Under its present head the church of Greece has in the main been able to regain some of the dignity that it had forfeited under the leadership of its last primate (1998-2008). During those years it had been taken over by an extreme nationalist faction, which construed Orthodox Christianity, and Christianity in general, as the exclusive preserve of the Greek "race". As a result it placed itself at the vanguard of the nationalist explosion that followed the dissolution of Yugoslavia, as the God-appointed savior of a national identity supposedly under assault from all points of the compass. Its discourse became a hate-filled rant against the Slav Macedonians, the Turks and, of course, the West, all of them in its eyes colluding in a vast conspiracy to wipe out the unique and chosen tribe of the modern Greeks.
I still cringe as I recall the sight of the previous archbishop verbally attacking the frail and terminally ill Pope Woytyla, who had gone to his headquarters for a courtesy call during his visit to the country in May, 2001. His lecture was mean-spirited and outright rude as he piled on the abuse concerning the perfidy of the Crusaders in 1204 (!), events moreover about which the Polish bishop of Rome had just apologized.
After that Prelate's death the Synod seemed to collect themselves by choosing the present archbishop, an honorable and spiritual person who pointedly eschewed the unsavory demagogy of his predecessor and concentrated on pastoral and humanitarian work. But, of course, the opposing faction had merely beaten a tactical retreat. It is now headed by the metropolitan of Thessalonica, who in his regular Sunday sermons (broadcast live to the nation) keeps on beating the drums of that well-honed intolerance, attacking the usual "enemies" with the same old vehemence and presuming to chide the government for their foreign policy.
Taking advantage of the present archbishop's mild disposition they also rammed through the Synod a "declaration to the people" bemoaning the current "subjugation" of the country to the foreigners, meaning the agreement with the IMF and the EU that led to the bail-out of the country in the face of its economic collapse. It is a cleverly crafted document meant to appeal to the broadest spectrum of political opinion from the extreme Stalinist left to the extreme nationalist right (the latter currently including the main opposition party under its present outrageously stupid and irresponsible leadership).
Another sign of the resurgence of these tendencies, obviously with an eye to the succession of the present primate who is very old, was also the recent anti-Semitic outburst of the bishop of Piraeus which made international headlines. That worthy priest provided extra theoretic depth to the inanities about "foreign occupation" by claiming that the real cause of the economic collapse of the country was the machinations of the Jewish bankers of New York acting at the behest of international Zionism which he equated to a satanic sect. He also opined that international Jewry were in cahoots with Hitler providing him with financial support in a conspiracy to force the Jews of Europe to migrate to Palestine and there to found their new "empire".
These despicable statements were, luckily, condemned by the government and other political leaders here, as well as by Orthodox hierarchs abroad, most notably the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North America. But they were not condemned by the Athens Synod; and -if I am to venture a guess- a reliable public opinion survey would find that they do represent a sizable chunk of the population.
I am merely describing these events and I do not want to analyze them further, except for saying that they show the decayed spiritual and institutional condition of the Greek Church and by no means reflect upon the Orthodox Church in its world-wide expanse.
What I would like to discuss, however, at some greater length is the general political response to these ecclesiastical missteps. A time-honored feature of modern Greek public life is that as against one extreme position there crystallizes an antithetical extremism, which is equally denuded of good sense and democratic propriety. This deleterious reflex was also exhibited in this case. A clamor arose, especially from certain circles of the radical left, to the effect that the church is not a legitimate institution at all and that as a result it has no say whatsoever in matters of social significance. This was couched in terms of the separation of church and state, a demand that is undoubtedly justified and overdue. But underneath this constitutionalist talk (which is often insincere since its exponents are quite ready to flout the constitution outright in circumstances that they deem ideologically appropriate) there hides a dogmatism which is just as totalitarian in its thrust as the theocratic nationalism it claims to oppose.
The covert point is that religion as such is a redundant feature of public life, simply because a certain kind of "materialist" ideology is supposed to have "proven" that it is "false consciousness". The adjudicators, needless to say, of what is and what is not "true consciousness" are the self-appointed intellectual elites whose own ideology must be taken as self-evidently true on their say-so. This smugness is coupled with ignorance of the historical role of religion in western society, and the theoretical debates surrounding it, as well as ignorance of the role of the church in Greek society in particular.
One does not need to buy into the "Greco-Christian" cant of the ecclesiastical extremists to acknowledge the fact that through the centuries the social function of the church was to provide, for lack of others, a cultural and institutional frame for the very existence of the Greek-speaking community. This had good as well as bad consequences, but it cannot simply be ignored on the basis of some ideological absolutism. It is highly instructive to remember, for instance, that members of the church were at the forefront of the Greek enlightenment in the 18th century. No more can be said about that in this connection. But it bears repeating that whatever the misdeeds of the ecclesiastical hierarchy then and now, here and elsewhere, this fact (as the great Korais himself noted) is not enough cause to erase the significance of the religious sentiment in human life in general, or the social contribution of the historical churches in the life of various nations (such as the Greek, Polish or Irish to name but a few). What is needed first and foremost is conscientious immersion in the historical record freed, to the extent possible, from ideological blind-sights and prejudgments. But, as is usually the case, those most stridently invoking history for cheap populist gain, whether from the left or right, are those most criminally inept in historical awareness.
So, as much as one must oppose the asinine political interventions of racist priests, we still do need a religious institution with a voice in social matters and trends, even if we might not like what they have to say. It is up to the thoughtful members of the church themselves to steer their institution away from the ingrained tendencies of nationalist demagogy -and such voices have indeed been heard. But it is also up to the secular democrats to avoid the blind alley of an opposite, but equally repulsive, intolerance, which denies the right to speak to anyone who happens to diverge from the ideological obsessions of certain self-admiring factions.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
The irreverence of birds
Good things are still happening. This is the end of a dismal year, with all sorts of further calamities presaged for the incoming one. But we should not dwell endlessly on the disasters -there will be plenty of opportunity for that. Rather it is fitting to celebrate a unique event, one which has been buried under the senseless sound and fury of the ongoing political and economic ructions.
The temple of Athena Nike on the Acropolis has been finally re-erected on its original site and it is now once again shining in its unique splendor despite the ravages of so many centuries. Its latest disappearance dates from about a decade ago when it was completely dismantled in order to repair not only structural damages from the erosion of its foundations (it was tilting about five centimeters on its south side) but also the mistakes of previous restorations back in the thirties of the previous century. It has now been fitted with new architectural elements made of Pentelic marble that are clearly visible since they have not yet acquired a patina. Before this, its previous demolition dates from 1687 when the Ottomans tore down the classical temple still standing in its place, for the purpose of building a higher battlement on that vulnerable side of the Acropolis fortress. The Venetians of Morosini were besieging the Hill after having retaken the entire Peloponnese -the warrior Doge having been awarded for this feat the honorary appellation Peloponnesiacus by the Council of the Serenissima. It was during that siege that the Parthenon itself was hit by a shell that caused frightful damage to its south side. Now this jewel of Callicrates is once again projecting its stupendous beauty into the Attic sky, wonderfully counterbalancing the massive presence of the predominantly Doric Propylaia with its intricate Ionic grace. We might spoil this extraordinary story by noting that the erection of this temple is symbolically associated with the ambitions of Athens to exercise political control over Egypt during the peak of its imperial reach, but as I said in times like this it is well worth celebrating the positive dimensions of the historical process. We are heirs to supreme artistic glory long after the power schemes of politicians (even world-historical figures like Pericles) have irrevocably perished.
When I visited the Hill a couple of weeks ago the sky was cloudy with the sun occasionally breaking through. The temple glistened with well-deserved self-satisfaction. All kinds of dark prophesies circulating at the time of its disappearance, to the effect that it had been spirited away by faceless enemies to be sold to foreign museums, had been proven false.
As I was taking pictures a pigeon came in to land on the roof. I am sure it had no inkling of the sacredness of its intended perch. I hope it did not leave any permanent mess behind.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Notes from the underground
The Greek parliament ought to be an elevated place, but in recent years it has been striving hard to come level with the gutter. This is certainly true with respect to the basic political (as well as other) intelligence of the average member. As for elementary integrity, the issue should be better avoided. This is terrible news for the notion as well as the practice of democracy in this country, which in recent years has disintegrated into an unprincipled free-for-all for the satisfaction of private interest and/or sectarian ideological delusion at the expense of the commonweal. This as a rule involves the deliberate wrecking of public institutions, space and property in the name of sundry ideological obfuscations of bogus "social" coloring, such as nationalism, Stalinism or (quite often) an odious combination of the two.
This is a shattering disappointment for many of us, who a generation or so ago fought the colonels' regime with the vain (as it is clear now) hope that we might put a free and decent society in its place. We paid a terrible price for this delusion, not necessarily in terms of personal suffering -although in quite a few cases this was also involved. I am talking rather in terms of the misguided life goals that we set ourselves in the light of the betrayed ideals of those years, such as the determination to abandon prospects of academic and personal advancement abroad in order to participate in the effort, as we saw it, to build that society. It was all so utterly futile. When Papadopoulos died in prison a few years ago, I wrote in my personal journal that he should rest easy because the behavior of his ostensible enemies actually vindicated him ideologically. His silly doctrine of "Greco-Christian" messianism was soon after his overthrow triumphant, penetrating all components of the political spectrum. As for the spectacular venality of the "democratic" power holders, of all ideological persuasions and on all levels of government, it worked as a retrospective confirmation of his dismissal of the entire political class as corrupt. One of the saddest things in the past couple of years especially has been hearing ordinary people of impeccable democratic and leftist credentials openly express a longing for his dictatorship as a last ditch cure for the moral, social and economic breakdown that our pithecanthropic political and intellectual leaders have plunged us into.
These are of course counsels of desperation. And, all told, it is still the sullen and cowed mass of the people that offers the long-term hope that this problematic historical experiment called modern Greece will still emerge as a viable social and cultural concern after the present shipwreck. And the reason is simple. It is they, the anonymous masses, that silently bear the brunt of the present catastrophe. They are its only witnesses in a basic existential sense. And, to utilize a valuable insight of the great Hegel, it is through this "fear and labor" inflicted upon them by those that falsely claim to speak for them that they will find the inner strength to endure and to build a new life upon today's ruins. They have done it in the past, and therefore it is reasonable to assume that the feat will be repeated. For there is true seriousness in their silence. They, and only they, have instinctively understood the depth and significance of the present disintegration, for it affects their existence immediately and painfully without the mediation of junk ideologies and political slogans. They know, for they have always known, that it is only through work, serious, concentrated work personal and social, that their society and nation will pull through. Work has reappeared as a value in the present despond. It had well nigh evaporated in the great debauch of the past generation, where getting something for nothing, blackmailing the community for personal gain, sucking the marrow out of the bones of the commonweal was the watchword of "democratic" advancement. In this sense there is a return to the essentials of, yes, Marxism (as well as of the classical social and political theory of modernity) -of a genuine Marxism, though, as opposed to the tattered and lying caricatures thereof with which the Greek people had been hoodwinked and oppressed. It is in this undertow that long-term hope may be detected -not foolishly I hope.
As opposed to this, there are no signs that, even in the midst of the terminal crisis we are going through, our rotten elites can offer even a morsel of inspiration to counteract the gloom. Instead, they are still engaged in their selfish games of jockeying for power, even as the whole edifice is crumbling around them. Their incorrigibility is the cause of the fact that among broad segments of the population, and especially the rudderless and fearful youth, the very democratic ideal, which they quite naturally identify with its vile usurpers, has been discredited. The feeling in the air is sometimes akin to the twilight of the Weimar republic. A kind of defensive fascism is rampant, blindly nihilistic and reflexively violent, no matter what the ideological pretensions it dons. This knee-jerk reactionary paroxysm, often taking the form of real flames devouring the center of Athens, can cause incalculable devastation. But, as I argued above, it is not preordained that it will prevail.
These sad thoughts (and only this kind seems to be possible nowadays) were occasioned by the antics of our self-admiring parliamentarians yesterday. The director of the IMF was in town and he agreed to appear before the economic affairs committee in order to answer questions about the rescue program etc. The antediluvian left boycotted the proceedings claiming that he had no right to be in the country (!!!!!) at all. The deputies present then proceeded to basically insult him. The attack was orchestrated by a prominent individual of the ruling party (!!!!), a person who was a chief contributor to the unspeakable kleptokratic mess from the consequences of which those foreign agencies currently reviled in the media and in parliament consented to save us, provided we decided to mend our ways. The sight of the very protagonists of the calamity that threatens our existence as a country abusing one of the agents of our possible salvation would be utterly laughable -if it weren't so tragic. The perversity of all this is so extreme that it ends up provoking a certain admiration. The political sense of our elected leaders is so abysmal for so many reasons that one's head just spins. To begin with, the IMF, for all its real and imaginary faults, is an official agency of the United Nations. Greece is a certified member of it, paying its dues regularly since WW2. Many prominent Greeks have been and are still among its ranks. So much for its "right" to be present in the country. All this is of course arcane science for our Neanderthal revolutionaries whose great vision for the country has all the hallmarks of North Korea. But one might think that a basic sense of self-preservation would deter at least the members of the ruling party that had to go a-begging to the IMF's door from their egregious rudeness. It so happens that at the present moment among our rescuers it is precisely the IMF that supports Greece's request for a prolongation of the period of repayment of the loans, in the face of opposition from Germany. Among all their accumulated misdeeds, it is this suicidal stupidity of our representatives which is so frightening. We are at God's mercy.......
This is a shattering disappointment for many of us, who a generation or so ago fought the colonels' regime with the vain (as it is clear now) hope that we might put a free and decent society in its place. We paid a terrible price for this delusion, not necessarily in terms of personal suffering -although in quite a few cases this was also involved. I am talking rather in terms of the misguided life goals that we set ourselves in the light of the betrayed ideals of those years, such as the determination to abandon prospects of academic and personal advancement abroad in order to participate in the effort, as we saw it, to build that society. It was all so utterly futile. When Papadopoulos died in prison a few years ago, I wrote in my personal journal that he should rest easy because the behavior of his ostensible enemies actually vindicated him ideologically. His silly doctrine of "Greco-Christian" messianism was soon after his overthrow triumphant, penetrating all components of the political spectrum. As for the spectacular venality of the "democratic" power holders, of all ideological persuasions and on all levels of government, it worked as a retrospective confirmation of his dismissal of the entire political class as corrupt. One of the saddest things in the past couple of years especially has been hearing ordinary people of impeccable democratic and leftist credentials openly express a longing for his dictatorship as a last ditch cure for the moral, social and economic breakdown that our pithecanthropic political and intellectual leaders have plunged us into.
These are of course counsels of desperation. And, all told, it is still the sullen and cowed mass of the people that offers the long-term hope that this problematic historical experiment called modern Greece will still emerge as a viable social and cultural concern after the present shipwreck. And the reason is simple. It is they, the anonymous masses, that silently bear the brunt of the present catastrophe. They are its only witnesses in a basic existential sense. And, to utilize a valuable insight of the great Hegel, it is through this "fear and labor" inflicted upon them by those that falsely claim to speak for them that they will find the inner strength to endure and to build a new life upon today's ruins. They have done it in the past, and therefore it is reasonable to assume that the feat will be repeated. For there is true seriousness in their silence. They, and only they, have instinctively understood the depth and significance of the present disintegration, for it affects their existence immediately and painfully without the mediation of junk ideologies and political slogans. They know, for they have always known, that it is only through work, serious, concentrated work personal and social, that their society and nation will pull through. Work has reappeared as a value in the present despond. It had well nigh evaporated in the great debauch of the past generation, where getting something for nothing, blackmailing the community for personal gain, sucking the marrow out of the bones of the commonweal was the watchword of "democratic" advancement. In this sense there is a return to the essentials of, yes, Marxism (as well as of the classical social and political theory of modernity) -of a genuine Marxism, though, as opposed to the tattered and lying caricatures thereof with which the Greek people had been hoodwinked and oppressed. It is in this undertow that long-term hope may be detected -not foolishly I hope.
As opposed to this, there are no signs that, even in the midst of the terminal crisis we are going through, our rotten elites can offer even a morsel of inspiration to counteract the gloom. Instead, they are still engaged in their selfish games of jockeying for power, even as the whole edifice is crumbling around them. Their incorrigibility is the cause of the fact that among broad segments of the population, and especially the rudderless and fearful youth, the very democratic ideal, which they quite naturally identify with its vile usurpers, has been discredited. The feeling in the air is sometimes akin to the twilight of the Weimar republic. A kind of defensive fascism is rampant, blindly nihilistic and reflexively violent, no matter what the ideological pretensions it dons. This knee-jerk reactionary paroxysm, often taking the form of real flames devouring the center of Athens, can cause incalculable devastation. But, as I argued above, it is not preordained that it will prevail.
These sad thoughts (and only this kind seems to be possible nowadays) were occasioned by the antics of our self-admiring parliamentarians yesterday. The director of the IMF was in town and he agreed to appear before the economic affairs committee in order to answer questions about the rescue program etc. The antediluvian left boycotted the proceedings claiming that he had no right to be in the country (!!!!!) at all. The deputies present then proceeded to basically insult him. The attack was orchestrated by a prominent individual of the ruling party (!!!!), a person who was a chief contributor to the unspeakable kleptokratic mess from the consequences of which those foreign agencies currently reviled in the media and in parliament consented to save us, provided we decided to mend our ways. The sight of the very protagonists of the calamity that threatens our existence as a country abusing one of the agents of our possible salvation would be utterly laughable -if it weren't so tragic. The perversity of all this is so extreme that it ends up provoking a certain admiration. The political sense of our elected leaders is so abysmal for so many reasons that one's head just spins. To begin with, the IMF, for all its real and imaginary faults, is an official agency of the United Nations. Greece is a certified member of it, paying its dues regularly since WW2. Many prominent Greeks have been and are still among its ranks. So much for its "right" to be present in the country. All this is of course arcane science for our Neanderthal revolutionaries whose great vision for the country has all the hallmarks of North Korea. But one might think that a basic sense of self-preservation would deter at least the members of the ruling party that had to go a-begging to the IMF's door from their egregious rudeness. It so happens that at the present moment among our rescuers it is precisely the IMF that supports Greece's request for a prolongation of the period of repayment of the loans, in the face of opposition from Germany. Among all their accumulated misdeeds, it is this suicidal stupidity of our representatives which is so frightening. We are at God's mercy.......
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Leaks and Reactions
As things stand right now, it seems to me that America is more likely to be hurt by her own reaction to the publication of the Wikileaks documents rather than by the documents themselves. When the Attorney General darkly intones that an investigation of a criminal nature is afoot targeting Assange for the unveiling of diplomatic secrets, not only is he on dubious legal ground, but -much worse- he is being stampeded by Palin and her ilk. This bodes ill for the administration and of course the world in the coming years.
If Assange broke US law with his leaks, then so did the NY Times. Assange did not steal the secrets himself, he just received the proceeds from an admittedly illegal act under US law (Manning is already in custody for the criminal side of this issue). He then acted as any other bona fide journalist would do and did, namely he decided that it was in the public interest to publish. He also deserves credit for waiting for the established news media to publish selected redacted documents, with information jeopardizing the safety of individuals excised, and then posting the same documents on his website. All these wild cries about putting a CIA hit squad on him etc. is just right wing extremism at its most odious. If this type of response prevails, then America will play into the hands of its worst enemies. Such hysteria would contradict and obscure America's glorious tradition of press freedom, which brought down a president after all back in the seventies. America ought to protest certainly; but in the name of the principle of diplomatic confidentiality which is of the essence in conducting international relations, a principle that all nations are interested in seeing upheld. For the rest, let the State Department put its own discombobulated house in order so that such a breach may not occur again.
That the Obama administration seems to be so easily cowed by the screeching and howling of the most reactionary right in a century is a symptom of a deep-going malaise. When Jimmy Carter in a misguided attempt to appear "tough" began his demagogic campaign against the presence of a "Russian brigade" on Cuba (a force that had been there since the early sixties and everyone knew about), this was a sure sign that his presidency had run out of steam and that he was throwing in the towel in the bout with Reagan. Could it be that Obama is mesmerized by the perverse charisma of that empty and stunted person, Palin, even though he says that he does not waste time thinking about her? Why are American liberals so complex-ridden in the face of that uncouth and hypocritical crowd of Tea Party Republicans, whose previous incarnation as the Bush neocons ran the American and the world economy to the ground and offered Iraq on a platter to Iran and Al Qaeda (forgetting for the moment the numerous human lives destroyed by that truly criminal enterprise)? And are the American people as a whole so uneducated and misinformed that they cannot perceive these facts? I believe that this is false. I believe that a serious political effort from the pulpit of the White House to broadcast the disaster that weirdo Republicanism has inflicted upon American society, and the texture of lies that is their present "policy", would easily overrun the defenses of that Neanderthal crowd. If Helmut Schmid can call the Budesbank and Angela Merkel a bunch of reactionaries, surely Obama can summon up some more fire from his political belly to underline the true cause of the American people's current economic suffering. In attacking the editorial and opinion pages of the NY Times as out of touch with ordinary people he is shooting himself in the foot. It just happens that Paul Krugman, for instance, is right on target precisely from an "ordinary people" perspective and Obama's advisors would do themselves a favor to heed some of his warnings.
With respect to the actual content of the published dispatches I do not think that America has anything to be ashamed of so far - with the exception of those stupid CIA instructions to America's UN diplomats to spy on their colleagues there. (Of course it is not to be doubted that their Russian and Chinese etc. counterparts returned the favor). As Neal Acherson cogently explained in the Guardian the other day, America's diplomats by and large emerge from Assange's disrobing as a crowd of sensible and well-meaning individuals, on the whole performing commendably the task allotted to them, namely to report the truth about local conditions and personalities and to manage the myriad crises thrown up in today's fragmented world with a view to maintaining peace and stability. Obama's handling of relations with Russia, what with the scrapping of Bush's missile shield in Poland so that Putin can be won over for sanctions against Iran, is a case in point.To be sure, this activity is conducted from a perspective of safeguarding America's predominant position internationally -but there is nothing new or astonishing in that. However, what does clearly emerge from the exchanges is the weakened imperial posture of the last superpower in the midst of numerous crosscurrents and shifts of power.
Whether one likes it or not, America's power is still the ultimate foundation of whatever coherence remains in the international system with reference to some residual legality and mutual recognition of legitimate interests. The way this power is wielded is, thus, of vital importance to all of us. And the classified cables clearly show that there is a world of difference between the Bush procedure of riding roughshod over the international landscape in the name of various half-baked ideologies of America's metaphysical mission and Obama's efforts to mediate in the name of a reasonable mutuality. That is why his possible overthrow by the crazed Palin crowd is such a nightmare.
Lastly a note of local interest. Among the Wikileaks documents there are about 1300 dispatches from the Athens embassy and the Thessalonica consulate. These have not yet been published. I desperately hope that nothing is contained in them that might fan the anti-American, anti-Western psychosis of the political and journalistic classes here. So far, the Wikileaks revelations have been greeted with the expected glee on account of the US embarrassment, as well as inane declarations, from certain numbskulls of the main opposition party no less, that Assange ought to be declared a "hero of humanity". Of course, if Greece had been the target of similar diplomatic exposure you would have seen a general hue and cry about an "imperialist attack" against the nations sacred rights. If, for instance, in the Greek dispatches there is as much as a veiled hint of a hint that Greece ought to compromise on Macedonia's name, you can safely expect an anti-American explosion, with ample invoking of the case of Purifoy and such instances from sixty years ago.
The fact that the Obama administration has been from the very start firmly on the side of Greece in its present travails, urging the Europeans to bail her out, declaring its willingness to contribute to this rescue through the IMF, opposing the bloody-minded deflationary and monetarist diktat of the Germans in the EU and generally following a neo-Keynesian economic course at home which if followed here would offer an escape for Europe from its present vicious spiral, has not registered on the defunct minds of our political and intellectuals leaders. Let's hope that Assange's, otherwise well-meaning, initiatives do not drag us deeper into this suicidal swamp.
If Assange broke US law with his leaks, then so did the NY Times. Assange did not steal the secrets himself, he just received the proceeds from an admittedly illegal act under US law (Manning is already in custody for the criminal side of this issue). He then acted as any other bona fide journalist would do and did, namely he decided that it was in the public interest to publish. He also deserves credit for waiting for the established news media to publish selected redacted documents, with information jeopardizing the safety of individuals excised, and then posting the same documents on his website. All these wild cries about putting a CIA hit squad on him etc. is just right wing extremism at its most odious. If this type of response prevails, then America will play into the hands of its worst enemies. Such hysteria would contradict and obscure America's glorious tradition of press freedom, which brought down a president after all back in the seventies. America ought to protest certainly; but in the name of the principle of diplomatic confidentiality which is of the essence in conducting international relations, a principle that all nations are interested in seeing upheld. For the rest, let the State Department put its own discombobulated house in order so that such a breach may not occur again.
That the Obama administration seems to be so easily cowed by the screeching and howling of the most reactionary right in a century is a symptom of a deep-going malaise. When Jimmy Carter in a misguided attempt to appear "tough" began his demagogic campaign against the presence of a "Russian brigade" on Cuba (a force that had been there since the early sixties and everyone knew about), this was a sure sign that his presidency had run out of steam and that he was throwing in the towel in the bout with Reagan. Could it be that Obama is mesmerized by the perverse charisma of that empty and stunted person, Palin, even though he says that he does not waste time thinking about her? Why are American liberals so complex-ridden in the face of that uncouth and hypocritical crowd of Tea Party Republicans, whose previous incarnation as the Bush neocons ran the American and the world economy to the ground and offered Iraq on a platter to Iran and Al Qaeda (forgetting for the moment the numerous human lives destroyed by that truly criminal enterprise)? And are the American people as a whole so uneducated and misinformed that they cannot perceive these facts? I believe that this is false. I believe that a serious political effort from the pulpit of the White House to broadcast the disaster that weirdo Republicanism has inflicted upon American society, and the texture of lies that is their present "policy", would easily overrun the defenses of that Neanderthal crowd. If Helmut Schmid can call the Budesbank and Angela Merkel a bunch of reactionaries, surely Obama can summon up some more fire from his political belly to underline the true cause of the American people's current economic suffering. In attacking the editorial and opinion pages of the NY Times as out of touch with ordinary people he is shooting himself in the foot. It just happens that Paul Krugman, for instance, is right on target precisely from an "ordinary people" perspective and Obama's advisors would do themselves a favor to heed some of his warnings.
With respect to the actual content of the published dispatches I do not think that America has anything to be ashamed of so far - with the exception of those stupid CIA instructions to America's UN diplomats to spy on their colleagues there. (Of course it is not to be doubted that their Russian and Chinese etc. counterparts returned the favor). As Neal Acherson cogently explained in the Guardian the other day, America's diplomats by and large emerge from Assange's disrobing as a crowd of sensible and well-meaning individuals, on the whole performing commendably the task allotted to them, namely to report the truth about local conditions and personalities and to manage the myriad crises thrown up in today's fragmented world with a view to maintaining peace and stability. Obama's handling of relations with Russia, what with the scrapping of Bush's missile shield in Poland so that Putin can be won over for sanctions against Iran, is a case in point.To be sure, this activity is conducted from a perspective of safeguarding America's predominant position internationally -but there is nothing new or astonishing in that. However, what does clearly emerge from the exchanges is the weakened imperial posture of the last superpower in the midst of numerous crosscurrents and shifts of power.
Whether one likes it or not, America's power is still the ultimate foundation of whatever coherence remains in the international system with reference to some residual legality and mutual recognition of legitimate interests. The way this power is wielded is, thus, of vital importance to all of us. And the classified cables clearly show that there is a world of difference between the Bush procedure of riding roughshod over the international landscape in the name of various half-baked ideologies of America's metaphysical mission and Obama's efforts to mediate in the name of a reasonable mutuality. That is why his possible overthrow by the crazed Palin crowd is such a nightmare.
Lastly a note of local interest. Among the Wikileaks documents there are about 1300 dispatches from the Athens embassy and the Thessalonica consulate. These have not yet been published. I desperately hope that nothing is contained in them that might fan the anti-American, anti-Western psychosis of the political and journalistic classes here. So far, the Wikileaks revelations have been greeted with the expected glee on account of the US embarrassment, as well as inane declarations, from certain numbskulls of the main opposition party no less, that Assange ought to be declared a "hero of humanity". Of course, if Greece had been the target of similar diplomatic exposure you would have seen a general hue and cry about an "imperialist attack" against the nations sacred rights. If, for instance, in the Greek dispatches there is as much as a veiled hint of a hint that Greece ought to compromise on Macedonia's name, you can safely expect an anti-American explosion, with ample invoking of the case of Purifoy and such instances from sixty years ago.
The fact that the Obama administration has been from the very start firmly on the side of Greece in its present travails, urging the Europeans to bail her out, declaring its willingness to contribute to this rescue through the IMF, opposing the bloody-minded deflationary and monetarist diktat of the Germans in the EU and generally following a neo-Keynesian economic course at home which if followed here would offer an escape for Europe from its present vicious spiral, has not registered on the defunct minds of our political and intellectuals leaders. Let's hope that Assange's, otherwise well-meaning, initiatives do not drag us deeper into this suicidal swamp.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
The eyes of Myrtis
If war is a "violent instructor", as Thucydides claimed, then humanity has learned next to nothing over the centuries. Kant sounded more optimistic in assuming that unsocial man at some point gets fed up with the beastliness of the Hobbesian war of all against all and turns towards cooperative modes of existence. But this is a somewhat spurious optimism, for the consummation of the social enterprise in which the hard, physical ego accepts a bounded freedom within its communal destiny and violence on all levels is renounced, is put off until an ever receding terminus of our historical itinerary. Meanwhile we have to make do with the brutishness of empirical life and hope that legal violence in the hands of a constitutional government will mitigate the general unpleasantness. Trusting in violence from above to keep in check the violence from below is a very precarious balancing act, in which all sides can very easily go berserk and the whole thing can descend into the hell of a Corcyra-type στάσις.
Myrtis found out the hard way about how the schemes of well-meaning, and even great, individuals, such as Pericles for instance, can mutate into raging carnage in which the citizens and their families -who are after all the content and the purpose of the legal democratic regime- are expended on the altar of some grandiose ideal that transcends their humdrum littleness. For, after all, all the inspiring rhetoric of the Epitaphios cannot disguise the fact that the great leader is pronouncing his oratorical masterpiece before a pile of mute and dumb corpses, and that most of his audience who are supposed to be comforted by his lofty thoughts would soon enough join that heap of lifeless limbs. Nay, even he himself in the space of a few months would become part of it. Might that not amount to fair retribution, if viewed from some higher metaphysical standpoint? For there is no way getting around it: the supreme democratic leader of all times was in fact the chief advocate and driving force of the warlike conduct of his Polis. He knew fully well, and he expressed it ably, that the Ἀρχὴ is the higher, compelling necessity. It is the Empire that dictates the urgencies and tendencies of political planning. And, if the citizens of Athens want to lord it over the rest of the Hellenes, then they must commit themselves to military action. The Epitaphios can be read not so much as a hymn to democracy, as is the usual -and useful- interpretation, but as as a paean to war. For Pericles' point is that despite its promotion of culture and private freedom (the pursuit of happiness, maybe?), the greatest testimonial to democracy is its ability also to fight, as bravely and as tenaciously as any militarist autocracy. The democratic warrior is just as fearsome as any Spartan muscleman blindly plunging into battle.
In all this his assumption is that Empire is indeed naturally desired by all men -and all Athenians. Maybe most of his audience did indeed -foolishly- share his assumption. But certainly Myrtis, who may very well have been part of it, did not. The reason is not just that she was only ten years old. She was probably there to mourn her father or her brother, or a neighbor. So even if she had been an adult, how do you put aside as an adult the grief and the pain of a very personal loss in order to elevate yourself to the empyrean of world-historical reflection? This is what Pericles was exhorting them to do. Shed your tears by all means, he told them, but then again do not let private feeling erase from your mind the Idea of Athens, that stupendous experiment in the refashioning of the principles of human social life.
Well, yes and no. For when Athens, or any other state, extinguishes the real existence of tangible individuals for no other purpose than to exalt some notion of collective destiny however admirable, then if you find yourself at the receiving end of this deal it is well-nigh inhuman to justify this eradication of life by means of some abstraction. If your fields have been ravaged and your crops burned by Archidamos, you are asked to disregard a loss striking at the very fundaments of humanity, i.e. the duty to nourish life in fusion with (ὁμολογουμένως) the eternal rhythms of the earth. You are asked to betray your gods. What does the majestic shape of the Parthenon, gleaming in the sunshine and presiding as it were over these morbid proceedings, mean to you whose ontological significance is expunged in the midst of this pageant? Political authority trumps existential self-worth. The exigencies of raw power drain the world of its vital juices. The price you pay for being a citizen is the shedding of (part of) your human substance. This is an insoluble mystery. This was Antigone's dilemma, and we know how that situation turned out. It is much easier to be high-minded about Athens at a distance of two and a half millennia. We do, and ought to, admire it. But this admiration should not blunt a keen and sober historical understanding. When you look into the eyes of Myrtis it is a dark reality of struggle and agony, of highhandedness and deceit, of callous calculation and mercilessness, of naked jostling for material advantage that comes flooding back. And, mind you, Melos has not yet happened....Myrtis is Thucydides made real and present. Her eyes accuse the centuries.
But who is this Myrtis? Myrtis is the most moving and eloquent remnant of antiquity to have come down to us in recent memory.She is the ens realissimum of classical times, the reconstructed face of an eleven year old girl who died during the plague in Athens in the first year of the Peloponnesian war. The emotion laden flesh of a being senselessly cut down has come alive again. And through her faint smile we can again be reminded that the stuff of history is not marvelously chiseled prose deposited among the covers of books, but the woes and sufferings of forgotten creatures very like ourselves. Her bones were found mixed up with those of many others in a mass grave near Kerameikos as they were digging for the new subway in Athens. They took her skull, they studied it and through it they refashioned her young head, now staring at us again timid and somewhat startled, but still full with the latent vigor that was squashed before it could bloom into the works of love of a fully fledged life. That skull is the first item in the exhibition currently housed in the Archaeological Museum here, a noble and gentle thing in the depths of which which you can still intuit the stirrings of a tender spirit. I couldn't bring myself to photograph it: it would have been such a violation.
Myrtis is the witness. And her presence is a balm in the midst of the gloom and decay of our present time. She has lived on.
Friday, October 1, 2010
The oracles of Delphi
Greek education has been moribund for quite some time now -and everybody knows and acknowledges it. For the umpteenth time in the past generation the present government claims to be embarking on a "radical reform" of higher education in order to make it competitive on the international level. The project, if this is what it is, was announced during a rather pompous gathering in Delphi last weekend, in the presence of various foreign personalities that are to function as advisors for the intended overhaul. These are all distinguished individuals no doubt, and their hiring replicates a favorite tactic of the current ruling team especially with regard to the economy where a variety of experts has been engaged to contribute their lights about what is to be done -as if what needs to be done were not clearer than sunlight in the first place. At least they will not collect fees for their services.
I do not mean to doubt the good intentions of anyone, but I am afraid that the whole show is just another exercise in futility. The "radical" proposals aired in the Delphi meeting basically came down to a change in the structure of university administration, which is the least significant aspect of higher education malaise. If the government or anyone else were serious about introducing meaningful reforms, all they need to do is to peruse the organizational and educational policy handbook of any internationally recognized school of higher learning from anywhere in the civilized world. It would take them at most a couple of hours to note the basic guidelines and another day to draft a legislative decree for their application here. But this they are not going to do, for what passes for a university here is completely at odds with universally accepted principles and criteria of what learning means at this level.
Instead of going from the bottom up (as is the usual method in this totalitarian-minded society), they should have started at the bottom, namely with goes on -or rather with what does not go on- in the classrooms. They should have instituted the obligation of the students to be present in the classroom and follow the lectures, their obligation to pass a given course at the end of the semester or else repeat it or take another one in order to complete the credits required for a degree, their obligation to fulfill the evaluation requirements demanded by the teachers (i.e. research papers, midterm and final exams etc.) and finally their obligation to successfully complete a lower level course before proceeding to the higher level one. It is quite astonishing and indeed incomprehensible to any person (expert or not) coming from a genuine educational environment to realize that none of the above criteria and procedures are in place here. The students are not required to attend classes and in fact most of them do not, they never write a single paper in their four-year career, they appear only at the end of the semester in order to write an exam in which cheating is rampant and is in fact considered a student "right" (!), and they do not give a damn if they fail for they can go on taking this wretched "exam" again and again for ever until the teacher becomes tired and/or disgusted and gives them a passing grade just to rid himself of their presence. Failure successfully to complete a lower level course does not prevent them going on to take a higher level one, where the aforementioned conditions also apply. If one as much as mentions the mot maudit "requirements" s/he will immediately face the ridicule, hostility -and more- of the student "unions", whose most recent demand is that teachers should not assign research papers in their courses because this constitutes class discrimination against working students.
The said "unions" are the branches of the various political parties, those represented in parliament as well as those of the extremist left, all of them united under two basic demands, firstly that degrees should be given to all with practically no learning effort involved, and secondly that all those with such worthless degrees should upon graduation be given jobs by the state. Most recently in some schools and departments, as I hear and I find easy to believe, these "unions" have put forward the demand that they have a say in writing up the questions to be put in exams. As for cheating, as I have already mentioned, it is not only established and widespread practice, but also declared a "right" under the protection of these champions of the working class. In all universities the rectors are elected as a result of deals with these groupings, given the fact that students participate in the election of the administration under a formula of weighted votes according to which even if one student votes as opposed to hundreds of others this one vote still counts for 40 percent of the total. This is the local idea of democracy in education, the like of which one would have to go to the other side of the universe to discover. It is no wonder that the so-called universities are basically factories for the mass production of illiterates, who also believe that it is their inalienable right to be supported for life by the society at large without them contributing anything to it. Needless to say, these despicable practices and attitudes are presented under the guise of communism, socialism, anarchism and what have you. This is not to say that in the universities one does not find brilliant, conscientious and committed individuals, both teachers and students. But these do not in any way set the tone or determine the direction of these rotten structures. I could add other graphic details about the way worthless individuals climb to the top without any academic credentials or by means of political connections, outright plagiarism, blackmail etc. etc., details that would make anyone coming from a proper university abroad cringe. These things are even beginning to be written in the press as of late.
Hence, what is to be done if there is to be education at all in this place is quite plain. You don't need armies of well-meaning experts from abroad coming here to prescribe solutions. The solutions are obvious and simple, and they are never going to be implemented. For one thing the very same political men and women shedding tears nowadays about the state of our schools and promising to be their saviors are the very ones who brought them to this horrific state of decomposition -one just cannot forget that the present prime minister was himself a minister of education for a number of years. Besides, the young people that under the direction of this corrupt and ignorant political class grew to believe that the world owes them and that they owe nothing to the world are not going to allow even the slightest movement in the direction of true Paideia. They would be ready and willing to shut down and even burn down (it's happened many times before) their schools, rather than see any real change.
The oracles of Delphi have always been deceptive.
I do not mean to doubt the good intentions of anyone, but I am afraid that the whole show is just another exercise in futility. The "radical" proposals aired in the Delphi meeting basically came down to a change in the structure of university administration, which is the least significant aspect of higher education malaise. If the government or anyone else were serious about introducing meaningful reforms, all they need to do is to peruse the organizational and educational policy handbook of any internationally recognized school of higher learning from anywhere in the civilized world. It would take them at most a couple of hours to note the basic guidelines and another day to draft a legislative decree for their application here. But this they are not going to do, for what passes for a university here is completely at odds with universally accepted principles and criteria of what learning means at this level.
Instead of going from the bottom up (as is the usual method in this totalitarian-minded society), they should have started at the bottom, namely with goes on -or rather with what does not go on- in the classrooms. They should have instituted the obligation of the students to be present in the classroom and follow the lectures, their obligation to pass a given course at the end of the semester or else repeat it or take another one in order to complete the credits required for a degree, their obligation to fulfill the evaluation requirements demanded by the teachers (i.e. research papers, midterm and final exams etc.) and finally their obligation to successfully complete a lower level course before proceeding to the higher level one. It is quite astonishing and indeed incomprehensible to any person (expert or not) coming from a genuine educational environment to realize that none of the above criteria and procedures are in place here. The students are not required to attend classes and in fact most of them do not, they never write a single paper in their four-year career, they appear only at the end of the semester in order to write an exam in which cheating is rampant and is in fact considered a student "right" (!), and they do not give a damn if they fail for they can go on taking this wretched "exam" again and again for ever until the teacher becomes tired and/or disgusted and gives them a passing grade just to rid himself of their presence. Failure successfully to complete a lower level course does not prevent them going on to take a higher level one, where the aforementioned conditions also apply. If one as much as mentions the mot maudit "requirements" s/he will immediately face the ridicule, hostility -and more- of the student "unions", whose most recent demand is that teachers should not assign research papers in their courses because this constitutes class discrimination against working students.
The said "unions" are the branches of the various political parties, those represented in parliament as well as those of the extremist left, all of them united under two basic demands, firstly that degrees should be given to all with practically no learning effort involved, and secondly that all those with such worthless degrees should upon graduation be given jobs by the state. Most recently in some schools and departments, as I hear and I find easy to believe, these "unions" have put forward the demand that they have a say in writing up the questions to be put in exams. As for cheating, as I have already mentioned, it is not only established and widespread practice, but also declared a "right" under the protection of these champions of the working class. In all universities the rectors are elected as a result of deals with these groupings, given the fact that students participate in the election of the administration under a formula of weighted votes according to which even if one student votes as opposed to hundreds of others this one vote still counts for 40 percent of the total. This is the local idea of democracy in education, the like of which one would have to go to the other side of the universe to discover. It is no wonder that the so-called universities are basically factories for the mass production of illiterates, who also believe that it is their inalienable right to be supported for life by the society at large without them contributing anything to it. Needless to say, these despicable practices and attitudes are presented under the guise of communism, socialism, anarchism and what have you. This is not to say that in the universities one does not find brilliant, conscientious and committed individuals, both teachers and students. But these do not in any way set the tone or determine the direction of these rotten structures. I could add other graphic details about the way worthless individuals climb to the top without any academic credentials or by means of political connections, outright plagiarism, blackmail etc. etc., details that would make anyone coming from a proper university abroad cringe. These things are even beginning to be written in the press as of late.
Hence, what is to be done if there is to be education at all in this place is quite plain. You don't need armies of well-meaning experts from abroad coming here to prescribe solutions. The solutions are obvious and simple, and they are never going to be implemented. For one thing the very same political men and women shedding tears nowadays about the state of our schools and promising to be their saviors are the very ones who brought them to this horrific state of decomposition -one just cannot forget that the present prime minister was himself a minister of education for a number of years. Besides, the young people that under the direction of this corrupt and ignorant political class grew to believe that the world owes them and that they owe nothing to the world are not going to allow even the slightest movement in the direction of true Paideia. They would be ready and willing to shut down and even burn down (it's happened many times before) their schools, rather than see any real change.
The oracles of Delphi have always been deceptive.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
After the silence
The long silence is only partly due to summer laziness. The chief reason is that thinking and writing about the desolate state of this society wears you down emotionally and morally. You may excoriate the filth gushing forth from every institution and just about every person molded by that iron-clad public mentality, but you still cannot avoid being fouled by it. You try to keep clean by averting your gaze, by constructing an alternative universe where the essentials of humanity mocked and falsified in this place are still alive. But this is also a desperate subterfuge. The evil and the ugliness keeps pounding you from all sides, and in order to keep it out of doors you have to exert a mighty effort that also sucks up every ounce of your vitality.
With respect to the economy the disaster keeps dragging on. The political establishment is engaged in a suicidal race of business as usual, with mutual recriminations about entirely inessential issues when the boat is steadily sinking. The general stupidity of the government, combined with the dissolution of the civil service and the resolute resistance to any change of what is left of it, is pushing us further and further into the whole. The prime minister keeps absenting himself on extended trips abroad, apparently imagining that public relations alone and nebulous rhetoric about the "goals of the millennium" will massage foreign attitudes, and especially that of the markets, into the illusion that the country has turned the corner. But everybody knows otherwise. At the same time, his idea of managing the crisis at home is to keep reshuffling his government adding more and more useless individuals to its roster, breaking up the ministries and giving them funny, and Orwellian, names, so that nobody knows anymore who is responsible for what. The opposition is playing their usual irresponsible game of disagreeing with everything, and blaming the reforms imposed by the foreign supervisors for the dire condition of the country, whereas this foreign assistance and control is the only thing that prevented the bankruptcy back in May and the only thing that promises an eventual return to a semblance of health if its prescriptions are carried out. As for the antediluvian left, they are tearing themselves apart about who is to be the more efficient wrecker of what is left standing. There are only two faint rays of hope: first, that the people at large seem to have realized the gravity of the situation and the nature of the dilemma we are facing, namely that we either suffer a lot in the medium term or we die completely; and second, that at this point Europe is in fact the captive member in its relation to this incorrigibly reactionary and self-devouring country. If Greece founders, then Europe does as well. So, whether they like it or not they are forced to do everything to prevent that. This means that foreign economic tutelage -thank God- is certainly going to be extended beyond the current three-year period of the rescue plan, and that eventually the colossal debt is going to be restructured in some orderly way. As for me I plan to be out of here before that happens -and plenty of others are also thinking along the same lines. It is just so thankless to talk about this situation. The body politic and social is putrescent by now, and the rot has penetrated to the very core of the collective mind.
But, to change the subject (it is not a change really, but a discussion of the same collapse from a different perspective) it is interesting to discuss another aspect of this anxious summer. I want to refer to what passes for "culture" here, and especially the way in which a faulty and degenerate sense of identity lays hands upon the works of the ancient classics and completely mangles their meaning, their aesthetic integrity, their human significance. As usual in the past couple of decades, miserable collections of untalented and illiterate nonentities calling themselves actors and directors put up shows of Aristophanes in particular, as well as of the other classical tragedians, in which they arbitrarily change the text, inserting their own inane rantings in order to make them "contemporary", and perform "experimental" or avant-garde renditions that are the silliest and most insufferable concoctions pompous puerility can come up with. All this is clothed in foolish post-modern verbiage of "subverting" the canon etc. amounting to nothing more than the license they give themselves to insult, sully and destroy the mightiest monuments of the European spirit to which these ugly dwarfs and usurpers have no intellectual or emotional connection. Their notion of Aristophanic raillery and ridicule is to dress up in clownish costumes, paint their faces in screaming colors and perform hideous contortions, in order to cajole laughter by means of gutter vulgarity rather than the majesty of the poetic word. The same with respect to tragedy, where their understanding of pathos is to scream with hoarse and brutish voice, so that one can barely hear any words at all, splash themselves with red paint to simulate blood, and make "horrible" faces and gestures, in an apotheosis of disgusting kitsch. This disease has penetrated all the way up to the venerable National Theater, which is today but a collection of these idiotic mannequins pretending to be the flower of contemporary artistry. The National Theater, roughly up to the end of the sixties, had worked out a respected tradition of tragic sublimity, which -replete with academic rigidity as it undoubtedly was- still managed to evoke the existential mystery that pervades the ancient texts. This well-honed idiom harmonized with the splendid venues of Epidaurus, Dodona, Philippi etc., which in the summer used to come alive with something approaching the soul of that stupendous poetry. Today, these hallowed places also have been demeaned and insulted as stages for the pestilential arrogance of those buffoons. This protest is surely as ineffectual and self-wounding as that about the state of politics and the economy here -but it has to be registered nevertheless.
With respect to the economy the disaster keeps dragging on. The political establishment is engaged in a suicidal race of business as usual, with mutual recriminations about entirely inessential issues when the boat is steadily sinking. The general stupidity of the government, combined with the dissolution of the civil service and the resolute resistance to any change of what is left of it, is pushing us further and further into the whole. The prime minister keeps absenting himself on extended trips abroad, apparently imagining that public relations alone and nebulous rhetoric about the "goals of the millennium" will massage foreign attitudes, and especially that of the markets, into the illusion that the country has turned the corner. But everybody knows otherwise. At the same time, his idea of managing the crisis at home is to keep reshuffling his government adding more and more useless individuals to its roster, breaking up the ministries and giving them funny, and Orwellian, names, so that nobody knows anymore who is responsible for what. The opposition is playing their usual irresponsible game of disagreeing with everything, and blaming the reforms imposed by the foreign supervisors for the dire condition of the country, whereas this foreign assistance and control is the only thing that prevented the bankruptcy back in May and the only thing that promises an eventual return to a semblance of health if its prescriptions are carried out. As for the antediluvian left, they are tearing themselves apart about who is to be the more efficient wrecker of what is left standing. There are only two faint rays of hope: first, that the people at large seem to have realized the gravity of the situation and the nature of the dilemma we are facing, namely that we either suffer a lot in the medium term or we die completely; and second, that at this point Europe is in fact the captive member in its relation to this incorrigibly reactionary and self-devouring country. If Greece founders, then Europe does as well. So, whether they like it or not they are forced to do everything to prevent that. This means that foreign economic tutelage -thank God- is certainly going to be extended beyond the current three-year period of the rescue plan, and that eventually the colossal debt is going to be restructured in some orderly way. As for me I plan to be out of here before that happens -and plenty of others are also thinking along the same lines. It is just so thankless to talk about this situation. The body politic and social is putrescent by now, and the rot has penetrated to the very core of the collective mind.
But, to change the subject (it is not a change really, but a discussion of the same collapse from a different perspective) it is interesting to discuss another aspect of this anxious summer. I want to refer to what passes for "culture" here, and especially the way in which a faulty and degenerate sense of identity lays hands upon the works of the ancient classics and completely mangles their meaning, their aesthetic integrity, their human significance. As usual in the past couple of decades, miserable collections of untalented and illiterate nonentities calling themselves actors and directors put up shows of Aristophanes in particular, as well as of the other classical tragedians, in which they arbitrarily change the text, inserting their own inane rantings in order to make them "contemporary", and perform "experimental" or avant-garde renditions that are the silliest and most insufferable concoctions pompous puerility can come up with. All this is clothed in foolish post-modern verbiage of "subverting" the canon etc. amounting to nothing more than the license they give themselves to insult, sully and destroy the mightiest monuments of the European spirit to which these ugly dwarfs and usurpers have no intellectual or emotional connection. Their notion of Aristophanic raillery and ridicule is to dress up in clownish costumes, paint their faces in screaming colors and perform hideous contortions, in order to cajole laughter by means of gutter vulgarity rather than the majesty of the poetic word. The same with respect to tragedy, where their understanding of pathos is to scream with hoarse and brutish voice, so that one can barely hear any words at all, splash themselves with red paint to simulate blood, and make "horrible" faces and gestures, in an apotheosis of disgusting kitsch. This disease has penetrated all the way up to the venerable National Theater, which is today but a collection of these idiotic mannequins pretending to be the flower of contemporary artistry. The National Theater, roughly up to the end of the sixties, had worked out a respected tradition of tragic sublimity, which -replete with academic rigidity as it undoubtedly was- still managed to evoke the existential mystery that pervades the ancient texts. This well-honed idiom harmonized with the splendid venues of Epidaurus, Dodona, Philippi etc., which in the summer used to come alive with something approaching the soul of that stupendous poetry. Today, these hallowed places also have been demeaned and insulted as stages for the pestilential arrogance of those buffoons. This protest is surely as ineffectual and self-wounding as that about the state of politics and the economy here -but it has to be registered nevertheless.
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