This architectural and ecological brutality spread like pestilence all over the land, and within a few years of the demolition of historical Athens the countryside as well as transformed into an heap of grotesque cement cubicles with rusting iron rods sticking out of them. Extraordinarily beautiful and culturally seminal islands like Crete and Rhodes were pulverized into amorphous heaps of concrete that could only have issued from the rotting brains of anthropoid creeps. The Cyclades were provisionally spared the worse of this barbarian rampage, although islands like Myconos, once famed for its untouched naturalness, have by now become the domain of the vulgar kleptocrats of the Athenian ruling class whose obscene villas and swimming pools paved over the hinterland. It will not be long before the remaining enclaves of natural and architectural beauty are drastically degraded.

And this has transpired, as I have noted before, in a country that trumpets the fact that it is the only one to include a clause protecting the environment in its constitution. This ties in, of course, with that other predicament previously mentioned, namely the total perversion of language in this place, where concepts have been gutted of their proper meaning and you can be certain that when used they signify the opposite of what they pretend to denote.The sanctimoniousness of official utterances is the surest sign of the actual suppression of the ethical norms that they nominally uphold. Unabashed hypocrisy is the order of the day, with those taking the lead in the subversion of all constitutional, ethical and even plain humane propriety being the most vocal in the fake defense of the values that they have done the most to destroy.

One hears ad nauseam, from official lips as well as from journalistic talking heads, the slogan that "this is the most beautiful country in the world". This would be a silly and ludicrous statement even if Greece were still unspoiled, for the beauty of all places is unique and no hierarchy of degrees can be placed on it. But under present conditions of widespread architectural blight and environmental degeneracy it amounts to more than a lie: it is an offensive violation of common decency.

So what is the cause of all this? The facts as have been laid out are true beyond the slightest doubt, but the explanation of them is a highly complex affair, with many subsidiary processes feeding into the general dynamic that brought about the horrid state of affairs we described. But, I believe that the chief reason for this retrogression into cultural aphasia is the gradual dismantlement of education, the demolition of the social edifice of Paideia both in its institutional as well as its axiological dimension. The "old education", to use that well-placed Aristophanic rubric, i.e. the state sponsored indoctrination with national values that derived from the nineteenth century and endured until the 1960's, was autocratic and filled with stereotypes. It was marred by huge gaps and deliberate omissions. But it was, nevertheless, rule-based and resulted in a functional knowledge both of the language and of the basics of history, however slanted and tainted. Underneath the official cant there was still sufficient factual awareness that enabled some functional social behavior -as well as critical thinking that challenged the ruling assumptions and official doctrines. Above all it was based upon a sound recognition of the intrinsic value of knowledge and a deep-going respect for those who had dedicated themselves to its cultivation. The students looked up to teachers that could boast of intellectual and ethical substance.

This official education was of course nationalist in a narrow and even hysterical sense, but it was not anti-European. In fact its chief claim was that European culture rested upon a Hellenic foundation and that a Hellenic-minded and Hellenic-educated person could feel at home in the mental habits and spiritual structures of Europe.

Now, these attitudes were essentially shared by those who adopted a critical stance vis-a-vis the official mode as it became progressively petrified through the years. The rebellious youth shared a commitment to intellectual cultivation and a commitment to Europe, despite the fact that they drew upon diverse strands of the European heritage in order to buttress a new and progressive version of the modern Greek identity. This was eminently true of the famed literary generation of the thirties; but it also applied to the Marxists who had derived their ideological property from Germany and France and who quite properly understood the "revolution" within a pan-European context. There was no blanket anti-westernism current in the forward-looking segments of the intellectual class. This type of mentality characterized, rather, the extremist fringes of the "national" camp -and even they were under the influence of western versions of anti-westernism, such as that of Barres for instance.

There was certainly general awareness of that "eastern drop in the Greek blood" (something after all present since immemorial antiquity), and this was now materially symbolized by the presence of the refugees. But the progressive political and economic elites of the refugees themselves were decisively oriented towards the west, something that was not canceled by the orientalism of the social habits of the refugee masses. Venizelos, the political god of the refugees, was the most determined westernizer and Seferis who introduced Anglo-Saxon modernism into literature was also of refugee stock and even of pronounced populist sensibilities (viz. his attitude towards Makrygiannis and Theophilos for instance). The drama of Greek political and spiritual life was thus enacted on a European stage, or on what understood itself as an extension thereof.

It was this fundamental orientation, this openness to a universal cultural becoming, which came to an abrupt end in the seventies and eighties of the previous century. Traditional education was dismantled, but its sound ingredients (generally acknowledged by left and right, as we said) were also thrown out. Knowledge and culture were now turned into a mere instrument to promote political ends that became all the more venal as time passed. This "closing of the mind" resulted into an utter confusion of notions and beliefs whose chief purveyors now were various nonentities and charlatans that flooded into and took control of the educational system under the pretext of "democratization" and whose only credentials were their politics, their determination to serve the party system and to benefit from this service.

The architectural and ecological wasteland now on view is the direct outcome of this decomposition of the collective consciousness of the country.