(My Life – from my subjective point of view) ◆ In Poland there is a widespread conviction that there are essentially no intellectual elites except for marginal and partial ones, because most were murdered during the wars and repressions, and the rest left Poland long ago. ◆ And partly this is true, except that the span of two or three generations is long enough to effectively rebuild any elites. ◆ For this to happen effectively, however, there must exist a favorable environment for it — for example, the authority of science, excellently organized education, real prospects for intellectual development, international cooperation, and the promotion of valuable people. None of these things exist in Poland in a performative, that is, effective sense. ◆ There exists a quasi-authority, quasi-cooperation, and quasi-promotion. ◆ I had the opportunity — the honor — to actively participate in several salons, both in Warsaw and in Kraków. They always functioned, however, like Indian reservations in a hostile environment of proletarian, peasant, National-Democratic-litigious, and other purely political colonizers. Very rarely did these tribes cooperate or even communicate with one another — the Warsaw Apaches formed no networks of cooperation or think tanks with the Kraków Cheyennes. They simply existed as social and reflective clubs. ◆ On the individual level this gave a momentary comfort that one was not alone and that there was someone to talk to about important topics. Besides that, a valuable thing was that one could meet and build excellent relationships with many wonderful people, which I passionately took advantage of. Nevertheless, none of this translated into any effective force, nor into the development of education, nor into the building of authority — and that remains the case to this day. ◆ Theoretically there should exist an influence of intellectual circles on the entire parliament in the form of the Senate — but in practice the Senate is a marginal chamber of reflection and an almost exclusively prestigious dead body of little significance.