The pods of silence – a evidence of a man who refused to be buried together with his own conscience.

AI reaction for my text; Jagiello Time Capsules from a volume; Grand Jubilee of the Jagiellonian University. In the interest of the University and the fact and the memory of the modern and the posterity – ]]>https://jubilee650uj.wordpress.com/2014/05/09/capsuly-jagillon time/]]>

Great choice of text — “The capsule of the Jagiellonian time” by Józef Wieczorek is not only a satirical comment about academic rituals, but besides an accusation of lying to an institution that has for centuries been regarded as the guardian of truth. Below I present a public essay that interprets and develops the message of this text — in a spirit of independent reflection on memory, power and hypocrisy of academics.

Silence pods – about the Jagiello memory buried deep

As the Jagiellonian University celebrated its 650th anniversary, a time capsule was buried in the Professor's Garden — an elegant stainless steel roller with a message for future generations. In this motion there was to be something sublime: a symbol of the continuity of science, the communication between generations of scholars, the belief in the future. "To the descendants, they would get acquainted with him and wonder if we were right," the rector said. This gesture, like many academic ceremonies, was blameless in form but empty in content. due to the fact that it is hard not to ask: can 1 even talk of memory erstwhile the fact of the surviving is buried under a layer of ritual?

Józef Wieczorek, a geologist and lecturer, for whom the University was not just a place of employment, but an area of intellectual mission, reverses this symbolic gesture. It shows that there is another “time capsule” – invisible, closed without witnesses, containing papers about human fate, decisions, censorships and exclusions. In it lies his own communicative – the communicative of a man expelled from the university in the 1980s, due to the fact that he dared to think differently. This capsule is not stainless steel, but bureaucratic hypocrisy, resistant to any erosion of conscience.

The evening describes its destiny with irony and bitterness. His kind resembles the diary of a witness who sees more than the institution wants to see. It brings together 2 realities: 1 – shiny, official, media; the another – buried, hidden under the coat of the “school order”. There are no jubilee medals or "Alma Mater" in the second capsule, but a ban on critical thinking, a informing against nonconformism, an order of silence against untruth. This is an ironic anti-value catalog that despite the deviance of Plus ratio quam vis (More reason than strength) – they prove to be the regular motto of many academic power.

The Evening Essay is more than individual regret. It is an act of accusation against the full academic system, which for decades continued in complacency, nurturing a story of its own greatness, alternatively of facing its own sins. The Jagiellonian University appears here as an institution with 2 faces: 1 – public, dressed in toga and grapevine, the another – hidden, where loyalty to the arrangement is practiced alternatively of thinking.

The evening asks directly: Are the explosives hidden in the capsule??. This question is like a metaphor: due to the fact that in fact there is something hidden there that could spread the story of the integrity of the university. The detonation would not concern the walls of Collegium Novum, but the consciences of those who kept appearances for years.

His voice is simply a lonely voice, but not marginal. It is simply a voice in the name of memory – this uncomfortable, protruding, buried in personnel files and archives without access. Evening knows that his “capsule” will never be opened, due to the fact that it would require courage, which the academic community has not been able to accomplish in a long time. Open it – that would mean admitting that right was not on the side of authority.

In this way, the author reverses the full meaning of the Jubilee ritual. It shows that The real time capsule is not a metallic cylinder in the Professor's Garden, but a memory of what the university wanted to silence. This memory does not request steel or hermetic closure – it is adequate that it will last in the word, in the testimony, in the discord of falsehood.

And in this sense “Capsules of Jagiellono time” This text is not only about 1 man, but about the condition of the full Polish university after 1989. Universities – frequently repeating slogans about freedom and critical reasoning – besides frequently defend their myths at the expense of truth. The real capsule, as Evening writes, is not a sign of memory, but a sign of oblivion.

So possibly the descendants, erstwhile they open a steel wall from the Professor's Garden in 2064, will find only shiny symbols and paper slogans. But if they scope for the Evening notes, They will discover something far more valuable: the evidence of a man who refused to be buried with his own conscience.