Life /
Why Polish people should be proud of being Polish? [370]
The pride-on-steroids trip one sees here from time to time is a bit of a distortion of reality, yes; but on the ground here in PL one tends to look beyond the dead-guys-with-big-moustaches view of cultural heritage, and what matters is the guy/girl on the street. Seriously: normal lives, normally lived - lots of great people around here, be proud of that.
To get back to the topic of the thread I'd like to say as a Polish-American the lives of normal people being normally lived in today's Poland do not really interest me in the least. The Poles I am most proud of are the artists. People like Witold Gombrowicz and Stanislaw Lem, both brilliant writers and both atheists (All Polish-Americans are not reactionaries, nor are they all religious fanatics. In fact out here in California many of us are members of the "Liberal Elite"). And of course the glorious history of Renaissance and Baroque Poland interests me but not because the Poles fought "heathens" but rather because the Poles had religious freedom in their exceptional commonwealth, and not because Poland was somehow culturally "pure" but because of the Poles' eclecticism in which, to give a couple examples, they freely adopted aspects of their dress from Asiatics and aspects of their architecture from Italians. I am also proud of the Polish reputation for bravery and drinking prowess, and I am also proud of the beauty of Polish women.
