Self-criticism is as old as civilisation itself, that is, as old as a political community that is no longer simply a tribe or a kinship group. At the very beginnings of civilisation, with the emergence of the first cities or places where people lived permanently, the psychology of those who inhabited them slowly began to change as well. In nomadic societies, in communities of tribes and kinship groups, personal identity was closely identified with collective identity, and self-criticism could even be harmful to the community because it separated the individual from the group and left them on their own. In the first civilisations, communities in which people from different tribes and kinship groups lived permanently together, self-criticism became necessary, even a tool of civilisation.

From tribe to political community: The emergence of self-criticism

A political community, meaning a permanently settled human community or civilisation, is therefore a community made up of people from different tribes and kinship groups who now have to be connected by some kind of idea, religion or, simply put, a sense of belonging. In the earliest human communities, that belonging usually rested on a shared language or some form of primitive religion. The need for the community to survive gave rise to hierarchies and authorities and, naturally, to the earliest forms of government or rule.

While in nomadic or tribal communities rule was generally “assigned” to the oldest or strongest member, in the first political communities government became something established according to a particular set of rules, something that could be changed and subjected to criticism. Criticism certainly existed within nomadic and tribal communities through different forms of consultation, but in political communities the need for self-criticism emerged for the first time.

If an individual had been self-critical within a tribal community in which collective identity was virtually the only identity that existed, this could have amounted to criticism of the community itself and might even have provoked a reaction disastrous for that individual. In tribal communities, particularly nomadic ones, a person is rarely alone and spends most of their time dependent on the other members of the group. In permanently settled human communities, or political communities, there is a portion of time in which a person remains “alone with themselves”. It is precisely then that they begin to think about the actions of other people and, ultimately, about their own actions. These earliest, primitive forms of questioning oneself are what we might call the roots of self-criticism in the history of human social development.

In his Apology, the Greek philosopher Plato attributes the following words to Socrates: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Ancient philosophy would place great emphasis on the development of critical thinking, but also on the need for self-criticism. With the development of Christian thought, self-examination and a form of self-criticism became linked to morality itself. Repentance and confession consequently developed as forms of awareness of one’s own actions.

In Islam, “muhasaba” refers to self-examination, taking account of oneself and analysing one’s own actions, thoughts and intentions. It is a process in which a believer critically examines their deeds to determine whether they are consistent with God’s principles, with the aim of correcting shortcomings and purifying the heart.

Modern European thought would place self-criticism at the centre of its political debates. Self-criticism became a rational method, inseparable from reflection itself, but also an important step in implementing programmes or projects in Western societies. Anyone who has had contact with projects or programmes funded or implemented by European organisations and institutions knows how important monitoring and evaluation are. Here, self-criticism as a rational method is practically manifested through an activity. By observing and assessing the effects of an action, the achievement of a project’s objectives is examined and further steps are then considered.

Without entering into deeper philosophy, self-criticism is a simple process in which an individual examines their own decisions and then acts on the basis of that examination.

When someone else is always to blame

Where there is no self-examination, we are dealing with an individual who lacks the courage to confront themselves, someone unable to admit that they may be wrong. Such individuals can often become violent precisely because they have not settled matters with themselves and therefore “keep trying to settle matters with others”. Communities made up of such individuals are often conflict-ridden, emotionally driven in their actions and inclined to blame everyone but themselves for their fate or circumstances. This is where processes of heroisation and victimisation enter the picture: heroism is possible only in relation to others, never oneself, while the community is almost always presented as “the unfortunate victim of great powers, geopolitics or some foreign centre of power”.

The peoples of the Balkans provide striking examples, particularly Serbs and Bosniaks. In the Serbian victimhood narrative, Serbs are “eternal victims of East and West” and “a perpetual bargaining chip between the great powers”. Among Bosniaks, the role of the main culprit is sometimes assigned to Belgrade, sometimes Zagreb, sometimes Turkey and sometimes Europe. Very rarely, one could say almost never, is the problem sought within oneself and one’s own community, nor are one’s own decisions seriously reconsidered. This is where the problem of theory and practice appears.

As a result of the phenomena described above, namely the absence of self-criticism, a deep gap also develops between theory, meaning abstract rules, and practice, meaning the actual implementation of those rules. If “someone outside is responsible for all our problems” and if “we are constantly being suppressed”, there is little left except a kind of “retreat into theory or ceremony”. In Serbian society, this can be seen in a highly developed system of rules and rich theoretical debates across almost every academic field, accompanied by weak implementation of the rules and conclusions produced by those debates. All of this creates a certain form of “social schizophrenia”, in which one thing is thought and written about while something entirely different is done and implemented.

This deep gap is particularly visible when observing Serbs in Belgrade and Sandžak Bosniaks, especially the social environment of Novi Pazar.

Knowledge without self-criticism is ignorance: From the University of Belgrade to geopolitics

In the Serbian case, the lack of self-criticism may be most visible in Belgrade, particularly among university professors, especially those on the political right who blame “foreign powers and unfortunate geopolitics” for the position in which Serbia and the Serbian people find themselves. The University of Belgrade is home to excellent theorists with extensive bibliographies. Yet when those same professors take on a practical role or public function, it becomes clear that an impressive body of academic work can amount to a kind of “retreat into theory”, rather than being proof in itself of genuine knowledge of a field. This is where the important connection between self-criticism and implementation becomes visible: describing events and phenomena in theory is relatively easy, while the real difficulty begins when those rules have to be applied.

One vivid example is Vladan Petrov, professor of constitutional law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Belgrade and president of the Constitutional Court of Serbia. In principle, Petrov has an extensive bibliography and has written a textbook on constitutional law. We are speaking about decades of academic work that one would expect to produce a highly capable constitutional lawyer or, at the very least, a capable “guardian of the Constitution”. Petrov was also a judge of the Constitutional Court for many years, which one might expect to be a considerable advantage in performing the duties of president of that same institution.

However, after becoming president of the Constitutional Court, Petrov turns into a guardian of President Vučić, while the Constitution of Serbia itself becomes secondary. A closer analysis of Petrov’s writings on constitutional law reveals considerably more politics than constitutional law itself, specifically the politics of Serbian nationalism. As an accomplished “expert on constitutional law”, he moves into explicitly political analysis in his books and blames various actors for the state of Serbian law, while rarely blaming Serbs themselves. Since the 1974 Constitution, everyone appears to be responsible for the problems of the Serbian judiciary except Serbs themselves and, ironically, Petrov himself.

This visible absence of self-criticism and the conviction that there is nothing wrong either with one’s own nation or one’s own conduct bring Petrov to the position of president of the Constitutional Court. His statement that “the Constitution has not changed, but the meanings of parts of the Constitution have changed”, when discussing its application, can be understood as an example of the problem this text seeks to describe: knowledge that is never subjected to scrutiny can become ignorance, while theoretical knowledge of rules without a willingness to apply them can turn into political loyalty.

From this perspective, as president of the Constitutional Court, Petrov becomes indistinguishable from a political actor whose interests should themselves be subject to institutional control and thereby, paradoxically, calls his own long career as a constitutional lawyer into question. It is also paradoxical that a significant part of the Serbian Constitution is devoted to human and minority rights, while the constitutional order established in 2006 rests on ideas of freedom, the rule of law and the protection of human rights. Yet Petrov, in his capacity as president of the Constitutional Court, appears on television speaking about the “abuse of human rights for political purposes”, which can be understood as a profound misunderstanding of the very nature of human rights. Petrov, despite his extensive theoretical legacy, therefore becomes an example of an unsuccessful attempt to translate constitutional rules into practice. The paradox is that someone occupying the position of president of the Constitutional Court can end up defending precisely those political interests that run contrary to the constitutional principles the institution is supposed to protect.

Here we can see why self-criticism is an important civilisational characteristic and why, without it, a person can move towards denying the very values they are supposed to defend and to which they have, in principle, devoted their career. Vladan Petrov is of course not an isolated example, only a particularly vivid and current one. Similar examples can be found in other academic fields. The University of Belgrade employs professors of architecture while Belgrade simultaneously faces serious urban planning and architectural problems. It employs professors of economics while corruption is described as a systemic problem and public finances remain strongly tied to political decision-making. Dozens of high-quality papers on landscape architecture and forestry are published every year while parks are destroyed and forests cut down and degraded. Numerous papers on hydrology are published while rivers face serious pressures. An enormous number of papers are published on democratic political processes while political institutions can simultaneously show serious signs of deterioration.

Dozens of professors educate future teachers every day, while individuals who move from that system into political office may support policies that further marginalise education workers. The paradoxes and ironies could be listed indefinitely, but without implementing self-criticism in everyday life, no serious solution to any problem can be reached.

Perhaps the most visible evidence supporting the claim that self-criticism is a civilisational characteristic is the existence of “systemic disorder” in the very centre that claims to be a bastion and centre of knowledge, Belgrade. The University of Belgrade, with hundreds of teaching staff, dozens of institutes and thousands of published papers, confronts a harsh reality when we look at the condition of the city in which it operates. Parts of Belgrade still lack adequately regulated sewage and water infrastructure, while only a few kilometres from the Rectorate of the University of Belgrade there are settlements that, even after decades of existence, do not have properly developed basic infrastructure. A considerable share of Belgrade’s sewage is discharged into the Sava and Danube without adequate treatment, while green areas in and around Belgrade remain under constant pressure.

This is precisely the central evidence for the argument that self-criticism is a civilisational characteristic: without it, we can hardly speak of ourselves as civilised, let alone describe a city as a “multi-million-person European metropolis”. Instead of being addressed and examined in an academic and scientific manner, problems are once again explained by blaming someone else.

Now the “Belgrade elite”, the so-called Second Serbia, blames Serbs outside Belgrade, and the same pattern continues: instead of looking for the problem within one’s own ranks, an external culprit is sought. A bizarre situation then emerges. In opposition to Greater Serbian nationalism, meaning a concept in which the Serbian state seeks to dominate the former Yugoslav space, Belgrade now appears, according to a similar logic, as a city seeking to dominate the region. The principle therefore remains the same; only the bearer of that principle changes.

Instead of countering Serbian nationalism with the concept of a Serbia focused on itself and on organising and modernising its own society, a concept appears in which Belgrade seeks to dominate other cities in the region. Within this absurdity, the University of Belgrade’s position on the well-known Shanghai Ranking is compared with those of universities in Zagreb, Sarajevo or Ljubljana, which is itself nonsensical. By both history and size, the University of Belgrade should be compared with universities in Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Warsaw, Sofia or Athens.

Moving in the opposite direction from the ideas of the well-known historian Latinka Perović, who argued for a Serbia that must turn towards itself and for Belgrade as a force that should direct Serbia towards its own modernisation, we now get a kind of “Second Serbia” that places Belgrade at the centre of the former Yugoslav region. In terms of its size and economic and political power, Belgrade indeed occupies such a position, but that is precisely where the problem with this approach begins.

The current student movement in Serbia, as well as the professors gathered around it, represents a concept that seeks to be the opposite of the nationalist state model but in certain respects actually reproduces its pattern. There are examples in other areas as well. One example is comparing Belgrade’s tourist numbers with cities from the former Yugoslavia while avoiding comparisons with Budapest, Bucharest, Prague or Sofia, cities with which, according to the logic of this argument, it should actually be compared.

Across all these comparisons, another problem emerges: because of a lack of self-criticism and a form of confidence built through comparison with universities and centres from the former Yugoslavia, the University of Belgrade avoids institutions in “its own weight class”, namely universities in Prague, Budapest, Bucharest or Sofia, and instead moves directly towards “measuring itself” against academic centres in Paris, Moscow, Berlin, Rome, Beijing or universities in the United Kingdom and the United States. It then confronts far larger and more powerful academic centres, and the explanation returns that everyone is against Belgrade or that they “envy Serbian intelligence”.

A similar pattern can be recognised in Serbia’s geopolitical relations with other states. Serbia seeks, and in some cases manages, to establish a more dominant position in relation to countries of the former Yugoslavia. This produces a degree of confidence, after which “measuring strength” against Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic or Slovakia is avoided, and the comparison moves directly to the United States, Russia and China. The same pattern returns: a lack of awareness of one’s own limitations and a lack of self-criticism lead back into the vicious circle of a “global conspiracy against Serbs and Serbia” and the “unfortunate geopolitical circumstances” to which Serbia is supposedly subjected.

At the same time, there is almost no recognition that Serbia itself entered certain geopolitical conflicts, often without a sufficiently realistic assessment of its own strength and limitations. Self-criticism, in addition to being a civilisational characteristic, is therefore also a practical survival skill: it is a way for a person to become aware of their own abilities and limitations and a safeguard against entering battles they cannot win.

An excess of norms, a lack of implementation

To conclude this section, one can also point to the enormous number of laws and rules Serbia has adopted during the process of accession to the European Union. In normative terms, Serbia is aligned to a considerable extent, yet in practical terms many of these norms remain insufficiently implemented. This is visible in the judiciary and the rule of law, media freedom and freedom of expression, and especially in political pluralism, where one party has in practice suppressed various forms of opposition activity for more than a decade.

Serbia therefore does not suffer from a shortage of norms, but from an excess of normativity in relation to its institutions’ ability to implement them. It is far easier to produce a law than to produce a society prepared to accept its consequences. The problem therefore lies not at the beginning of the rule, but at its end, at the moment when the rule is supposed to become behaviour.

The consequence of this gap is the creation of a society in which the law loses authority, exceptions become more important than rules, personal connections replace institutions and responsibility is shifted onto others instead of mistakes being recognised and corrected. A particular problem is precisely the absence of self-criticism: rather than asking “where did we go wrong and what do we need to change?”, people much more often search for an excuse, a culprit or a circumstance that will explain failure. The same mistake can therefore be repeated for years while new analyses, strategies and theories are produced around it, without any real change in behaviour.

The solution therefore lies in a culture of implementation, responsibility and self-criticism, in which admitting a mistake is not defeat but a condition for progress. Success is measured by how willing we are to implement, test and change what does not work.

The muhasaba that never happened: Retreat into ceremony and narrative

Among Bosniaks in Sandžak, the lack of self-criticism is most visible in questions of religion and in the conduct of religious officials. Islamic tradition contains a strong concept of muhasaba, taking account of oneself. A person is not called only to identify the mistakes of others, but continually to examine their own actions, intentions and decisions. Muhasaba means being willing to ask oneself uncomfortable questions: where did I go wrong, what could I have done differently and were my actions really right? Its essence is not self-condemnation but the ability to see one’s own mistake before looking for it in others. In this sense, self-criticism becomes a form of personal responsibility: a person unable to examine themselves will find it difficult to correct the society around them. Muhasaba therefore functions as a kind of internal control that prevents a person from hiding behind ideology, group identity, authority or belief.

Religious officials in Sandžak, unlike Belgrade professors who “retreat into theory”, choose a “retreat into ceremony and narrative”. This form of “retreat into ceremony” involves a large number of religious lessons, khutbahs and lectures delivered by religious officials, accompanied by a low level of implementation of those rules in practice. Self-criticism is equally central here. Without taking account of themselves, religious officials decide to “settle accounts” with the immorality of the community and try to correct the community without first correcting themselves. The result is naturally the opposite of what is intended.

The clearest example is Mevlud Dudić, mufti and president of the organisation that calls itself the Meshihat of the Islamic Community in Serbia and which still has not resolved its legal status in the Republic of Serbia. Looking at his biography and doctoral dissertation, we find that Dudić worked on Islamic upbringing and pedagogy and that one of the most important books he published is Ilmihal for the First Level of Religious Education. Dudić’s focus is therefore pedagogy and the Islamic upbringing of children, while in his public appearances he is regarded as a traditionalist and cannot be placed among religious officials inclined towards Salafism. Formally, Dudić is considered an authority both in religious circles in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Sandžak. Looking at his public appearances, he has generally avoided sectarian polemics and disputes, adhering firmly to traditional Islam, meaning the form of Islam historically connected to Sandžak and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Dudić has all the prerequisites to be a highly successful mufti and to lead an Islamic organisation effectively.

However, after the death of Muamer Zukorlić, the former undisputed leader of the Islamic Community, Mevlud Dudić developed a very close, even submissive relationship with the authorities in Belgrade, specifically with Aleksandar Vučić, then president of the country. Contrary to Muamer Zukorlić’s slogan of “partnership, not subservience”, Dudić becomes a “true sycophant” of the president. In most of his public statements, including recent ones, he speaks very positively about Aleksandar Vučić’s policies while disregarding the moral and religious principles that should guide a religious official, particularly someone who considers himself a mufti.

A mufti, as a religious authority, should not publicly praise a head of state because of that person’s political power, because Islam requires scholars to maintain independence of conscience and speech before those in power. In Islamic tradition, a scholar has an obligation to speak the truth and advise rulers rather than legitimise them through flattery. There are hadiths warning of the dangers of approaching rulers for personal benefit, while classical Islamic thought particularly valued scholars who did not alter their standards of truth and justice in the presence of power. This does not mean that a mufti should oppose a president or ignore good actions by a government; specific good acts can of course be publicly acknowledged. But praise of the ruler as a person, particularly when frequent and uncritical, can easily turn religious authority into an extension of political power. The role of a mufti is not to act as a government spokesperson, but as a moral conscience of society, recognising what is good, pointing to injustice and remaining equally fair towards everyone regardless of their position.

Here we arrive at the contradiction between Dudić’s formal education and his conduct in practice. It then becomes legitimate to ask what his knowledge of Islamic and moral education amounts to and how Dudić can write books on the upbringing of children if, in his actions, he contradicts Islamic principles. Dudić, however, is not an exception. Unfortunately, many religious officials in Sandžak often behave in a similar manner. Here we see the essence of the “retreat into ceremony and narrative”: they are highly skilled at preaching and moralising, while their implementation remains questionable.

According to some research, several hundred people who have completed religious secondary schools or even university-level religious studies operate in the area. This number is very high in relation to the overall Muslim population of Sandžak. Such a number also stands in contradiction with the widespread presence of “non-Islamic” social practices. Islam is reduced to ceremony, religious rituals inside mosques or skilful sermons about moral conduct, while after those rituals the population returns to its own rules. Unfortunately, similar patterns can also be seen among religious officials, so Dudić or another religious official may speak critically in principle about relations between scholars and rulers while, in practice, “political sycophants” can easily emerge. This “retreat into ceremony” is a consequence of the absence of muhasaba, of taking account of oneself. When rules cannot be implemented, the response becomes a retreat into rituals, theoretical discussions and moral criticism of others.

The most visible harmful conduct of Islamic religious officials in Sandžak can be seen in the large number of betting shops and casinos operating successfully in Novi Pazar, while much of the population can simultaneously gamble and perform all Islamic religious rituals without recognising a contradiction. Despite full mosques and hundreds of religious lectures, Novi Pazar remains a place that, in a substantive sense, does not observe Islamic moral principles. Corruption, favouring personal connections over justice, political hypocrisy, gossip and slander, disrespect for the dignity of others, materialism and turning religion into a tool of personal or political interest are all widespread phenomena in Novi Pazar. Islam does not judge a person by how often they invoke religion, but also by how just, honest and responsible they are towards others. It is therefore particularly dangerous when religious language is used to conceal personal weaknesses or justify the interests of a group.

True muhasaba begins precisely where we are prepared to admit that the problem is not always “with others”, but also within ourselves, because a society that constantly searches for the mistakes of others while refusing to examine its own can hardly speak convincingly about genuine Islamic morality. At the other extreme, religious officials will blame the political representatives of Sandžak Bosniaks for every problem facing the population, once again leaving their own moral conduct unchanged and merely shifting responsibility for their own society onto someone else.

The same can be seen in Novi Pazar in the way local residents understand their own size and importance. Harsh criticism is often directed at inhabitants of other places in Sandžak whom people from Novi Pazar regard as “insufficiently enlightened or backward”. Cultural and educational institutions are compared with those in towns several times smaller than Novi Pazar, while people originating from the Pešter plateau are described as uncivilised and unworthy of city life. In this “confrontation between Pazar and other places in Sandžak”, unrealistic confidence develops. Instead of comparing Novi Pazar with cities of similar size and development in the country and region, such as Užice, Čačak, Niš, Zrenjanin, Zenica, Tuzla or Osijek, people in Pazar prefer to “measure themselves” against Belgrade or Sarajevo, a contest they inevitably lose.

Thus the “unfortunate unified Islamic Community in Sandžak” is formally placed under Sarajevo, while Belgrade decides on its legal status, meaning that dispute is automatically lost. Dudić then goes from being one of the state and president’s strongest loyalists to someone accused of an act of “high treason”, moving the centre of the Islamic Community to Sarajevo, while the legal status of the “unified Islamic Community” becomes uncertain, together with the employment status of all people working within the organisation.

This example clearly shows how the absence of muhasaba or self-criticism can lead to severe consequences and how self-criticism is itself a civilisational characteristic, without which other civilisational features can also be lost, including the legal status of an organisation. In this specific situation, instead of asking how much responsibility belongs to the people running the organisation, the old explanation returns: “UDBA structures”, Belgrade as the permanent enemy of Bosniaks and its alleged desire to subjugate or remove the Muslim population of Sandžak.

From a real enemy to an alibi: How the lack of self-criticism becomes our greatest problem

By way of clarification, in both Serbian and Bosniak narratives, the idea of a “foreign enemy” is neither entirely invented nor without foundation. Great powers have not always treated Serbia favourably throughout history, just as Belgrade has not always treated Muslims, or Bosniaks in Sandžak, favourably. On the contrary, over the past hundred years there have been numerous plans, policies and attempts that resulted in emigration or pressure on Muslim populations from areas in which they had lived for centuries. These are historical facts that should neither be minimised nor concealed.

This is precisely where the argument of this text begins. The problem arises when a real enemy becomes a universal explanation for every failure of our own. Historical injustice then stops being an object of analysis and becomes an alibi. If every failure is blamed on Belgrade, the West, the East, great powers, neighbours, political opponents or some “foreign structure”, there is no longer any need to ask the uncomfortable question: what did we ourselves do wrong? The same applies to the Serbian narrative. If every Serbian failure is blamed on foreign centres of power, conspiracies, pressure and geopolitical interests, Serbian society no longer needs to examine its own decisions, institutions, political elites and mistakes.

The point here is not that enemies do not exist. The point is that the existence of an enemy does not free a community from the obligation to look at itself in the mirror. Even when external pressure is real, the question of internal responsibility remains. Self-criticism does not mean denying historical injustice. It means refusing to use historical injustice to explain absolutely everything that happens to us.

The absence of such self-criticism produces a vicious circle that can last for decades. Instead of admitting and correcting a mistake, a new theory is produced explaining why the mistake was supposedly unavoidable. Instead of changing behaviour, a new declaration is adopted. Instead of building a functional institution, a new regulation is issued. Instead of accepting responsibility, another culprit is found. This creates excessive normativity combined with a weak capacity for implementation: society produces more and more rules, interpretations, strategies, declarations, programmes and ceremonies, while producing less and less real change in behaviour.

This leads back to what has already been described as a “retreat into theory and ceremony”. When theory fails to change practice, more theory is produced. When religion fails to change behaviour, more ceremony is produced. When institutions fail to function, new regulations are produced. When a community refuses to accept its own responsibility, another story about an enemy is produced. The problem is therefore never solved; it is simply moved from one narrative to another.

The most dangerous part of this process is that over time it becomes part of collective psychology. Generations inherit ready-made explanations: “they are to blame”, “they have always done this to us”, “we are the victims”, “if it were not for them, everything would be different”. Some of those explanations may be historically entirely justified. But if they become the only explanations, a community stops learning from its own mistakes. And a community that does not learn from its own mistakes can spend decades repeating the same patterns under new names, new institutions and new flags.

Self-criticism is therefore much harder than blaming an enemy. An enemy is easy to identify, particularly where historical evidence of one exists. It is far harder to admit that part of the problem arose within ourselves. True muhasaba and genuine self-criticism begin at precisely that point: not when we stop recognising the responsibility of others, but when we finally become capable of seeing our own responsibility alongside it.

If this circle is not broken, we remain trapped between historical trauma, theoretical explanation, ceremonial response and practical failure. The enemy remains the same even if its name changes, while we remain the same because we have never examined ourselves seriously enough. The problem then no longer lies only in what others do to us. The problem is that we learn nothing from what others do to us.

Civilisation begins with admitting a mistake

Ultimately, the way out of this vicious circle does not lie in another grand theory, another manifesto or another confrontation with those stronger than us. If every failure produces a new excuse instead of a new lesson, the problem is also within us. The first act of genuine courage is therefore muhasaba, or self-criticism: before blaming the world, a person examines their own weakness; before attacking an opponent, they examine their own strategy; and before writing another theory, they check what actually worked in the previous one.

Without this, theory becomes a refuge from responsibility and heroism merely a more attractive name for the irrational expenditure of strength. We do not need a society that constantly proves that it is right, but a society capable of admitting that it was wrong, learning something from defeat and acting differently the next time. The most dangerous defeat is not losing to someone stronger, but losing the ability to learn from defeat.

Self-criticism is therefore neither a sign of weakness nor a luxury reserved for developed societies. It is one of the fundamental characteristics of civilisation. It allows individuals, institutions and societies to recognise a mistake, correct it and continue. Where self-criticism disappears, error becomes pride, failure becomes justification and conflict becomes a way of life. When a person loses the ability to question themselves, they lose more than the possibility of progress; they begin to move outside the very logic of civilisation. Because civilisation rests precisely on our ability to recognise our mistakes, correct them and turn them into experience rather than destiny.