Razprave in gradivo, Ljubljana, March 1986, No.18 
Ciril Zlobec UDC 323.15.00:008 
President of the Yugoslav 
Association of Writers 
Ljubljana, Yugoslavia 
UNITY IN DIVERSITY (REFLECTIONS OF A WRITER)* 
In today's world of almost unlimited information potential, of 
the computer age, and of an ever-stronger philosophy of star 
wars, it is not difficult to be statistically cogent in 
calculating, defining, assessing virtually everything. The same 
can be claimed for predictions and for getting organized in 
planning behavioral patterns of the future. At first sight, life 
itself appears transformed into pure science, the embodiment of a 
universal organization that can be programmed, guided, 
transmuted. Fear of the population explosion, ecological 
disasters, fear of losing the job under the conditions of rampant 
unemployment, the ever-increasing belief that science and 
technology do not in themselves ensure worldwide progress and 
peace - all of these make the individual, nations, and states 
feel that our sole and all-embracing solution is an even more 
perfect and total organization which admittedly dehumanizes human 
beings but compensates for that by offering them social security. 
The world has already attained that level of organization when, 
faced by the more and more programmed nature of our lives we 
become aware, with regret, of recurrent disturbances supposed to 
simpler terms, who may have for a moment neglected to conform to 
his function of a thoroughly defined link in a certain work 
process, behavior, responsibility. "The human factor" therefore 
ought to be done away with, so that perfect reliability could be 
achieved in the functioning of programmed life. According to this 
reasoning, which admittedly has not been proposed and set forth 
by any philosopher but is nevertheless part of our everyday 
reality, the human race has to renounce man if it is to be kept 
in existence. This, only seemingly absurd logic used in our 
thinking impels us to strive for something that we fear most: we 
give up our essence in fear of losing our identity. 
It is in the framework of this context, in which man's status is 
increasingly that of an undesirable, the intruding "human 
factor," that the question must be posed of what is the nation, 
national community, disparate ethnic groups deprived of 
statehood, differentness of human beings and - last but not least 
- that unit which is easiest to discern, viz. the individual with 
all of his so-called natural rights? Is it not true that all 
these forms of human existence are but an extension of the 
humanistic tradition, an intruding element that must be sooner or 
later abolished, attuned to the rhythm of the faultlessly 
functioning organization of tomorrow's world? 
And yet we have decided this time to convene, with all the 
responsibility and conviction that what we are doing is 
  
* Original: Slovene, 20 pages 
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Razprave in gradivo, Ljubljana, March 1986, No.18 
meaningful, so as to offer our thoughts on these very categories 
set in the contemporary world: the nation, national minorities, 
the individual who is either resolute or confused in search of 
his own identity and his deeper existential substantiation 
grounded in his relation with the broader community, and who does 
find his deeper significance and identity in the community where 
he was born and which represents his national, social and 
cultural givenness. 
Not long ago, at an international poetry festival I listened to a 
poet, German if I am not mistaken, who concluded one of his poems 
with the verses that went roughly like this: 
Rockets were created by man 
Man would like to live without rockets. 
I believe that by using this aphoristic message, the poet 
described well ovr plight, which is the basic plight in the 
contemporary world. It appears that the ancient man, that lucky 
being as well as the victim of his own desires confronting and 
fighting with the forces of nature and clashing with the will of 
Gods, has left the Earth for good. The uncontrollable human 
craving for a better and freer life impels us to produce more and 
more material things and create such relations as subordinate our 
human dignity and our individual and common freedom to some new 
dependence which, on the one hand, logically results from our 
functioning in the world of today, while on the other hand it 
also embodies a universal threat that makes us feel increasingly 
powerless, ever so powerless because the war we wage incessantly 
in all the possible forms is all but hopeless, since in waging it 
we can no longer be - unlike the ancient man just mentioned - 
either heroes or victims, as this time we fight only with 
ourselves. Yet it is well-known that man is uncritically self- 
indulgent. We no longer sharpen and ennoble ourselves and our 
lives by “engaging nature and Gods;" we have already transcended 
the phase when we were masters of nature. We have instrumented it 
thoroughly by now, and all we do today is exploit it. We have 
replaced all types of Gods, including those of seemingly stable 
ideologies, by our own projections of the future which, however, 
can develop only as offered, or rather imposed, by laws of the 
social and technological evolution. Thus, I can paraphrase the 
poet's idea as follows: Man simply has to keep creating rockets, 
even though he fears them and would like to live without them. 
Our common fate, the fate of every one of us, thus becomes an 
increasingly moral question. 
Is morality, whether social, political, scientific, or intimate, 
that is, any conceivable kind of morality, something that can 
really exist in our computer-dominated civilization? And what 
bearing, in this respect, can be given to such categories as 
nation, ethnic community, national minorities, national identity 
of the individual? Even though these are apparently outmoded or 
at least traditional forms of life, which nevertheless have 
survived into our age, are one of the most reliable correctives 
available for the soulless universalization of the technological 
development, as well as one of the most enduring hopes that "the 
human factor," conceived of as both an individual unit and the 
sum of various individual worlds, thus as the unity in diversity, 
might keep its momentum and influence in the years to come too. 
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Razprave in gradivo, Ljubljana, March 1986, No.18 
It is quite true that the universalization of the technological 
development imposes also the universalization of political ideas 
on the world. The minds of the overpowering planners of the 
future have conjured up a picture of the world population 
characterized by identical reflexes, needs, and goals. Naturally, 
given this leveled vision of the future man, the existence of any 
nation, let alone national minorities and other types of 
communities, seems an unnecessary hitch in the wheels, an 
imperfect implementation of a great plan. Ever since the last war 
ended, we have been listening and reading - and often watching as 
a concrete instance - the confrontation between the two so-called 
blocs, a bipartite division of the world, which amounts to 
nothing but imposition, mental and factual, of a certain 
mentality according to which the world faces the imminent 
decisive battle that is supposed to lead to a universal way of 
life, hence also to one single nation or people. If it was not 
for the existence of the nations on all the continents and in all 
the systems, and also for national minorities within these 
nations and an ever-increasing number of the individuals who 
refuse to be divested of their basic natural rights or who are 
more and more firm in fighting for them, the uncontrolled and yet 
planned technological pattern of logic and the leveling- 
regulating totalitarian political thought would have already 
effected the fatal transformation of our "good old world." It 
appears, however, that nature - including human nature - has not 
yet been subjugated all down the line: every current is bound to 
encounter its countercurrent, thereafter never again regaining 
its original source of strength. "The human factor," subsuming 
both its individual and collective dimensions, has in this 
respect too proved to be stronger than it was thought, more 
unpredictable than the design stage would have had it. 
The experience of the Second World War, when nations of the world 
were very clear and unequivocal in expressing themselves in the 
most evil and self-immolating manner, was momentous and remains 
momentous: the tragic experience of the confrontation of the 
nations in the most destructive enmity this world has ever seen 
had to be followed by the policy of reconciliation. People and 
nations felt the need for such a policy on a more genunine and 
deeper level than the political calculations would have it. The 
idea of the equality of nations irrespective of their biological, 
economic and military strength came to stand for the fundamental 
idea embodying justice and human dignity as well as the only form 
of international relations expected to preclude the outbreak of 
yet another world war. 
Even though slogans calling for the equality of nations and for 
human rights remain but empty words in many places of the world, 
thus amounting to little more than propagandist delusion, a mere 
smokescreen, it is nevertheless possible to state that in the 
consciousness of modern man both of these desiderata have 
crystallized into truly inalienable natural rights of every 
single nation; moreover, in individuals too the awareness of 
human dignity has been increasing by leaps and bounds. Both of 
these ideas are very closely interrelated and interdependent: 
there is no free nation without the existence of individual 
freedom, just as there are no free people without the freedom of 
the nation to which the people concerned belong. Thus at least 
part of former conflicts between the nations "moved" within the 
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Razprave in gradivo, Ljubljana, March 1986, No.18 
framework of the nation itself or the state incorporating several 
nations and nationalities. Never before have there been at the 
same time such a large number of revolts, fights, revolutions and 
counterrevolutions, coups d'état of all kinds, armed tribal 
fights and acts of terrorism also due to the dissatisfaction of 
the ethnic communities that believe their equality of rights to 
have been infringed. Force and violence are still the means of 
changing the existing conditions, and the old saying that the end 
justifies the means is still employed and exploited. True enough, 
there was hardly any sustained peace in the past as well, and 
local wars are the tragic regularity of our own time too. 
Yet most of the present-day conflicts show qualitative changes in 
comparison with those belonging to the past: formerly, that is, 
up to and including the Second World War, the world predominantly 
showed the pattern of the rule of the stronger over the weaker, 
or the strongest themselves engaged in battles for leadership on 
a worldwide scale. Today, however, a comparable confrontation 
takes place especially in the fields of politics and economics 
(for instance, the USA versus the USSR, or the NATO countries 
versus the Warsaw Pact countries), although the presence of the 
"big ones" can be perceived in almost all of the local wars. 
Peculiar to the present age are also autochthonous and violent 
states of ferment within small - and the smallest - nations as 
well as within national minorities living within the confines of 
a single country. The ferment in question is normally the result 
of a desire for national emancipation, independence, identity. 
Unfortunately, however, the cases of striving for gaining 
supremacy over others are not infrequent, even though they may be 
veiled by the slogans calling for patriotism, loyalty to ideology 
or to a political bloc, to a given civilization or religion. 
Cases are not difficult to find where such things happen in 
virtually all the corners of the world: most of Africa, the 
Middle East (Lebanon, Cyprus, Iraq - Iran), the Indian 
subcontinent, Central and South America. Such developments can be 
found also in a number of European countries, occasionally ina 
less conspicuous form: Northern Ireland, the Basque Provinces, 
and Kosovo in Yugoslavia as well. Many a nation that got rid of 
the foreign rule - the rule of the stronger - has not yet 
mustered the strength to begin to live in freedom. After the 
Second World War, the process of decolonization has been in full 
swing, but the process of democratization has without doubt been 
much slower than was expected. 
The truth must be told that many nations that had been 
decolonized or otherwise liberated in the postwar period, 
subsequently somehow "disappointed" the rest of the world and, 
what is worse, even failed to live up to their own expectations: 
many of them simply cannot find their own image and hence do not 
have their own identity which would reassure them, secure 
maturity and dignity, and qualify them for real equality, for the 
international dialogue. This certainly is one of the gravest 
tragedies in the contemporary world, because it is the lack of 
identity, that painful hovering in an empty space of history and 
civilization, which devalues the noble expectations of yesterday, 
their fight for freedom, and the victory itself. The fact remains 
that it proved that liberation is not necessarily also freedom, 
and in particular that it is not automatically also real 
independence. And yet, the experiences show that there is no 
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Razprave in gradivo, Ljubljana, March 1986, No.18 
e misunderstandings sparked on this level, and the 
ments as to what is primary, more natural and more 
Se gh further corroborate the realization that this 
matter is a truly complicated problem that even optimum solutions 
cannot resolve in a wholly satisfactory manner; certain 
deficiencies are bound to linger on. Fully implemented NET 
education, with state borders and mental limits being identical, 
is ultimately but a self-destructive provinciality that keeps 
undermining irrevocably and inexorably the very foundations of 
the autonomy of a nation. Similar in effect is also the 
fetishization of the state, taken to represent the sole 
possibility of meeting all the needs - and the only agency that 
should meet all the needs - of every single individual and of 
every single national community, which unavoidably shifts the 
very essence of education to the level of propaganda, 
indoctrination and sterile collective consciousness, and which in 
a multinational state symbolizes superficiality simplified all 
the way, shallowness, verbal awareness. 
The inevitabl 
Is there any way out existing somewhere between these two 
extremes? Without doubt, it is to be sought only in the utter 
rejection of both the extremes, in a unity in diversity of some 
sort. 
Can such a unity in diversity be actually attained? It is 
undoubtedly very difficult -for anyone to reach, because it can 
only result from. the deepest mutual understanding, respect, vital 
(rather than ideological, political) need for one another, and 
from the conviction that such a mutual enrichment does not 
undermine either the independence of any nation or the unity 
within a state community, but that on the contrary it strengthens 
both. And there must be no misunderstanding here: we must 
genuninely enrich each other, which can only be done along the 
lines of giving and accepting and never through taking or 
coercion, The category of “state" must not be and cannot be 
something that transcends nations and nationalities; instead, it 
must originate in the relations of the equality of rights 
established among the equals, in their common life. It is solely 
on this basis that such a fruitful education can be organized. 
The reason why a nation scoops out whatever it does from the well 
of another mation or nationality is not coercive law, political 
meds the will and Customary practice of the stronger, but 
cee ae e need for broadening the spiritual horizons through 
ie the er Rernenn: the curiosity also about the otherness, which 
es ura consequence of the previous and complete condition 
eing fulfilled within oneself. What we have here is thus the 
natural need of accumulating 
only the best. 
Tuan yoyelcqnony of culture and education can only be achieved 
climate eine of an appropriate political, social, and cultural 
a eis ae only as much as entertaining the notion that in 
state has th culture and education a multinational-community 
committing LL Same effects as a single-nation state, means 
misunderstandi asic error, one whence most of the subsequent 
which the destin Spring up. Even in the case of the countries to 
fittingly the oe One nation - one state seems to apply 
symbolizing the nevcrse logic is often at work: the state 
nations living oreo tty nation subordinates to it all the other 
Ving within its borders, not to mention nationalities, 
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Razprave in gradivo, Ljubljana, March 1986, No.18 
national minorities, these having long ago been ghettoized — at 
the most in terms of language and folklore activities in the 
field of culture. 
Some of this - to my mind unacceptable - spirit of the political 
state rather than of the actual single-nation state is 
discernible to me even in the title of our seminar, viz. 
"Education in Multicultural Societies," where one can forebode 
the process tending to the most dangerous image - new image — of 
the world, one in which such a state is a mere intermediate link 
between independent nations enjoying equal rights and the de- 
nationalized unification of the world governed by internal logic 
of the technological development and political vision of one 
single proper way of life (American? Soviet?). As we have already 
pointed out above, this represents the worst type of impoverish- 
ment of man, his degradation from “the human" to the “production 
and consumer factor." In my view, this is the underlying question 
of modern man and of the contemporary post-industrial society 
dominated by computers and information science. 
Proper education must have as its starting point the awareness 
that the nation within which it takes place accumulated during 
its past such an amount of spiritual heritage and today has in 
its possession all of that whence education is nurtured, that the 
corresponding level of the "culture" and “education" of its 
members is taken for granted, i.e. that they are, in short, 
qualified - if I may use the expression - for the spiritual and 
material reproduction of their own nation as well as for the 
dialogue conducted on an equal footing with any other nation. Of 
course, that this should be so is taken as a matter of course by 
any one nation - at least within Europe - that also has a state 
of its own, because it is the state that offers such an 
education, even stimulates it, organizes it, and furnishes the 
economic basis for its implementation. , 
The foregoing observations seem to indicate that a nation living 
in a multinational state must have its own statehood. But since 
many nations do not have it, their independence is curtailed, 
incomplete, which is why with them state education rather than 
national education asserts itself of necessity. 
We have mentioned above that we will take a closer look at this 
area through the example of the Slovenes, a nation that in many 
ways is typical of such an analysis. To begin with, the 
comparison between Yugoslavia in the interwar years and the 
Yugoslavia of today is not uninteresting. Although the Kingdom of 
Yugoslavia recognized some nations (Serbs, Croats and Slovenes), 
their special national rights were far from being complete. The 
political and demographic conditions were such that the country 
simply had to be multinational, but its constitution, 
legislation, and the actual implementation tended toward a 
single-nation form of state. For this reason, the Slovene fight 
for emancipation was taking place throughout the existence of 
that state, but in the most unfavourable times it could only take 
on the form of a fight for culture, the striving for the autonomy 
of the language and for its use in public life and in schools - 
yet the schools’ curricula themselves were shaped by state 
interests and not national concerns. The new Yugoslavia, formed 
by the conscious participation of all our peoples and 
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Razprave in gradivo, Ljubljana, March 1986, No.18 
nationalities in the National Liberation Struggle and in the 
Revolution, was organized anew as a constitutionally 
multinational state that recognized several previously ignored 
peoples and nationalities; enjoying full equality of rights 
regardless of numerical strength by the Constitution, these 
peoples and nationalities were also to have a democratic, 
federated state. With respect to the title of our seminar, the 
basic characteristic of this country is also that there is no 
single official language, because this function is 
constitutionally distributed among all the languages of the 
nations that enjoy equal rights: Serbo-Croatian/Croat-Serbian 
(the Serbian and Croatian varieties), Slovenian and Macedonian; 
on the territories populated by national minorities, thus in the 
ethnically mixed areas, the language of the ethnic minority in 
question has also the status of an equal rather than a second 
language. This applies to public use, public administration, the 
educational system, the judiciary, health service, etc. Finally, 
the education of each and every nation living in Yugoslavia is 
based on the national principle. 
Like every other nation in Yugoslavia, then, so we Slovenes too 
have our statehood, and even the Constitution defines us as a 
state that together with others makes up the Federation and 
represents one of its constituents. 
In constitutional terms, this is certainly the ideal and just 
solution, one against which no objection can possibly be made. 
And yet there are difficulties that arise in the course of every- 
day practice, when opportunism and vulgar economic profit consi- 
derations, coupled with the recent economic, political,and inter- 
nationality complications, with a renewed belief that the state 
as the highest ideal can solve even that which is insolvable, 
incite some people to the goal of trying to alter even the basic 
aims of education, showing clearly the tendency toward gradual 
nationalization of all public life. Each nation ought to contri- 
bute, in proportion to its total population figure, its share 
(e.g. to the economy, army recruitment) to some common fund of 
mental content that should be on its way to becoming a new 
reality, a new value. In simpler terms, elements of the national 
would - in the area that makes up the subject of our reflections 
- be relegated to marginal positions, whereas education would 
begin to feature prominently the mathematical sum of - true - all 
the peoples and nationalities of this country, but distributed in 
such a way that the larger, i.e. numerically superior ones, be 
also accorded a larger share, more weight in their activities and 
effects. And since majorization is a concrete matter, this would 
lead to spiritual, cultural, educational-instructional, national, 
and later by necessity also political domination of one single 
nation, its language, culture, and its way of life. In this way, 
the state would substitute for the nation in the latter's most 
delicate functions. This would also be a great blow to the inde- 
pendence of the national minorities which, in the wake of such a 
reorientation of values and aims, would have to loosen their ties 
with their parent nations living outside Yugoslavia, the ties 
that hitherto have been natural and firm enough. 
Why, one might ask, such an emphasis, at an international 
meeting, on certain specifics that beyond our borders may be even 
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Razprave in gradivo, Ljubljana, March 1986, No.18 
incomprehensible, or appear to some to be the only sensible, 
contemporary and - in today's world - inevitable development? 
It would seem that in Yugoslavia the Slovenes are most firmly 
opposed to such tendencies. Our opposition originates not least 
in the cognitive principle which takes due account of the 
complete life value and function of a nation in the society of 
today, and proceeds from the assumption that democracy and 
equality of rights in a multinational state can only be 
actualized by giving full consideration to all the peoples and 
nationalities concerned, i.e., those that constitute the 
population of the state. In other words, democracy and equality 
of rights in a multinational state can only be attained through 
complete functionalization of the nation on all levels, because 
all the other tendencies - whether or not we keep closing our 
eyes to the fact - lead to such a single-state formation as 
necessarily represents a state of coercion, although against its 
own will, throughout its "transitional period" on the way through 
amalgamation and assimilation. Such instances of submitting to 
considerations of practicality, economy, strategic suitability, 
and the like, would force such state communities - according to 
the very same thread of logical reasoning - into another 
“transitional period" of the withering away of single-nation 
states as well, this time in favor of what has been referred to 
repeatedly in these reflections, namely, the unification and 
universalization of the world as the rule of a single idea, a 
single way of life, or two counterpoised socio-political systems 
constantly engaged in battle. I believe that the existence, the 
functioning, and the optimum perspective of every single nation 
are the best expedients warranting the nation to be free from the 
threatening dehumanization of the world. 
The Slovene nation was lucky enough, perhaps in having been able 
to choose the lesser of two evils, to shape its own national soul 
and self-awareness and by fighting to gain at least the basic 
possibilities of functioning too as a nation, already in the 
period when it had neither a statehood nor a state of its own, It 
is for this reason that the Slovene nation is not willing under 
any condition, including warning and pressure, to give up its 
cohesion, it own identity. 
Education founded on a national basis belongs among the essential 
ingredients and rights of any sovereign nation. The respect and 
consideration of the spiritual, existential, and political inde- 
pendence of the nation is from the viewpoint of vulgar economics 
an “expensive" affair to maintain: a complete network of day 
nurseries, kindergartens, primary, secondary and vocational edu- 
cation and universities, sciences that are both autonomous and 
qualified for cooperation with the world, an appropriate state 
and administrative structure, and participation of all these in 
the broader community - in the case of Yugoslavia at the level of 
the Federation. This represents a considerable economic burden, 
and hence fewer and fewer things are taken as a matter of course, 
inherited and preserved, thanks to the so-called natural laws; 
today, and even more so tomorrow, such things will necessitate 
conscious decisions, many-sided organization of the society, 
well-founded and promising developmental orientation. It is par- 
ticularly with reference to a small nation that the single most 
important fact today - much more so than at any time in the past 
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Razprave in gradivo, Ljubljana, March 1986, No.18 
- is the dictum: if you want to be a nation and to remain a 
nation, it is not only because you are convinced it is your 
right, but because you are convinced it is your advantage. 
To discuss the nation, the danger of its disappearance, the 
possibilities of its survival, and even its thriving existence, 
means that we must also have clear-cut notions of education, that 
element which shapes both the individual and the national 
community. 
Naturally, the whole world - and this is something encountered in 
Yugoslavia as well - teems with all the conceivable kinds of 
nationalism, including the dangerous varieties, but they must not 
be fought by seizing upon the idea of doing away with the nations 
and the national consciousness, for many a nationalism emerges 
out of unbearable frustration, emotional and physical 
restrictedness of an endangered or dominated nation or 
nationality. To eliminate misunderstandings and conflicts on this 
particular level represents also the task of education, one that 
education is able to tackle. 
I have repeatedly stressed that education must be grounded ona 
national basis, but far removed from nationalism of any sort and 
from self-complacent introversion. Today, the world is a broad 
and open expanse wherein "the evil" and "the good" are 
increasingly difficult to delimit precisely; they exist here and 
there, within ourselves and within others, and any attempt at a 
generalization of the one or the other is doomed to failure and 
is in fact out of place; if carried on at the political level, it 
is even very dangerous. Unfortunately, we live in an unsettled 
and highly neurotic period, when perseverance, patience and 
tolerance have all but vanished from our everyday life, when all 
too often we are prone to pronounce inappropriate such matters as 
due to their inherently complicated nature occasion also 
difficulties, the matters we try to eliminate from our lives in 
the mistaken belief that everything will be easier then. This 
happens also in the field of inter-nationality relations within a 
common multinational state. By analogy, when various state 
nationalisms sparked (and still spark) wars of varying extent and 
duration, we try to find the reasons for disagreements, disputes, 
and in certain cases even hostilities among the peoples and 
nationalities of one and the same country in the very fact that 
these peoples and nationalities persist in keeping their present, 
given status they fought for. Yet it must be admitted that the 
reasons for these predicaments are often to be found elsewhere, 
most frequently in our own inability to set up and immediately 
assert genuine equality of rights enjoyed by the unequally 
strong, by the unequally developed, by the communities that live 
with disparate customs and foster different goals. It may be true 
that the multinational state, which apart from peoples almost as 
a rule contains also numerous minorities, is first and foremost 
givenness, a real entity, yet it is at the same time also a 
historical, political and moral obligation prohibiting the 
stronger (the numerically superior) from doing the weaker an 
injustice and from misusing the faith that all the community 
members contributed to the creation of their state. 
The error of either type in the educational system, namely, 
close-knit nationalism which beyond its limits cannot find 
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Razprave in gradivo, Ljubljana, March 1986, No.18 
anything good, let alone better than itself, or state 
indoctrination unfavorable to the positive national consciousness 
(mere verbal patriotism being the interlinking force), can be 
fatal to the existing circumstances and relations both within 
peoples and nationalities and in the framework of the state. The 
proper way in this respect is also the most arduous one, viz. 
that of parallel selection and synthesis of the highest and most 
stable values inherent in the nation as well as the state, 
together with full awareness of the essence and possibilities of 
the one and the other. However that may be, it is quite certain 
that in a multinational state comprising several languages, 
cultures, different currents of tradition and civilization as 
well as dissimilar natural developmental perspectives, education 
represents a highly delicate issue; it is the field where even 
the greatest case is not great enough, because the matter in 
question is not merely a profession but nothing less than the 
shaping of man who is to acquire a feeling and sense of conflict- 
less coexistence in a multinational state, a feeling and sense 
also of his own intimate relationship with the nation he belongs 
to, and with the state that he shares with his nation - but not 
only with his nation. 
Though neither a teacher nor a politician, I am convinced that 
this aspect too should not be ignored in reflecting upon life, 
whenever it is discussed in the light of our own experiences and 
those of others, and not least in the planning of education. 
31