Initiation and initiative : an exploration of the life and ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinović

150 LIFE AND IDEAS OF MITRINOVIC

At the core of the various activities in which the group engaged was the irrevocable commitment they each made to the other, the Personal Alliance that they established between themselves to share their lives together, that whatever might happen they were fundamentally ‘for each other. Arthur Peacock witnessed the fact that personal alliance was more than an empty phrase to the people gathered around Mitrinovic.

They practised what they preached. To the common pool they gave their possessions and shared one with the other. An irrevocable bond of friendship exists between them all. Seldom in my life have I come across a body of people so sincere and earnest.*

If all things were mutually interdependent, then each member was responsible for the spiritual, psychic and material welfare of each other. If each individual was a part of the whole, a single cell in the body of humanity, then in giving to others one was also giving to oneself. The sharing of oneself, however, also necessitated the exercise of the utmost honesty and frankness in one’s relationship with others—truthfulness to oneself and to others. Only by being true to oneself, to one’s own values and inner promptings, could one be true to others. Only by making an irrevocable commitment to each other could the tension and distress caused by plain truth-speaking be withstood. It was only on such a basis that a real community of real individuals could be established. By being loyal and truthful to each other, they were also being loyal and truthful to themselves and to the whole of humanity of which they were a part. Moreover, only by establishing such relationships with each other could one start to approach an intuitive understanding of the organic relatedness of the whole of humanity. Lived experience, rather than mere acquaintance with theories and facts, was the only basis from which such an insight might be grasped. And the way to obtain that experience was to start in the ‘here-and-now’ with one’s immediate colleagues and friends.

As with so many of his complex and fundamental notions, Mitrinovic coined simple aphorisms and terms taken from other contexts to express the essense of his thoughts and ideas. Thus, the twin dimensions at the heart of the personal alliance that the group members formed with each other were referred to as ‘Barley, the establishment of a genuinely warm and caring human household; and ‘Cactus,’ the telling to each other the real, often harsh and uncomfortable truth. ‘Barley’ stood for an almost religious devotion to absolute community. ‘Cactus’ stood for radical individuality and self-affirmation, with the rigorous dedication to truth of a scientist. Taken to their extremes, these two dimensions were incompatible and mutually