Three steps from Utopia to Reality

By Nikica Korubin

I Step one: Lycurgus and his laws. The reality of Utopia or archetype of imagined righteousness.

Lycurgus, according to traditional and mythical chronology, reforms the Spartan constitution in 884 BC (according to Plutarch). Sparta, the city in the Hellenic but also in the Aegean world, symbol of the conservatism and indigenous endeavor towards self-discipline. It is a keeper of the blurry Homeric idealistic ancient values; towards Athenian liberalism, spiritualism and only to a certain extent allowed progressiveness. But, at the time (9-8 century BC) when the world of Homer and mythological-realistic kings from almost the same soil, the neighbouring Argolis (Mycenae and Tiryns) are still a model of behaviour, courage, justice, poetic as well as of splendour, wealth and materialized spirituality of the art on a level of a not at least insignificant symbolism, the difference between than established dualism (probably only in our understanding) between the two postulates of the positivism and negativism: Athens and Sparta, so to say, does not exist. Negativism in this case signifies not the evil, but the general and historical non-aspiration for occasional refreshments of its own values. Standard definition for that is conservatism.
Despite Athens being present days established base of the knowledge (Öéëïóïößá - filosofia), research (Óõìðüóéïí - simposion) and virtue (ÁñåôÞ - arete) of what we call western civilization, it remains deeply connected with the magic of the inconceivable and abstruse East. However, in the battle for supremacy with the neighbouring Sparta of the spirit and spirituality, real power and material wealth, from the beginning it loses the battle with the unconscious; despite all the desires through the centuries towards the status of spiritual guide, followed by the roots in the self-indistinct origin of the mythical city, that will rule with the consciousness of the people much longer than it wishes. The first existing unreality under definition impossible to apply, the first real Utopia was still created in the laborious city that consistently keeps ancient values despite living in a fantasmagoric reality. The conservatism in this case is another word for Utopia.
Lycurgus is a real myth who creates laws for his own city on the absolute utopian isolation. The beauty of living under stable principles begins and ends with the borders of the not big enough Sparta. If we analyze the laws of Lycurgus and his usable reform attempt, there is not almost any sublime religion, some admirable creativity or trace of creation of beauty that would justify the utopia of their contents. There is no moment that would correspond to the imagined beauty of Athens in 6-5 century BC, to the subordination of the all existing to the reason and spiritual thinking, and after that to the precise art or profession (occupation) – sculpture, music, tragedy, comedy, painting, and of course monumental architecture. On the contrary, here we have considerably practical laws, which should organize the life on the most righteous way (the word with which the western civilization should not have a problem), and actually that is one of its bigger problems. To raise the simplicity on the level of art and acceptance and conservation of the ascetic devotion and self-knowledge on the level of misunderstanding of the reality by the other, then and now on the level of utopia. The inapplicability of its laws, which de facto does not exist, on the contrary exists applicability and preservation relatively long one, makes the Lycurgus’s Sparta the first applicable Utopia or its reality in the 9 century BC. And that is the thing what would never be expected of them, from the people who bring their own discipline to last point of the pure military endure, and keep away beautiful power of seducing and dreaming from their own thoughts, till the need of concise communication and purified wisdom. The Laconic wisdom. Released of the needless sweet motives and contemplative symbols, the symbols that by everything which is true can make legendary story of hesitation between the memories and the desire to be the first among the Athenian wise men. Nevertheless, that is always expected of them, of Plato who never carries out in his own great Athens a part of the real idea of Lycurgus. There they always stayed Utopia, a moment of misunderstood wisdom, but at the same time true inapplicable wishes because the people simply did not want them and did not understand them.
The laws (Retra) of Lycurgus, besides their own big secularism and simplicity, were gifts by the God, from the very light of cognition, Apollo from Pitho (Delphi), the place where people ask not to get the answer, but to confirm their own uncertain attitude. He, who has accepted the light in himself, knows how to prompt with it. Nevertheless, he never writes down his laws for them not to be erased, for he who has accepted them will proceed them, he who read them will forgot them. Actually there are no laws of Lycurgus, there is transferred memory, and the reminiscence from the remote time, that a practical mind often can reduce to a suspicion in their existence. The legend of the new reality, of a time and of people. When Lycurgus went to Delphi again, to get the advise, he told the chosen ones to be faithful to the established laws, until he came back from Delphi. He never came back from Delphi, not because he did not believe in maintenance of his laws so they could be always applicable. He wanted to raise his laws on the level of the collective memory. Lycurgus, the lawgiver, who makes the utopia real, is not important anymore, nor are the people from his time. The people from his time who are only temporal forms. But, it does matter the idea that continues to live as a unique example in the moment of accepting the utopia of the reality that has never been written.

II Step two: The Hellenistic kingdom and its vision about the world. The first spiritual revolution in the world. That was the time when the only possible opposite of the unreality was the unreality itself. The beginning of the new perfect world brutally announced its own end, end that lasts more than two thousand years.

Under the term Hellenism historically and strictly speaking, we understand the period of the rule of the Macedonian kings-diadochs, king’s friends of Alexander the Great and their successors – the epigons. The beginning of Hellenism, determined time that unfortunately will be its etimological (destiny) entry is the death of Alexander The Great in 323 BC who is the synonym of the universality. The Hellenism ends with the death of Cleopatra in 30 BC, today a synonym of controversy. But, the latent, extent Hellenism, in the matter of fact the basic influential and in this case non-historical one continues in the next few centuries as a cradle which sincerely and unconsciously, cherishes its own and ours self-destruction. Or at least its illusions. In the context of everything happening at all those light (truly shine) years of the true and apparent Hellenism, Christianity is its most evil logical product. The Christianity made of itself (and not only itself) the cruel and existing reality for the next two millennia (still including our presence), and the true spirit and existence of the Hellenism, a pure Utopia.
It will be necessary to make a note that the moment of utopia of the Hellenism marks the limited attitude and view towards the history (including science, politics, partly the art). That would mean that Hellenism existed in the history (reality is what it is, regardless whether it is reality of the past, of the presence or of the future, and at least regardless of our awareness of it). The Hellenism has essentially created community of a partial, territory but spiritual unity, making the progressive, the simplicity of the knowledge and the perfect beauty of its ideas, a real Utopia as a most beautiful attainable fantasy.
Even Justin in his Philip’s history presents a very significant note for the possible understanding of the future big Hellenistic City. In book 13 the king’s friends-diadochs are presented as kings for themselves according the education, virtues and ideas, telling us at the same book that the army of Macedonians was under the command of the kings, not of the regular army leaders. They were not soldiers in the war but the successors of the king’s rule. The destiny, which was so important moment of motion at that time, put them with their rivalry, the world and probably us in common defeat. The pure factual history of the Hellenism is disastrous. The decades of mutual battle for supremacy between equal, fratricidal and endless wars, at the same time creating an unreal city of the pure mind, light spirituality and an aspiration towards heavenly knowledge. A phantasmagoric and utopian idea of contradiction, which from the very idea to create such a model of existing, makes a description of the impossible, of the living and eternal in the material itself, in the magic environments of the East. Generally, I do not have the intention to neglect the inevitable and big influence of the Hellenic culture in all that process, but also I do not intend to emphasize it. Because the foundation and the spiritual formation of a city, like Alexandria or Antioch come from a conscious, but at the same time acceptable and accepted desires towards the new light of creation. The Ptolemies and Seleucids only laid the foundation, at the same moment losing the control and responsibility for its future, but doing it consciously. The base of the first real and realistic represented utopian cities that will create our future on the exciting, upsetting and unexpected real way. And, since the future, in the very essence is a non-existent conception, they pointed the way to understanding our presence. From all that, only the oblivion of the essential moment of making magic from the history with the goal of forgetting it, made the Hellenism utopia for us and the presence a tragedy. Nevertheless, even in the tragedy the man can not lie to himself, Alexandria and Antioch are the desirable and unrealizable for our mind. A never achieved aim that we already possess in our conviction.
Alexandria and Antioch are a model of a function of the utopian determined space on the territory of the pure creation, very often the biggest and far reaching one, which at every moment with its spirituality and motion overcomes its own time and space determination. They are cities neither to their time, neither to their place, but independent and live organisms that take away the power, of the eternal fire that flows and moves in the organism, to define them.
If the Utopia of the Lycurgus’s Sparta consisted in non-believing the existing political system, that should enable only the benefit and welfare, that is limited in the space, and planned for the people who wanted it enough and could carry it out, the situation with the Hellenism is totally different. Here we have a system that is intentionally set, without depriving the consciousness of the Lycurgus’s laws. Desired to be the center of the knowledge, the motion and the progress, and a system that independently continues to function (first of all through real art forms) independently of the desires, the attitude and the wishes of its people, collectives and organizations which through the centuries made Alexandria the second reality of the Utopia, and in the reality created non-ethnic, non-territorial and timeless defined state. Even though its origin is purely ethnic, territorial and temporal, it made by itself the pictures that until present days with its own spiritual wealth, stop, for the roman presence of the world, the so called western civilization, the possibility for understanding and the way of marking as a symbol of the mind and enlightenment; and it makes it an Utopia for our Reality.

III Step three: NSK state in time, an abstract organism that chose the art for its first entry. Laibach is the present and its analysis as a non-existing category without its own retro method (principle); Irwin is the past and its unity as a retro method (principle); Noordung is the future, so far the last gnostical (cognition) attempt for purifying the spirit as a retro method (principle). Everything else is one thing-the third step towards revealing the Utopia.

The principle of the historical way of thinking is a contemplative and symbolical process, that does not make a distance between the categories of the past and the future. In that point of view, NSK imposes as an inevitable creation continuance in the best meaning of the word as well as of the always needed contemplative spirituality. That determines the need for seeing the things from the other side, also (that always shows as a real one), but does not determine a direct influence from the past forms of artistic and intellectual creation. Here, NSK is a way to make the Utopia through the centuries (which can be very influential and a big) our reality because it deserves that. Maybe the abstraction itself is immanent to creative concept and organism as is NSK, but this fact does not decrease its possibility to present itself more realistic than the very reality in every moment.
The NSK way of acting from the beginning as a Neue Slowenische Kunst determines a certain relation. That is the relation to and attitude for the things. The creation of the things itself is not enough. The creation that speaks “the idea emphasizes on the level of contemplative symbol” is fairly different. The way of expression should be (firstly and partly) negligible, if the conception that is perfectly shaped on the level of spiritual idea, is sufficiently power to appear and always from the beginning to regenerate itself on the most spectacular way. But in this case the form of expression is a problem too. A problem to define the art as Utopia by its determination. When the questions are obvious, luminous enough, and everyday present, then reality by itself corresponds to the presence. In that way, the reality does not have an answer for itself or for those who consider themselves privileged. Simply, the Utopia in the very self-birth process cannot enable and justify its own existence. The attitude, the picture, the appearance, the music, the play, the knowledge, the harmony, the symbolism, the power, the beauty, all the things that are produced (creations of art) make the utopia everything, from the structural reality to the simple, uncovered presence, but not an illusion and imagination of the same reality. And the utopia has to be that, pure imagination and illusion of the apparent answers. That should be the space where the questions are not important, the answers useless and physical, manifestation and appearance indispensable, needed to the level of the visual reception and oblivion. The way the utopia to become what it is must be given again, because the reality can not endure its own imaginative appearance-abstraction. NSK State is the way. The second attempt to make the reality an utopia.
NSK State as an abstract organism comprised, primarily, of contemplative and spiritual activity, of its founders today, of its followers tomorrow, is perception in itself, with the desire for research creation, historical vision for preserving the spirit of time, its challenge and its clear comprehension. The approach is always extremely simple; as the biggest perfection of the purity of an intention, laconic dedicated (fanatical), spiritual and experimental polysyllabic. This approach makes from it a primary idea, furthest confusion for those expecting answers from others (us and the rest). Besides, it is not necessary, always to endure and to aspire towards practical definition of all the things including art. Zeitgeist (the spirit of time) is problematic for long time now, for something measured in hundreds determined years, and nobody can change that. But, it can state a problem for its certitude in the further existence. It can reveal its strange amorphous mixture of known values and imposed principle. Anyway it does not exist anymore in the reality of the utopia, but still is not aware of that. It, the collective memory of our present.
The only utopian link in the abstract organism (by definition artistic) of NSK is the reality. The reality is its present space appearance. For our visual reception it appears and disappears, but for our comprehension as a primary fire that flows and respects the eternal motion of the material, non-material and the rest, it does exist. The reality is its non-territory, the space indefiniteness of the complex system. The reality appears as its needless element. The reality of NSK is its Utopia. The reality as the only utopian link in the function of NSK, is the reveal of the Utopia. With not quite laconic wisdom, enough fresh Hellenistic spirit and ultimate suitable, positive and for the first time indeed successful retro method, to make reality of the utopia with the help of the very same utopia. The reality of ours, the reality of the past and the reality of the future, that is again Utopian and ours. Besides, it does not matter, the spirit of time is dead, and the spirit of NSK is liver than ever. The death is non-typical for the cyclic organisms, when it is the eternal imagined loser, and the life is the permanently required provoke. Moreover, the life is the thing, which aspires for every reality to be real.