Edin Urjan Kukavica WTF!

By Edin Urjan Kukavica

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Privately, we often speak just to say something, less often to communicate something, even less often to be understood, and most often, in fact, just to say what we have to say, whether anyone is listening or not. We use words whose meanings we know and don't know, which have meaning or don't have meaning, but they have somehow crept into speech so that despite meaning nothing, everyone understands them. For example, the term 'upražnjavati' (to practice/exercise), semantically completely nonsensical and content-wise even more so (it can mean to empty, to clear out, but it's impossible to 'in-empty' anything), but everyone knows what is meant when they say it, and the word has the same meaning for those who hear it. The same applies to the term 'neosporno' (undisputed)... something can be disputed or undisputed, debatable or indisputable, but 'neosporno' means absolutely nothing, yet everyone knows what it means. But that's only part of the story...

The second part takes place on so-called social networks, which are 'useful' only to the extent that they allow people to be what others expect of them... Or, rather, to be what they think others expect them to be... Or, most preferably, to be what they would like others to think of them. However, this type of communication has enabled the introduction of photography as a new communication medium, thus giving the social network user the opportunity – since a picture is worth a thousand words – to appear a thousand times dumber than they actually are. Yes... there is also the universally popular Viber, which on the one hand has simplified (and cheapened) communication, and on the other has unimaginably complicated it by introducing emoticons (smileys?!) and abbreviations into written private and official communication. 

As for official, formal, public communication, a multitude of terms from the English language have 'crept' into the language we all speak here and which we all understand, even though we all call it differently. This is partly because we don't have equivalent words in our language, so many officials, who are expected to be the most eloquent in their own language, often speak a mixture of languages, in addition to numerous localisms and words that are inappropriate for public discourse. If someone, for example, fell asleep ten years ago and woke up yesterday, they would be confused by the countless number of 'official' neologisms, from 'behavioral' 'branding' to 'outsourcing' to 'downloading'... If they managed to 'get online' and 'surf' and 'google' all of it, they would come across 'attachment', 'car', 'botting', 'booting', and the mandatory 'liking'... Of course, there are also mandatory acronyms, which my generation generally has no idea what they mean, and let's not lie... we sound ridiculous when we use them.

Besides sounding ridiculous, we sometimes appear foolish in that speech and use of words, and sometimes a little less foolish, and most foolish when we particularly try to appear smart. Then, from the semi-darkness of muffled semi-intellect, sentences emerge which, if someone asked us what they meant, we wouldn't be able to explain the fullness of their meaning any clearer than what was (out)spoken, even in a completely understandable domestic, native, or paternal language. For example: 'I am a lawyer and I respect the law' and 'I do not consider that the amount of attacks caused by the hanging of certain individuals, as it has started in the public, is justified.' Namely, 'that gentleman who participated in, let's say, the incident, did not participate as a political official...' because 'I do not come from politics, but I am a political activist' and as such 'I believe that SDA is responsible for everything good in this country' or 'the problem in BiH is a disturbed value system and lack of justice. We must work to introduce justice and the rule of law as soon as possible because that is what is driving our young people out of BiH the most.' 

A syntactic-semantic analysis of these two texts would be more meaningless and absurd than the texts themselves, and the analyst dumber than the speaker. Almost like MD, who stated that 'in the Federation of BiH there is an illegal plan for arms production, meaning that international representatives deliberately abolished the specialized production in the RS earlier, but not in the FBiH, where six factories of this type operate and exist today.' He points out that AV is also aware of this. In other words, 'precisely in Mostar, meetings were held three times in the last three months, attended by the presidents of local SDA organizations, as well as members of the mentioned party from the southern part of BiH, together with representatives of the intelligence community and the SDA security commission' and 'the Commission is the initiator of the census of military-capable Bosniaks with the aim of profiling them in terms of where they were, what they did during the war, while those who are not militarily trained are intended to be prepared for what they call eventualities.' However, two vivid examples are not the only ones...

On the one hand, perhaps masochistically, I would like it if I knew that these people don't mean what they say, if they were making crude but honest jokes, mocking, sneering... whatever... at us. That would, in some morbid way, give me hope that they are smart because they are cynical, and even more morbidly, that those who hold them on their lap like a ventriloquist's dummy and move their lips, in their madness which they impose as a national interest, still see some system. Let me remind you: these are the ones who convince us that natural partners are those who fought each other (us to preserve the whole country with all its inhabitants, and them against us and against what we fought for). But, unfortunately, it's not like that. They truly have no idea what they are saying, what they are doing, where they are going, whether they have arrived, or 'where they are going at all'... everything is fine as long as they are in power and as long as no one touches their budgets.

On the other hand, I wish they didn't mean what they say. Then I would know that they are intelligent people, with a twisted and malicious sense of humor, people for whom terrible times, insane historical circumstances, and worse than them have provided an opportunity to heal their complexes, to fix childhood traumas, to take revenge on everyone and anyone for an unhappy youth... But no... They are obsessed with themselves, and obsession with oneself leads to some ego trip (the winking emoticon would be welcome here).

In fact, I wanted to say... the only one who was ever right here is the greatly underestimated first philosopher of the transition, Mr. NG, who, before all this began, said: 'First personal hygiene, then democracy!' If someone were to ask him the same question now as almost thirty years ago, he would probably just say: WTF!