West", and the security architecture of Europe did not seem to be closed. In order to create the appearance of inevitability, the alternative of neutrality (the Finnish-Austrian model as an option), the option of "pan-European security", the idea of ​​long-term flexible geopolitics and the fact that NATO also redefined itself after 1990 had to be weakened, not a static "solution", but a changing organization. The political choice of our membership in NATO was retroactively reformulated as a historical necessity. Neutrality was reduced to an "unrealistic illusion", other models of security disappeared from historical memory, and the impression of the only possible development was created. The imaginary crown was put on it, in other circumstances absurd, by the election of army general Pavle to the position of president of the republic. That is why today for most Czech politicians it is impossible to react sensibly to blackmail regarding the costs of armaments within NATO and to President Trump's threats that the United States will withdraw from NATO. They would first have to get out of the "box" of the illusion of the inevitability of our membership in NATO. Only then could they think about real possibilities and logical solutions:

The Czech Republic's membership in NATO is not a reward or a reason for gratitude, each of the members receives and at the same time gives within the alliance of equal states.

NATO membership only makes sense for the Czech Republic if the benefits exceed the costs. There is no reason for foreign countries to interfere in the internal politics of our country. The departure of the Czech Republic from NATO or leaving its military structures is not a taboo. Just as Czech neutrality is not taboo.

It is not in the Czech national interest for NATO to be an instrument of US political, military and economic dominance and a source of conflicts in various regions.

If the US wishes to leave NATO, it can do so like any other member. Alliance will overcome this step.

It is not in the national interest of the Czech Republic to abuse "value politics" or the issue of respect for human rights as a tool for fueling conflicts with other countries. The Czech Republic is not a great power and must solve a number of fundamental internal problems. In this situation, he cannot instruct others on how to better manage their inner affairs.

The Czech Republic has no "natural" enemies or friends. It can build peaceful, fair and mutually beneficial relations on all sides of the world. At the same time, they must, without exception, insist on observing international law, because it is fundamentally linked to peace and security in Central Europe.

The second trap we must avoid if we want to think outside the "box" is falsifying our own history. This usually doesn't work as simple lying in political propaganda. It is rather a systematic adjustment of selection, context and interpretation. How does one create a distorted historical picture in which the appearance of the inevitable thrives so well?

The most basic method is the so-called cherry-picking, i.e. selective memory. Only events supporting the desired conclusion are selected, inconvenient episodes are ignored or minimized. The resulting image of history seems unambiguous, even though in reality it was conflictual and pluralistic. The past is also often rewritten as a path to the present. Remember that when you hear "we were always headed for it" or "this was a natural progression". This makes history a linear story without alternatives, instead of an open process. Political decisions are naturalized, described as historical or natural. Alternatively, the so-called moral framing is abused. Historical ambivalence disappears and the present and the past are reinterpreted according to "our side", which is synonymous with defense, civilization, culture and freedom. Against the "other side" as an image of aggression, barbarism, destruction. Does it seem primitive to you? It is enough to recall the concept of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in the Czech public space.

This involves taking events out of their historical context. Decisions are assessed through today's lens, some facts are neglected, selected limitations (information, geopolitics, economics) are ignored. Instead, a few iconic events are inflated: battles, treaties, turning years, to flatten the rest of history. This creates the illusion that history is a series of bright spots, not a continuum. The question, what could have been different, is systematically omitted? Modern motives are attributed to historical figures or complex decisions are simplified, eg pragmatic decisions are retroactively changed to ideological ones. Nuance disappears: history has fewer actors but a clearer moral structure. There is an abuse of language. It is an unobtrusive yet powerful tool. Changing terms changes the very interpretation of reality: "occupation" vs. "liberation", "revolution" vs. "coup", "defense" vs. "aggression". History closes into a stable narrative and alternative interpretations are marked as unacceptable. And in extreme cases, they are criminalized. This creates a monopoly on the interpretation of the past.

Let's look at the systematic reduction of the merits of the Red Army and Czechoslovak soldiers for the liberation of the homeland in 1945. As a bizarre theater, reminiscent of the glorification of the Soviet Union before 1989, this week the opening of the celebration of the 81st anniversary of the end of World War II in the center of Prague. The main point of the program was the arrival of a convoy of historic military vehicles to the US Embassy building and a speech by US Ambassador Nicholas Merrick. Streets lined with school children and a forest of American, not Czech, flags. The fact that US troops never reached Prague in 1945 and did not liberate the capital certainly did not escape the organizers of this show. They covered it purposefully and without the slightest scruples.

They behave similarly to the Sudeten German expatriate association when it suppresses historical memory and calls for so-called reconciliation and dialogue. And it subtly falsifies history through moral universalization. It sounds noble: suffering is shared on all sides, and the past is not to be a "competition of victims". There is a gradual depoliticization of history, the events of the 20th century (expulsion, war, displacement) are separated from contemporary politics, and the emphasis is placed on "today's relations". The past becomes a closed and actually uninteresting chapter. In the relationship between Czechs and Germans, a historical grievance becomes a shared experience, while the political dimension is suppressed in favor of personal stories. There is a hidden conversion of history into ethics. The historical conflict, with its causes, course and consequences, is translated into the moral plane of the so-called reconciliation. However, this is a very significant shift. From the causal analysis (what happened and why), the deportation of Germans from the post-war republic moves into the normative framework (how we should behave today). This brings us to the core of the question and to the falsification of Czech history. The complex historical differences between the role of actors, the structure of power and the context of the war and the post-war order are flattened into a symmetrical image of suffering in the discourse of supposed "reconciliation". Instead of: "what led to what", "how we live together today with the past" is asserted. "Reconciliation" often functions as a final framework of interpretation that replaces further dispute over the meaning of history. Legitimate historical discussion turns into an artificial moral consensus. "Reconciliation" acts as a tool for political normalization (stabilizes relations, enables cooperation, reduces conflict memory). But at the same time, it distorts the perception of history, because it weakens the analysis of the causes of the conflict, hides the asymmetry (power, decision, responsibility) and creates the impression of moral equivalence. Exactly in the spirit of the described techniques of propagandistic rewriting of history.

The "reconciliation" argument serves the Landsmanschaft as a tool that changes the way history is allowed to be interpreted at all. Its effect is not primarily what it says about the past, but that it shifts the emphasis from explanation to ending controversy, reduces the openness of historical debate, and replaces causality with moral compatibility. It must be understood that activities such as the Memory of the Nation and the initiatives surrounding the Sudeten German Expatriate Association are based on a partially overlapping framework where historical conflict is transformed into the language of memory and reconciliation. Both parties (and other actors of these projects) work with the understanding that the past is not only a subject of dispute, but material for processing stories. The goal is not so much to win an interpretation, but to stabilize the relationship to the past by translating historical events into ethics.

When the language of "reconciliation" appears in such projects, it functions as a depoliticizing factor: historical conflict (displacement, war, post-war order) is translated into the level of interpersonal experience. Different historical roles converge on the plane of suffering, with an emphasis on "shared pain". The goal is no longer to open up the past in a conflictual manner. But this fundamentally relativizes causes and consequences, and ultimately it opens the way to the revision of these consequences, as a tool of "reconciliation". Including property transfers. As soon as the political and structural causes of the conflict move into the background and the impression of "equivalent suffering" without historical context is created, there is only a step towards the "rehabilitation" of those who were "afflicted". The stories of the victims of the Nazi rampage in the Kounic dormitories during the occupation suddenly seem to have the same dimension as the executions or murders during the deportation.

We will not solve our country's problems unless we find the courage to think outside the box, get comfortable and settle for the illusion of the inevitable. If we let our own history and identity be taken away. Each of us can take a small positive step. For example, if we are not afraid to think about the functioning of NATO and our allied ties. Or when we remember who really liberated our homeland. And also if we reject the Sudeten-German meeting at the Brno exhibition center and games with the so-called reconciliation. The members of the Sudeten German association and their Czech fans should come to terms with themselves and with the results of the war that their ancestors helped start.