Even human life has its refrains. Situations that – for example, in period-specific changes – repeat themselves decade after decade. Or they return unexpectedly after a long distance, appear in a new context, maybe even carry a changed meaning. However, their essence remains the same. Being able to perceive this is one of the most trusted benefits of aging. And sometimes the newfound continuity can be quite surprising.
An example of such a continuing cycle is the quite intense revival of the question: “Who will you benefit from this?” I come across it or some modification of it quite often, in spoken and printed form. Until now, I considered it a phenomenon associated with the closed period of Czechoslovak normalization, that is, with the time when I attended schools of all grades. I heard it there either addressed to myself or to one of my classmates. The question “Who will this benefit?” was a favorite argumentative maneuver of the most conscientious educators; a surefire way to cut off a debate that might be in danger of taking an undesirable turn.
An unspoken exclamation point
That threat, of course, was only hypothetical. In the environment of socialist education, it didn’t really happen that people started to debate anything really openly. They knew full well what this could lead to, and the little bit of fun would not be worth the possible “unforeseen consequences” (another popular term of the period).
But sometimes a person has tried a little – very restrained and not too risky. For example, with the diction of an innocently curious student, he drew attention to some obvious contradiction in the interpretation of a committed educator. And he nudged him so that he got really tangled up in his condescendingly worded arguments. And then it was possible to respond to this with other questions, which were followed by another tangle of arguments. Utnutá used to be a question ending with a clear, though unspoken, exclamation point: Who will you benefit from this?(!)
Of course it was a rhetorical question. It was based on the justified certainty that the interviewee also knows the answer very well. After all, it would benefit “them” – the enemies of the socialist establishment, both internal and external. And in several ways.