Recklessness can be an effect of excessive care by parents or educators, and later by institutions. If a child or adult knows that someone always will rescue him or her from oppression, they do not have to care about the consequences of their actions or negligences. But recklessness also happens to be a form of despair, when all ways seem to be shut and it is not worth while taking care about anything. Such recklessness of despair manifests itself through drunkenness or drug abuse, through passivity or escape. Despair can also express itself through aggression. Recklessness is a reaction to desperate situations which is proper to people who are rather kind-hearted and serene by nature, inclined not to aggression, but rather to escape and to seek oblivion. These features depend on genes and on childhood rearing.

Irrespective, however, of whether recklessness is an effect of excessive care or of lack of prospective, it is always contrary to hope. For hope means expecting the good that we do not yet see, but is firmly expected at the end of a certain path. It is defined thus by St. Paul in his letter to the Romans. Hence, hope is a motor of action and makes what I do and how I do it in no way indifferent. Hope makes us strive at something with patience and persistence.

The attitude of hope does not always have a religious source. It can be, for instance, trust in humans and in the good that is in them; it can be also a sense of one’s own strength.

From the attitude of hope there comes courage for life and for initiating new and difficult affairs. We may say that, on the one hand, it is accompanied by a spirit of adventure and of testing oneself in adventures. On the other hand, it is a source of patient perseverance in difficulties and in ordinary everyday reality, when one has to survive and save something -- in spite of everything.

The spirit of adventure which I would connect to the hope of the good in people used to calculating chances, may seem to be reckless, for it is a romantic spirit of measuring one’s strength against objectives. But, as a matter of fact, there is no recklessness when someone looking for adventures prepares for them and undertakes them responsibly. Classical recklessness consists in lack of responsibility for what we do and its consequences. Even adventures, if lived recklessly, presume some thoughtlessness and laziness in the stage of preparations. Recklessness is an irresponsible and intrinsically passive optimism, looking for pleasant experiences and not for deeds. It can also be a result of pessimism seeking oblivion in such experiences. In attitudes of recklessness optimism prevails, whereas hope itself is a source of optimism.

We can say, therefore, that various forms of optimism in human attitudes situate themselves between recklessness and hope. They allow one to accept responsibility and to preserve optimism even in seemingly hopeless situations.

There exists, certainly, still another form of optimism, typical of stable and well organized societies in which the chances for success can be calculated. In such societies optimism may be based on adaptation to calculations and may thus combine passivity with industriousness and responsibility within the frame work determined by the stability of a given society. I think here in particular of the bourgeois consumer style of life characteristic of Western Europe. But many people there break away from this stabilization, for while calculation ensures the feeling of safety, it gives no hope of any new good. Hence there emerge rebellious movements as well as escape under the impulse of despair, for instance in drug addiction. But there is also positive movement looking for sources of hope, be it in idealistic engagement on behalf of neighbors or in various religious commitments.

Poland lies in that part of Europe that did not taste stabilization. Every generation here lost its wealth and close relatives in wars, partitions, or invasions. The question here then concerns the various forms of optimism and how they include recklessness and hope?

Jokes, like proverbs, unveil the psyche of the society which creates them. Let us take a closer look at two Polish jokes. One of them is from the time of "Solidarity" when it was not sure if the "big brother" would not intervene. It goes like this: "God sent his angel ordering him to see what is going on earth. The angel returns and reports: "On the West, they fear and arm, on the East, they fear and arm, and in Poland, they neither fear nor arm". "Oh, dear", says God, "they count on me again!"

Another joke if from the middle of the economic crisis of the eighties. There are two ways out of the crisis: the normal and the miraculous. The normal solution would mean that Our Lady would descend from heaven and fix everything in Poland, and the miraculous would consist in the fact that we begin to work and cope with our problems ourselves.

Both jokes criticize recklessness and waiting for God’s excessive care. At the same time, the second joke constitutes an appeal to get to work and to count on our own forces. The first shows Polish pride from the fact that we do not fear, for when it comes to armaments things did not depend on us, living in the framework of the Warsaw Treaty. Let us, however, go back to the second joke and to its critique of lack of work. This lack was an effect of both the bad system of insufficient pay and of the bad organization of labor as a result. Firstly, there was no profit from good work, and secondly, the effects of work, even if it was good, were wasted through bad organization. This is a phenomenon common to all countries with post-socialist economic systems. Let us add that Poland passed to this system from an economy based mainly on agriculture and that it did not have sufficient experience of capitalist industrial economy as had Czechoslovakia or Germany. The labor culture survived in Poland on private country farms. Unfortunately farmers, limited in their aspirations, are destroyed by alcoholism which was carelessly promoted by the state, and later also by private tradesmen. Alcohol is accessible when other wares are absent from the market or too expensive. Moreover, local bureaucratic cliques settle many affairs by means of "wetting the bargain". Restrictions on the growth of the existing economy made it unproductive to care about this growth and removed the economic grounds for human hope for a better life. Drunkenness and bad work are signs of despair and of lost hope for achieving something better.

On the other hand, reckless counting on God’s intervention has old roots in the Polish mysticism, deprived, however, of its motor. We will return to this motive again.

The economic recklessness of socialist authorities (again, not only in Poland) should also be noted. Totalitarianism ensured in this domain almost complete irresponsibility on the part of those who shared power, who were politically "ours". We may say that in the system of the so-called real socialism whoever had power had money, given to him as a privilege and not based on work -- hence the prodigal lifestyle of the groups in power. Companies were not evaluated according to their profitability, but on the basis of fulfilling centrally designed plans -- hence a recklessness in the whole economic life. No manager lost his job because of bad management, if only he was politically obedient. So this problem belonged not to features characteristic of Poles, but to traits distinctive of socialism. As a result the whole nation had to wrestle with the effects of the system in the form of an economic breakdown and horrible indebtedness. We almost needed a miracle here to be successful. It had, however, to be a miracle of hope and be translated into responsible and hopeful economic action. In this miracle were traditions that grew from struggles of a different type than that for economic success.

An essential element of the Polish educational tradition is that of knighthood. It lives still, for it is a tradition of a strictly defensive fight -- for your liberty and ours. Such a type of knighthood produced the history of our nation, similar in this regard to the history of our neighbors in that part of Europe, composed of little states incessantly tormented by great powers: Germany, Austria, Turkey, Russia. Defensive wars require a peculiar optimism and courage, especially when they were fought with poor resources against great superpowers. The hope of victory consists here in faith in the victory of the right cause that is expected to result both from determination and from the braveness of its defenders, as well as from God’s help. The biblical scheme of wars fought by Israel, trusting in God’s help, is almost exactly repeated in the history of Poland.

Knightly hope is not a passive waiting for Godot -- it is an invigorating hope, plunging right into the whirl of the struggle for the good that is awaited with hope. It combines counting on God with a conviction that God counts on our braveness.

Similarly as in the history of Israel, so in the history of Poland this counting on the victory of the good cause over the bad did not always prove efficient. After Poland’s partitions we lost one uprising after another. After each uprising came the time of considering the defeat and of looking for its causes. It was also the time of persecutions, arrests, confiscation of manors, and the destruction of economic treasures and those of the national culture.

In Poland, after each uprising the burden of maintaining the economic and cultural status rested to a great extent on women, as their fathers and husbands either were killed or had to emigrate. These women generated a new type of optimism and hope in regard to their knightly and Romantic form -- an optimism to persist in spite of everything and to save by means of hard work what still could be saved. What remained to be saved was first of all economic existence itself seriously threatened by various confiscations and by the policies of the invaders. These conditions bred a type of women -- workers and managers -- with a type of hope connected with performing duties. This hope communicated to children and youth who had to be educated for the future difficult struggle for independence, for work and persistence. The educational work engaged the whole society. There emerged various forms of clandestine education, pursued by the invading authorities. Various official and clandestine religious orders were founded to care for education, some of them of social elites, others of the poorest. Orphanages were created, such as those founded by Edmund Bojanowski in Great Poland or open-air kindergartens, combining education with playing in the open.

An interesting form of action was the religious orders without special habits, including factory sisters, evangelizing milieus of industrial workers, whose work could be compared with the "worker Priests" in France. Activities of this type lasted through the whole period of enslavement, and became ever more intense.

If the ethos of positive work -- as it was expressed in the literature -- was intrinsically Romantic in Sienkiewicz’s novels, their return to the knightly ethos is not at odds with that of positivism, even if it suggested somehow a thought of armed action. We may say that from Sienkiewicz’s novels, written "to strengthen hearts", grew the Polish armed action during World War I.

One of Sienkiewicz’s heroes, who were favorites of the youth, is Andrzej Kmicic from The Deluge (Potop), a brawler and a bully, extremely reckless but wildly brave at the same time. In the course of action he changes into a patriot and a marvelous knight. He still risks, but is loving and brave; he is responsible, yet embodies a sense of adventure, be it in reckless quarrels or in romantic patriotic action. Popularity is decided not by virtues alone, but rather by a combination of values and vices, of heroism with carelessness, or even with wildness or cruelty in some situations, while in other circumstances the hero becomes sentimental and mild. Through this combination of vices and virtues Kmicic is an all too human hero, accessible as a model to be followed.

At the end of the XIXth and at the beginning of the XXth century there was a revival in our country of the traditions of knighthood. National hopes bound themselves anew to the idea of armed action, linked with a dream of a great liberative war of nations which was prayed for and expected. Among the youth there emerged gymnastic associations (Falcons) preparing their members for military actions. Then riflemen’s groups were found as an immediate germ of the Polish army. The Polish scouts’ movement (harcerstwo) emerged as well as an educational youth movement. It drew directly upon such knightly traditions such as the story of the legendary knight Zawisza the Black from the XIVth century, who embodied bravery, honor and reliability. There was a saying that you can relay on a Scout as on Zawisza.

Scout optimism consisted in developing bravery, resourcefulness, love of nature and adventure in the middle of nature, as well as in developing group solidarity in conditions of camp life. It is an optimism of youth and friendship. The hope entertained by Scouts is that of spreading good by means of their own common efforts. We should point here to a certain difference between the genesis of the Polish and of the English scouting. We did not have colonial traditions of ruling others. Our scouting emerged before the first World War and its most important hope was that of regaining the country’s independence. The knightly element was directed here towards defense and the fight "for your freedom and ours", for freedom of all enslaved nations. In the twenties between the wars in our scouting there prevailed the element of play and adventure in the perspective of preparation for normal work in a normal, independent state. But this did not mean a disappearance of the knightly ethos. All too fresh were the memories of older generations who participated in struggles for the country’s independence, and who often were killed in these struggles. Too real -- and increasingly imminent -- was the prospect of war with the Nazi Germany. Optimism, typical and normal for young people living in a normal country, still was related to readiness for defense and to awareness of a real threat.

A particular chapter in the history of Polish scouting is the story of its struggle during the second World War, starting with heroic death of a group of scouts resisting the German invasion in Katowice. In the underground work scouting -- the so-called Grey Squads (Szare Szeregi) -- gathered elder children and youth who because of their age were not able to join the National Army, and formed Scouts’ squads directly incorporated into the military structures of the Army. Young participants acted in the frame of the so-called little sabotage, while their elder colleagues formed squads for armed actions. Grey Squads became one more national legend.

The popular university in Gacie, led by the Solarz couple, was a symbol of the desire of knowledge This university did not provide academic knowledge, but taught wisdom in many matters essential for orientation in life; it taught how to learn and to think. A proof of this growth of the desire for knowledge and of the appreciation of the value of science was the large number at that time of scientists and students of peasant origin.

Generally speaking, the twenties between the wars brought a cooling of the heroic and patriotic temperature and a normalization of human attitudes and strivings. To a certain extent it also brought secularization of a large part of the intelligentsia. In religiosity there appeared some dangerous trends. On the one hand, in certain youth movements there occurred a national chauvinism, related to the influence of Fascist ideas. This colored the religiosity of youth with an aggressive nationalism. Among elder generations, often hesitant about this chauvinistic understanding of Catholicism, there appeared the tendency to treat religion as a purely individual and private matter, just as in Western of Europe.

At the same time, however, there were vital elite groups promoting a religious renaissance, a deepened spirituality and an ethics open to all neighbors. We should mention here the "Renaissance" movement (Odrodzenie) from which stemmed future founders of the Universal Weekly (Tygodnik Powszechny), students’ organizations such as "Juventus Christiana", Catholic Action, circles related to the above mentioned Laski center. However, everyday human hopes were focused on such more practical matters, as, for instance, finding a job in the period of crisis and unemployment.

The educational ideals of that time were shaped, on the one hand, by the state, propagating the so-called state-creating education, and, on the other, by opposition movements. Among them, Fascist-oriented movements brought not so much hope as various phobias and fears, the unique remedy against which should be a rod of iron rule. Yet both Peasant and Socialist movements, also in opposition to the government, brought a culture of hope based on the idea of cooperation in striving towards democracy and social justice. The third educative power was the religious teaching orders, running schools (scarce for boys and numerous for girls).

In the frame work of leftist movements is doctor Janusz Korczak, a great educator of poor Jewish and Polish children. Doctor Korczak’s educative optimism consisted in trust in children, in respecting them as persons and and treating them seriously as partners worthy of attention, and in equal respect for dignity of both every adult and every child. Korczak thought that children just like adults need not only respect, but love. He also appreciated the need of looking for God, and hence the need for a chapel in his orphanage. The essence of education was for this great doctor being together with children. He remained together with his pupils in the Warsaw ghetto and went willingly together with them to a gas chamber, till the end supporting their hope with his presence. For hope is not always attached to something concrete that we await; more often it is based on somebody’s presence -- be it the presence of God (religious hope) or of man.

When we speak about the influence of religious orders on Polish optimism, we should definitely highlight the influence of the Franciscan Order, carrying the image of God who is good and merciful, and of Jesus Christ who is close to us all. The Franciscan image of God -- not severe and puritan but colorful and friendly -- lies at the source of the Polish optimism, counting always on God’s forgiveness and help in every critical situation. It is no coincidence that in the Polish lands there emerged the cult of Divine Mercy, thanks to the spiritual experiences of a poor nun, sister Faustyna. This spread quickly during the second World War, when there was such need to put one’s hope in God.

The period of the second World War, being a tragic time of confrontation with the two superpowers of that time, Nazi Germany and Stalinist Soviet Union, brought intensification of heroic attitudes. These included the cultivation of hope against hope, in spite of abandonment and weakness. This hope was based solely on the conviction that every evil has to fail, and that good and justice have to win. It was therefore worth even dying in battle to contribute to this victory. At that time, heroism required multiple actions: death from the invaders’ hands was threatened for teaching Polish children, for hiding Jews, or even for slaughtering a pig without permission or for delivering products from the country to the town. Heroism was in order to survive German concentration camps, deportation to the East and Soviet labor camps. Everybody -- not only soldiers -- had to be a hero. This generated a peculiar optimism of bravery as well as a particular kind of humor. Religious hope gained a political dimension -- hope of liberation and hope for God’s help in the struggle "for your liberty and ours".

The climax and symbol of this struggle became the Warsaw uprising. It was directed against Germans, but at the same time with the idea of taking Warsaw under control before the Russians would be able to do so. Leaders of the Warsaw uprising wanted to greet the Soviets as allies, but in a free Poland by free authorities. The Soviet army allowed the uprising to be crushed by Germans because it was, as a matter of fact, directed against both the departing and the incoming occupation. Hence its defeat was double, accompanied in addition by lack of any action of the allies from the West. It was a moment when all hopes of the nation might have collapsed as it was felt that the nation had been sold by its allies to a new invader. Yet hope and the will to persist did not fail. They had to operate in post-war Poland in conditions of enslavement by the mighty neighbor with its associates in the Polish Communist party that formed the Polish apparatus of power. How did these conditions shape the education of the youth and what elements of hope did it carry, on one hand, of an optimism of recklessness, and on the other, of an optimism of hope?

The state Socialist education taught obedience to the ideology and to the government, execution of precisely defined tasks, and political passivity. Hence, it educated towards recklessness, especially as the only thing left for personal choice was private play on the margins of social life. At the same time, people were not responsible for any broader matters. They had only to watch out not to incur the displeasure of their leaders, but were not to worry about the effects of their action. Moreover, youth magazines encouraged sexual liberty, recklessness and irresponsibility in this domain of life. This system, implemented in schools and youth organizations directed by the party and state authorities, had also another feature: like all kinds of indoctrination and manipulation it was horribly boring. It could not, therefore, be taken seriously by young people, especially when they discovered that it was based on deceptive information. It urged some of them to escape into play, into youthful subcultures, into various escapist movements allowing one to go away from society, more often into alcoholism and, from a certain time, into drug addiction. Finally, groups that were rather elitist in terms of quality, and yet recruited their members from all social layers, discovered their hope of political and social engagement in political opposition or in the opportunity for religious engagement in various ecclesiastical groups and organizations.

Mass religious education, based on religion classes, had also its shortcomings. Above all these lessons, held in buildings belonging to the Church, sometimes in difficult conditions, gathered classes too numerous to allow individualized education. Nevertheless, they provided basic information, not only from theological and ethical domains, but also about the history of the church in Poland and about the Polish Christian tradition. Often this completed what was passed over in silence in official education or corrected false images and information presented by state schools.

Basic Christian education, however, was the domain of families and of various pastoral groups gathering students, young workers, workers and farmers in general, or various movements, such as the neo-catechumenate, the Movement of Rebirth in the Holy Spirit, and "oasis" groups, entirely of Polish origin, known also as the "Light-Life" movement. In the pedagogy of this movement we find a synthesis of the experiences of Catholic Action, the French JOC (Young Catholic Workers) and the JEC (Young Catholic Students) movements, combined with elements of the Movement of Rebirth in the Holy Spirit and of various liturgical and biblical movements. The biblical accent was particularly strong. The "Light-Life" movement prepares lay men and women to participate actively in the life of the Church. It also has its family branch, called "Family Oases". Family movements in the Church had remarkable significance for resistance against totalitarian education of all kinds. Apart from "Family Oases" there existed "Family of Families", "Covenant of Families", and the like. In all these little groups hope is based on the Gospel, and the young and families draw serenity and joy from friendship which they express in hymns and songs sung with accompaniment of guitars.

This hope was not extinguished during martial law; those who were confined and those who were just shocked by the events gathered around this hope that comes from faith. This allowed the society to organize immediately, in spite of prohibitions, to help the confined and to create various forms of social life. The Church provided in most cases support for these actions. There were at that time many conversions of non-believers -- in spite of external defeat.

It was this optimism of hope and persistence in people’s strivings and chosen values that was strengthened by the subsequent papal journeys and by the Pope’s teaching on moral victory and on standing firmly on the frontier of dialogue even if the adversary refuses to go. This persistence in remaining on the border of dialogue was based on a hope that there is a basic good in man that can open the possibility of dialogue in a certain moment.

Without understanding the political history of our country it is not possible to understand this mixture of recklessness and serious, the stubborn hope in our social life, as well as the basic patterns of hope shown in our literature and present in our education. We should, however, pay attention to some sociological data. As an example, let us mention that, in our family life, we left the model of a peasant family. The new cities and industrial quarters are inhabited by people who came from villages and live in cities for a maximum of the second or the third generation. The Polish peasant has a strong sense of his own dignity, strong family ties, a great dynamism, and also remains strongly bound with the Church.

These bonds with the Church were inherited by the newly emerging workers’ groups, such as those in Nowa Huta near Cracow, the flag steel-works of the Stalinist times. Hence in such centers, planned as a mainstay of Communism, the struggle for the right to construct a Church became a ferment of self-consciousness and resistance. Consequently, parishes became centers of independent social life and a basic element of hope.

This sociological situation conditions also a peculiar religious conservatism associated with the political openness of our nation. Postconciliar renewal was accepted by the majority of the society in a shape proposed by the bishops. Only narrow circles of intelligentsia went further in their desires for change. Yet what has been done has great significance -- including the more ecumenical and biblical model of piety as well as a special accent on God’s love and mercy, replacing the catechesical methods of frightening with God’s justice.

It would certainly be worth while to analyze what kind of optimism was offered through all the years to the children of families bound to the political authorities. In contact with representatives of these circles we usually observe lack of any sense of humor and an attitude of fear when confronted with the society’s independence. It would be interesting to study the effects of such an attitude in family education. It may evoke a prolongation of this attitude in the children, especially where children choose the same profession, as was often the case with members of the Communist police. In other cases, children, inspired by the idealistic phraseology of their parents, became pillars of dissident movements and discovered values entirely different from those they had imbibed at home.

Another, and yet tragic space was formed by the families of alcoholics. There, it is very difficult to evoke optimistic attitudes in children who live in fear and poverty, without a smile or a sense of safety. Sometimes they find refuge in good pastoral youth groups, in the Church. More often, however, they seek escape in accidental, sometimes criminal youth groups, sometimes offering also alcohol or drugs. This is one of the greatest social dangers in our society.

A great national success was the emergence of the "Solidarity" movement, in spite of the efforts of schools and the state to deprive people of freedom in thought and action. Not only did the Trade Union emerge, however, but a whole movement of defense of human rights, together with independent youth organizations, new scouting and other similar groupings. Their emergence supported hope for gaining the good by means of non-violent methods.

A testimony of despair (and thus of educational loss), on the other hand, is drunkenness, drug addiction, and to some extent also the fact that a large part of youth leaves for abroad. The latter phenomenon is, besides, not univocal. It is a proof of lack of hope for changes in our country, rather than of hope for the good in general, even if it is sought in other lands. It is rather a change in the space of hope. Young people who went abroad to improve their conditions of life or to live in a free world ceased to count on changes that would happen in our country in a predictable time. We can and should understand this for everyone has a right to such a decision. But the mass character of this phenomenon indicated a certain atmosphere of hopelessness that occurred especially in the martial law period. This atmosphere was changed, awakening hopes not so much for the reformability of the system as for its end. Education in Poland was hitherto an education for the heroism of struggle, be it armed or non-violent, but always involving a high price paid for the defense of basic values. It was an education forming a specific elite. This was not an intellectual elite, for it consisted of people of all levels of education and of all social strata. It was a moral and socially engaged elite, aware of its goal, its sense of defense of values, and its readiness for action. This elite now influences a broader, sometimes a very broad circle of people.

On the other hand, difficult conditions breed individualistic egoism, the practice of closing oneself in the circle of family affairs, and yielding to attitudes of consumerist societies. In the case of the latter model, a great role has been played by the example of the West. Together with socialist education towards passivity, such patterns produce a special type of consumerism deprived of efficiency. The smartest go to the West to become prosperous and to gain wealth.

The most essential matter in our country -- also from the political point of view -- is creating a movement of families that would support one another in educating children in the spirit of national and Christian traditions, in forming their ability to love, to share with their neighbors, to defend their own dignity and the dignity of the others, the ability to hope coming from love.