Do you agree?

 It can be easily and logically proved. Because for each question there is only one true answer. Whereas we can have host of deceitful answers.

So, to what has the „passion to uncover lies” driven one of the greatest contemporary sociologists?

You would surely like to talk about a political lie?

If so, this is the kind of a lie into which human misery is wrapped up.

 It is not very interesting.  Political lie is sooner of later visible for everyone.  Nobody will wonder hearing that Blair lied talking about the terrible weapons of Hussein, or that the Germans lied saying about a Polish attack on the radio broadcasting station in Gliwice. No philosophy, nor sociology is needed here.  I don’t have time for that. I am interested in hidden springs which decide about the fate of ordinary people – such as you and me.

Do you believe that the „hidden springs of fate” exist?

 There are great processes which we perceive as twists of fate or lot, which in reality  are the result of somebody’s more or less conscious activity.  There are events which seem to be unpredictable and unavoidable, and which result from a sequence of human decisions, from the system of connections upon which we could have influence if we could realize them.
Any great conspiracies?

 Rather implicit endeavors which always existed and now are especially entangled and hard to permeate as there is a real planetary correlation of fates.  A bolt from the blue hitting a worker working in a factory near Leeds or Warsaw may be the result of what happened in Singapore or in New York.  A worker has not got a slightest idea about it and cannot affect it in any way. What is more – even Gordon Brown (a British minister of treasury), a French president, a German chancellor, nor a Polish prime minister have no influence on that. 

 This does not have too much in common with lie.

 But the global interdependence entails that the causes of our situation elude human observation.  This creates space for great lie and manipulation, which is unparalleled in the history. Once there was not so much space for lie because dangers and ways of defending them were in an obvious relationship. When there was plague, one was to close the door against strangers.  When there was flood, one was to climb a dry hill. Today we don’t understand the relation between danger and our activity. We learn about it from wise men who write in newspapers. Air pollution, overheating of the planet, ozone hole, the sources of economic situation, causes of terrorism, reasons for unemployment – these are not phenomena cognizable with natural senses. Experts tell us about them.  If experts don’t tell us about them, we don’t know that we are exposed to danger. What’s more – because in the evaluation of the situation we have to base on the opinion of experts and an ordinary man does not have the possibility to control them, we can be freely deceived.  Experts can make us believe that the greenhouse gases are not harmful for anything, that the unilateralism is better than building international community, that there is one and only right way to future development, that chocolate or vodka makes our lives linger or just the opposite.

 And in your opinion there is no way to verify it?

 No way! Everybody can cheat us practically unpunished. Some time ago it was obvious that politicians lie, so people tried to look for truth at various experts, authorities, intellectualists, sages. Today, experts, intellectuals and sages more and more often lie equally unpunished and easily as previously politicians.  So when we hear that according to the latest research a certain enzyme, which is in an edible substance, prolongs or shortens life, then cautious people ask at once: „And who financed the research?” More and more well-known becomes the opinion that when the research is ordered by a corporation of tobacco manufacturers then it will turn out that cigarettes are healthy.  Probably there is no more such an absurd thesis which could not be supported by the results of scientific research carried out in recognized centers.

But it can be refuted with other research.  

That’s right! It is equally easy to refute or justify the most correct and the most stupid thesis! So what do we have from this? When we type „a lie” in Polish, Google search engine within two tenth of a second found me over 10 400 documents.  What can a man do with it? And for the word „safety” I recently obtained 17 million documents.  Have I become wiser due to that? Paul Virilio writes about “the information bomb”, which in his opinion is more dangerous for the survival of mankind that the atomic bomb, because it makes it impossible to see what is happening.

And take rational decisions.

 The diagnosis itself becomes impossible, and what to say about rational decisions!

Thus, today the fist fundamental lie is the thesis that we can distinguish lie from truth?

 We can’t, even more and more we can’t. It is an omnipresent, increasing meta-lie of a contemporary rational thinking.

But it isn’t yet one of those great lies of the present day into which “responsibility for human misery is wrapped up”.

 It is a lie which enables a deceitful packing of responsibility into freely chosen boxes.

For example?

For example, safety.
Which is?

 Here I think I managed to unpack something, but please be patient a little bit.  Do you remember the theory of Bahtin saying that the nature of power is based on fear? First of all on a cosmic fear which everyone of us feels almost from the day he is born. Whenever we think about cosmos, we look at powerful waves, precipitous cliffs, soaring mountains, we feel our littleness, fragility, unskilfulness.  It is a natural fear from which religion, philosophy, culture draw the power. Another second fear is the official fear. The might of political power is based on it.  Official fear has to be created. To acquire the might of the cosmic fear, political power must be tailored to a Divine power.  It must be omnipotent, omnipresent and impenetrable.  It must be the power equal to the Bible including the Book of Job.  Because Job sensed thoroughly what it meant that God not only creates but also changes laws according to his will, so no obedience to the Divine law gives us the guarantee of safety on earth.  Leszek Kołakowski was the one to fathom it perfectly.  And earlier Carl Schmidt wrote that „the truly sovereign power consists in the power to make exceptions”. A master in this area was Stalin who was able to terrorize the whole society to such an extent that even the most obedient people were not sure of their future, so they were grateful for him only for this reason that they were not put to prison. „A beloved Stalin cares for sincere people – he did not sent me to Siberia”.

 And how does it apply to the present world?

 In such a way that every authority, even the present one, in order to fulfill its role, needs a membership card based on fear.  It cannot be the cosmic fear, as in the ancient Egypt – because our authority is secular. The official fear is required.  The authority standing in front of the citizen must be able to tell him: „It is us who protect you from dangers awaiting for you.  You can only be safe by subordinating to the regulations of our society dictated by the authority!” But what  is this authority to protect us from today? Some time ago the dangers of the world were very real.  Natural disasters, animals, strangers were dangerous.  The authority was to protect the people from all these. Then there were additionally economic cycles, crises, unemployment.  From the times of Bismarck, the state took the protection against subsequent threats on itself, until after WWII it took the form of a social state, which ensures the minimum existence for everybody and insured an individual in case of single calamities – illnesses, unemployment, disabilities, poverty and old age.  The twentieth-century states were in a way politically signed insurance policies… This model is going to an end. The contemporary state is not able now to insure its citizens against calamities.  It does not have funds nor will to do that. It cedes the responsibility to the powers of the market and the ingeniousness of an individual. Those who cannot manage it become „human trash”. The contemporary world is the world which “writes things off”. What is useless or what people are bored with – is thrown out.  At the beginning things were thrown out more and more often.  Now this happens to people, social categories, nations, continents. Africa became the “trash of globalization”. When the wind of politics or economy changes, everyone of us almost from day to day may become a trash.  And we can count less and less that somebody will protect us.  And especially that the state will help us.  Life risk is privatized and individualized.

So where is the lie here?

 I am about to reach this point, but it becomes more difficult.  Because the authority, in order to legitimize, to justify the demand for obedience, must be the only barrier against threats lurking for the citizens and a guide to a safer world.  The contemporary authority, local one as before, but functioning in a globalized world cannot any more and does not want to protect us against the fancies of the market, against unfortunate fate, against the risk of an illness.  There is a temptation, so is the possibility to bring the function of defense against fear, on behalf of which we are demanded obedience, from the sphere of fear of existence into another sphere.

Into which ?

 Here I have a linguistic problem… For the lack of dangers there is only one word in Polish – safety.  Whereas, English has two words: security and safety.  Security concerns social relations – what in Poland is called social security, such as the permanency of earnings, freedom from poverty, roof over one’s head, hope for peaceful old age.  And safety mainly concerns the bodily integrity – the certainty that I will not be poisoned by food or water from the tap, that I will not be robbed or mugged, that I will not be shot dead, that my children will not be kidnapped, that they will not blow up… In this direction the contemporary state more often directs the attention of its citizens. When they cannot promise security to its citizens and the society in which they will feel secure the authority more frequently speaks about the danger of safety. It wants to win our appreciation if the bomb does not explode, if we are not beaten by hooligans, or when the beggars will be removed from the street. A yellow alert. An orrange alert. A red one. Phew, they managed, the attack was thwarted ! The less security, the more excitement and sensation around the safety. This way the vigilance of the citizens can be misled, our attention can be directed in the other direction, away from neglects or helplessness of the authority.

This could be proved in international comparisons. The war with terrorism has the most fervent course where the state is least engaged in the sphere of security or where it withdraws in the fastest way – America, England, Poland.  The countries in which nothing special is going on concerning security, somehow manage to go through this war more mildly.

 But this does not only concern the war with terrorism. In other spheres of safety the level of stress if similarly distributed. The less security, the louder the battle with tobacco smoke and with breaking speed limits on the roads, with family violence, and with various hooligans. In America the anti-nicotine obsession started with neo-liberalism and grows together with it. In Germany the authorities started speaking about limiting the speed on the highways when the social state started to decrease.  It surely isn’t an accident that in Europe the total ban on smoking in public places was introduced by Ireland, which has the highest competitiveness index, i.e. in other words, the least safety, the most privatized life risk and the least caring state.

Do you have the feeling that this way the authorities divert the attention of people from painful reforms?

 I cannot prove this. I can see a clear coincidence. I can also see that people devoid of security easier agree to limitations explained by the need to protect their safety.  I observed the reaction of thousands of people camping on a London airport when after the terrorist alert the to the United States were stopped.  Nobody cursed, people waited tamely.  The authority was spoken well of and appreciated because it stopped the flights.  This is nothing that people lost their vacation or business because of which they were flying to America. Everyone was happy because the authorities cared about them. “I'm afraid to think what would happen if we were together on the plane with a terrorist?!” The fact that none terrorist was arrested and that no credible circumstantial evidence was disclosed concerning the danger of any kind, did not decrease the appreciation of citizens.

So where is the lie here?

 I don’t know if there is lie.  But I do know that there is a new space for lie and for manipulating people. I don’t know whether the terrorists were really planning something.  I don’t know if the authorities had any reliable signals.  But I do know that if the authority itself fabricated this alert, the same as Stalin used to fabricate successive counterrevolutionary conspiracies, it would easily won the appreciation of people. It is difficult to check this in practice.  The risk differs from other dangers that it is invisible, difficult to calculate and finally hard to verify.

It can easily be proved whether the explosion took place or whether the pensioners received rises. But it is very difficult to decide if there was the real risk of explosion. Surely there is always some kind of risk.

 Judging on the basis of the number of false alarms and political lies which are disclosed, it can be assumed that we do have a problem here.

But you do believe that terrorists exist.

I believe that they exist and I believe that the authority is in war with terrorists but I feel that it takes unfair advantage - maybe consciously – of the fear, which is incurred by terrorism to cover other, less glorious aspects of its activity.  Were the tanks surrounding the London airport there to fight terrorists? Or maybe they were there in order to strengthen the feeling of danger and appreciation of citizens towards the authority which protects people and to which they should be grateful for life? Can you imagine using the tank to look for a woman wearing explosives and who wants to blow up the plane? When it comes to fight with hijackers a tank is not very efficient but it gives a great impression on terrified people. “They care about us, they protect us, we owe them our lives”.

Do you think that the governments and special services in America, England, Poland, or Italy devised a plot in order to make be a herd of terrified living things, disoriented, easy to manipulate, inert?