Post socialistic mentality:

Let me elaborate on the topic of a post-socialistic mentality from the subjective point of view of a person who lived in different cultures for a significant period of her life. One of the biggest distinctions is articulated by learned conditioned cultural beliefs, often expressed through human language by what or how we "should" or "should not" be, think or behave.

Upon disclosure of personal disappointment or disillusionment by contemporary Czech mentality, the wall made up of defensive argumentation showed itself in sentences such as: "But you should look at all that we have here; in comparison to London, our healthcare system is much more accessible to everyone." "You should not see everything so critically. We are a country of great potential in scientific as well as technical fields."

Feeling alienated in one's home country was not caused by the lack of its development in the light of its healthcare, social or other, more technical, fields. It was caused by its peculiar mentality, which often appeared to be more than simply stuck in its communistic way of thinking and behaving. On the other hand, it must be admitted that what seems to be the neo-liberalistic mentality of the contemporary West did often look, in its particular expressions, so similar to what was called "normalization" during the totalitarian era of the former Soviet bloc - post-socialistic tendencies within my own nation are often more obvious than the same tendencies dressed up differently, despite having a similar intellectual, philosophical and probably also political base within the western environment. 

It often seems that our society is still learning from the lessons of the past, yet the western-centric societies which sometimes seem inclined to the ways of thinking that are so similar to socialism are yet to learn these lessons. 

During communism, the doctrinal need for equality dismissed individual differences, and under the guise of equality the party tried to make everyone the same. If a similar kind of logic were applied to the animal kingdom, all animals would be the same: giraffes, elephants, cows. But aren't all of them animals? So, using communistic logic, let us treat all of them the same. Let us forget that giraffes are slightly taller than hens, and so, let us make an approximate average, and let us make that average based on the hens because while counting them, we see them to be of majority within the population of the animal kingdom. If hens have certain specific conditions/needs to live, and if they are to be the representative for all animals, let us make them an example for all animals: may all hens and all cows and all giraffes have the same living conditions; is not that so wrong? If hens are the majority, and they need a small place in the yard to live, let us use the same conditions for every other animal, even if they are ten times bigger. Aren't they all animals, in the end? Of course this would be highly criticized by all those who protect animal rights, but, strangely, when it comes to humans, the propagandistic ideology "let us all make them alike, same" seems to be of little bother. Those who mix the meaning of equality with sameness forget to differentiate between the particular needs of a human being who was diagnosed on the autism spectrum and the other particular needs of those who would qualify for Mensa. As humans beings, we all are entitled to the same dignity, the same equality, yet that very equality needs to demonstrate our right to meet our particular, specific needs. Despite our equality, we are not the same.

Totalitarian systems often perceive gifted, talented and creative people as a threat to their own established ways of seeing. That will result in mishandling gifted education, which in the recent past sometimes stigmatized or even pathologized gifted children who were seen as problematic, and their giftedness was all but appreciated. For such children, their gift became a cause of their shame, which was a consequence of the lack of educational support which came as a part of a discriminatory strategy which intentionally targeted them.

The mothers of gifted, talented and creative children are unfairly seen, through the lenses of totalitarian paradigm, as torturing mothers if they want to support their child's educational abilities and aims. Highly under-developed diagnostic systems which would otherwise offer support for these children and families would often offer erroneous guidelines for these specific cases, which resulted in lower grades for these children, who were not allowed to flourish within the educational system which was based on approximate averages.

A highly envious and jealous environment, which is an emotional standard for totalitarian ways of thinking, will judge anyone who does not fit within their own boxes by their own pre-established means, where it is not an exception for those women who excel academically or in any particular field to be asked questions about if they even know how to cook or clean, if they were taught how to by their own mothers and if these mothers even prepared them for life? Such narrow-minded and pedantic questions are often targeted to those who seem to be ill-fitting for the pre-established standard of women, or, who are simply too independent for a control-based system. Anything will be done to put these people down, under any consequence, and the ironic fact is that women who are truly independent often do not need to brag about the basic skills such as cooking or home ordering which they mastered at an early age.