Nov 28, 2025
This chapter reflects on Charter 77 — a Czechoslovak dissident movement — and how it tried to create a space of truth, ethics, and civic responsibility outside the lies of the regime. The text shows how Charter 77 lived in a “double reality”: the political system’s propaganda on one side, and the moral, lived reality of citizens on the other.
“The Parallel Polis” is the idea of building an independent sphere of life—culture, ethics, community, responsibility—that does not rely on the state’s legitimacy. It argues that when a system turns political problems into moral ones, the only real resistance is to live in truth, create autonomous structures, and refuse the state’s monopoly over meaning.