Decisions

my constant inspiration

I rediscovered the language and culture of my birth about two years ago, in the Greek blogs, thirty two years after I had left my birthplace of Athens, in Greece, and lived for seven years in England and seventeen in Massachusetts, bringing up my son who was born in Boston. After a brief spell back in Athens I finally found myself in the mountains east of Florence, in Italy, where I live in a small rural village with my wife, who was born here.

The first difficulty reared its strange head when I realized that by now I was feeling, thinking, counting, dreaming, speaking, and writing in English --a combination of British English and American know-how, as luck, and as natural choice through evolution, would have it. But I did not see it as a problem, or even a challenge. For me it was a marvelous quest into my roots, using styles of expression with which Greek writers had influenced the thinking of my youth --even though I was thinking in English, and sometimes I was using a dictionary to translate into Greek for the posts and comments I wrote in the Greek blogs, and in this one.

By today I have written in Greek enough material to fit into a 250-page paperback, translating from the English. I thought I was translating between languages, but I came to find, recently, that I was also trying to translate between cultures --a feat considerably more difficult than translating language.

The Ancients used to say "I grow old, always learning" and "The more I know the more I realize how little I know". For the ancients, debate was the stuff of being, without which the human spirit becomes isolated and sterile.

In my blog, written in Greek, and in my comments everywhere, again in Greek, I realized that the pleasure of being challenged by different opinions to debate was to be amply found in the blogs written by Greeks. In time I also realized that the style and principles of debate I grew older with, as an adult, are phenomenally different to those found in Greece today.

Modern Greece in general, and Greece of the last 37 years in particular, never fared well in the community of western nations. It was not the language, but the culture. For as its geographical location initially helped in giving birth to modern thought, the same geographical location was responsible later for the fact that the thought which sprang from that land and those islands emigrated to climates and was adopted by peoples more susceptible to its wisdom.

Philosophy and Democracy were born of Greek parents, but they were given up and were adopted by the foster parents who gave us the Renaissance and flourished in the ideals of liberty founded therein. This is what my tour in the Greek blogs, sadly, lead me to conclude.

The essence of co-existence in a free and democratic society is undoubtedly, as I understand it, found in the art of debate. The two most crucial ingredients in debate are the respect for the point of view of the opposing party and the flow of conversation in addressing the essence of all the points introduced by each party, in a cool and level-headed factual approach. In many of the Greek blogs I had experience with, the respect for the point of view of the opposing party exists only as a pretense, or as a beautiful whipped cream layer over a completely burned and bitter-tasting cake. With cherries on top. The addressing of statements and presented facts is done with the narcissistic approach of twisting the meanings put forth by addressing some words disregarding their greater meaning, and ignoring others against which there is no argument, or it is very difficult to make an argument against.

Many bloggers in Greece apparently believe that it is alright for a blogger to make the abhorrent statement that "Hitler should have finished the job", if that blogger was influenced by photos from Gaza. It is also apparently alright to give up personal freedoms if a society gets in exchange what some arbitrarily believe to be the common good. And it is alright to view a philosophy, religion or culture not on its merit but by the appearance of the clergy. Any debate on these points is met with what appears to me as sophistry and propaganda techniques, or dogmatic emptiness.

Inadvertently I am reminded of the lines spoken by Brad Davis, in the role of Billy Hayes addressing his Turkish prosecutor in the 1978 film Midnight Express, where he compared the ability of the Turkish prosecutor to understand the issues at hand to that of a pig being told to use a toilet. Also, of the stance demonstrated by sir Thomas More, in the guise of celebrated actor Paul Schofield, in the 1966 film A Man For All Seasons, who tried in vain, but with dignified resignation, to address his king and country in respect to issues that transcended personal interests. I do not, of course, equate myself or the circumstances with either film memory --but films are a part of modern culture that permeate our thought with their crude or wise examples.

Yet, it is up to the individual to always celebrate the positive aspects of every quest, even quests that lead to places unexpected and sad. I, for one, am grateful and full of interest and anticipation for future debates with e-friends I encountered on my way, the better-than-I bloggers who honor me with their comments to my posts, and their responses to my comments to theirs, Epanechnikov, NdN and latecomer in the United Kingdom, ManBlogg and Locus Publicus in the United States, Scarlett in Germany (I think), my good friend Teleytaios, and Ellinaki, Eskarina, Roadartist, Squarelogic, Atheofobos and others in Greece.

The key, I think is to always accept the lessons of the past, look ahead, and say what one believes --and believe what one says. I look forward to everything we will share and discuss, even debate, in the future.

What is truly interesting is that, for most of these bloggers, the language of this post matters not, neither would they find any difficulty in understanding the culture and comprehension of the world from which its line of thinking stems.