Why the folks running Greece cannot possibly be human

I have this theory.
That three things set humans apart from other animals: our ability for reflection, abstraction and compassion.

What do I mean?
I mean that unlike other animals, humans can deeply reflect on their behaviour, on life, on the universe. We have an ability and often a need to link the dots, poke in the shadows, truly seek to understand how things fit, why things are the way they are, why things feel the way they feel. Why did so-and-so do this? Why was I left feeling this way?
On top of that, we can do all this in the abstract. We can think about our own liberty and freedom writ large. We can think about rights, ethics, social reform. We can write poetry and debate religion. We can deal in things that cannot be touched or seen and yet we feel strongly about them.
And, most important of all in my mind, we are capable of compassion. Not just the fierce love of the lioness for her cubs. Not just the acute territorial protectionism of a wolf for his pack. Compassion. For complete strangers. On grounds of our shared humanity.

So, after thinking about it at length, I have concluded that, if my taxonomy is taken to its logical conclusion, we are left with only one option: the people running Greece are not human as they demonstrate no ability to reflect, no capacity for linking up the abstract with the concrete (the law they are passing with the problem they are trying to solve, say) and above all, no compassion whatsoever.

Let me demonstrate.
Mr Markogiannakis – successful lawyer, public prosecutor under the dictators and high and mighty within the current government. If he is not proof enough in his continued service that our leaders don’t reflect, let me give you more. He is one of the forces behind the stun guns our policemen carry – notorious for causing permanent health problems or even death – and is currently clamouring for the hire of ‘foreign’ policemen with the express job description of informing and keeping an eye on their compatriots, saving the day by arresting scores of illegal immigrants selling home-made CDs on street corners
Leaving aside his belief that illegal immigration is Greece’s most pressing problem at the moment (being stupid, sadly, fails to disqualify him as a human), his proposed solution fails to even for a moment consider what sort of society he would be building if the measure went through. No abstraction. He fails to consider how relations within the force and between the force and the community would fragment, sour and militarise. No reflection. And he fails to see – or fails to care – that this measure is preying on the poverty and despair of many an immigrant who would agree to anything that would feed their families in an honest, if not honourable way. So compassion is out the window too.

The really bad news, of course, is that Mr Markogiannakis is not alone.
Our glorious police force demonstrate a pitch-perfect ‘pack mentality’ looking after their own, covering up trespasses, crimes, violations of the law and police code of conduct. Evident is an inability to think in abstract terms of public service, order and an active contribution to democratic governance. Evident is their total lack of compassion for those they are meant to protect. Evident is also a total lack of willingness to reflect on their own conduct.
A recent study revealed that 4 or 5 policemen go down every year on charges of drug and people trafficking, blackmail, pimping and murder. That’s a tiny number in a corps that is notorious for its corruption. Yet even these few invariably come back into the force, having lost a few months’ earnings.
With more and more cases of evident police brutality being written up as people ‘beating themselves up’, tripping and, of course, suicide, ‘looking after one’s own’ is not just a figure of speech. The boys in blue don’t just keep an eye out for each other. They take out any eye that witnessed wrong-doing in a fierce protection of the pack.

Now ‘looking after your own’ is a natural instinct. Meerkats do it. Hyenas do it. Policemen do it. All humans do it, if we are honest. But they don’t do it to the complete detriment of everyone else. That’s the difference between hyenas and humans living in society. The latter know that survival does not need to be a zero sum game.

And while I’m at it – the priests? Not human either.
Sex scandals, appropriations scandals, land sale scandals and pure theft from charity coffers. Wanna talk compassion now? Wanna talk reflection? Why am I here, why am I wearing this funny black dress and what was it I set out to do?

Animals live meal to meal.
When humans have to live like that, we feel a crushing sadness as this life robs them of the basic tenets of their humanity – the ability to make complicated choices, the ability to live in the abstract, the luxury of showing compassion which you just don’t have when your own belly is empty.
But when you are fed, watered and sheltered from the elements, abstraction, reflection and compassion are possible. And essential.

Which brings me to the subject of our prime minister.
Well-fed, undoubtedly. Safe, warm – even though a trifle tired.
He is in a position to engage in reflection, abstraction and compassion. And yet he does not. He allows his government to pass laws that at best fail to address the problems he has to solve and at worse manipulate society closer and closer to a repressive regime.
There are three options here.
Option 1: his ability for reflection and abstraction is impaired because he’s dumb. That doesn’t make him any less human although it does throw his suitability for the post he is holding into sharp relief.
Option 2: the lack of reflection and compassion suggests he is not actually human. And that explains a lot.
Option 3: he is reflecting all right. And he has a perfect visualisation of where he is taking us, so his powers of abstraction are unimpaired. The slow but sure descent into a controlled state of fear and state repression is part of the plan and the prime minister and his cronies are simply members of that species that can think like a human but not feel like one. Abstraction? Reflection? Yeah, sure. Compassion? No, not today.

And here we are, trapped in a weird fairy tale, a work of science fiction, with a dark and sinister plot, unexpected twists, beasts, demons, battle scenes, plenty of villains – and no good guys.
But if this is a fairy tale, and having demonstrated that we are governed by wolves and ogres, are we not due a prince to slay them all roundabout now?

Witch-hunts for the digital era

One of my pet peeves, of which I have many, are people who use the terms ‘natural’ and ‘normal’ interchangeably.
Homosexuality ‘it’s not natural’ they say ‘it’s not normal’.
No sir.
It’s natural because it occurs in nature. But it is not normal as in, it is not of the norm – as in it is not the statistically prevalent, culturally prescribed, socially expected and publicly encouraged form of conduct.
So let’s get our terms straight here: ‘natural’ has everything to do with Mother Nature. ‘Normal’ has everything to do your own mother, her expectations and a whole number of social prescriptions on how ‘things should be’.

Now if you ask me, societies change, opinions evolve and what is considered normal is far from constant, varying from time to time, from place to place and from one person to the next. So although ‘natural’ is an altogether safer bet long term, ‘normal’ is what gets you invited to parties and leaves your aunties and nosy neighbours feeling safe and all warm inside. You don’t need me to tell you people generally prefer ‘normal’ to ‘natural’. Societies have historically victimised, marginalized, criminalized, ostracised and killed witches, prophets, adulterers, abortionists, unmarried lovers, homosexuals, members of different religions, parties, factions or football clubs.
You catch my drift.
‘Normal’ can be brutal and scary.

And here we are, in the year of our Lord 2009, in an era of openness, acceptance, moderation. In an era where your creed, colour, sexual preference or taste in neckties will not lead to a marginal life of victimisation and uncertainty. Or so they tell us.
Here we are thinking that, in our open-minded Western societies, ‘normal’ is a multi-hued, multi-faceted thing, as close to ‘natural’ as it has ever been in human history.

And here I am reading with incredulity that a number of psychiatrists and therapists are still offering their services to gay customers: 'helping them become heterosexual'.
To be honest, I first read the item a couple of weeks ago and dismissed it as an April fool’s day folly. A bad one but still a folly.
But no. It’s still on the wires. Evidently not a joke. Patently not funny.

Although such treatments are at best irrelevant and at worst harmful, apparently one in six of the mental health professionals surveyed in a recent poll in the UK said that they had ‘helped at least one patient curtail their gay, lesbian or bisexual feelings’ and one in 25 would try to ‘treat’ someone with homosexual ‘emotions’.
That’s a big percentage.
Maybe they are starting a trend. Maybe they will launch a pill.
I can see the adverts: ‘Tired of being different? Now you can fit it with the jocks, the cheerleaders and the conservative Christian right! Yes you can. You can try lobotomy or our new revolutionary Straight Pill – available at pharmacies near you’.

No, I don’t think this is funny either.
If licensed mental health professionals are trying to ‘cure’ sexual preference then it’s a matter of time before an angry mob bearing pitchforks comes to my door and drags me away to be burnt at the stake for witchcraft – what with my opinions and the people I hang out with.

Professor Michael King, from University College London, denounced any such attempts to cure homosexuality as scientifically unfounded and potentially harmful. His statement was countered by someone who refused to be named (the KKK also wore hoods to conceal their faces) who claimed that many a gay person is unhappy with their sexuality and ‘wish they were heterosexual’ and thus deserve help.
Professor King of course puts this proposition on its head, noting that many people face prejudice against their sexuality both from society and from within themselves – because you can’t shake your upbringing as easily as you’d like – and the mental health practitioner’s job is to help the individual deal with and overcome this prejudice, wherever it comes from.
As I was saying, when ‘natural’ and ‘normal’ collide the socially-fabricated and collectively-upheld normality wins over nature every bloody time.

And so ‘normality’ is shoved down our throats, with a lab-coat and stethoscope screaming from afar ‘when society and science converge, there is no use resisting’.
Now you may say, 1 in 25 practitioners being tempted to ‘cure’ homosexuality is not that bad, statistically speaking. But I really hope you won’t say that. Because one is one too many.
Besides, if a few sessions of cognitive behavioural therapy are believed to cure homosexuality, it is a matter of time before we hear of pills for atheism, syrups for liberalism and an enema to cure trade unionism.

This is not the first time doctors help us to be 'normal'.
This is not the first time scientists opt for upholding 'normality' and corresponding relations of power and control.
'Normal' has by definition strenght in numbers. 'Normal' lives, by definition, in the mainstream. What was once done in Churches is now done through chat shows, socio-babble jargon, websites. But a witch-hunt is a witch-hunt even with a .com at the end of it. And this wouldn’t be the first time the bad guys wore lab coats either.

And although the numbers are low (1 in 6 have done it, 1 in 25 would do it), the numbers are too high. And until the profession purges itself, there is a collective reponsibility no-one can deny. And until 'normal' aligns itself with 'natural', I will have cause to rant. This anger may be not be natural but, given the world I live in, let's face it: it's normal.

The joke that was the G20 summit or why many potential protesters stayed at home

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/03/28/article-1165382-04255381000005DC-599_468x314.jpg
Sure, protesters marched through the City of London, flanked by police. Loads of police. But, let’s face it, their heart wasn’t really in it. And there weren’t that many of them. Even the Countryside Alliance has fielded more people than hit the City last week.

All the banks were on high alert of course. City workers were told to work from home or dress down, come in earlier than normal (protesters are not used to early starts, you see, they sleep in, lazy people that they are) but really when it came down to it, things were quiet in the City. Eerily quiet most of the time.
And that’s as it should be. Contrary to pet fears, protesters are neither ignorant nor stupid. They have no quarrel with City workers, the number-crunchers that get crunched by the crisis worse than anyone. The people they have a quarrel with were either not coming into work on those days or sitting right at the heart of the G20 summit. So City workers were left to their own devices, largely.
Their bosses were largely not there, so they weren’t hassled.
And the G20 bosses, well, they have security details and traffic police clearing the way so they can’t have noticed much either.

Uneventful, is what the protests were.
Now that’s no bad thing. The people who hit the streets were pacifists, issue-focused and politically aware. Destruction and havoc was not on the agenda so the fact that the protests were uneventful was part of the plan and not, as the BBC seems to suggest, a lucky accident. These people protested our leaders’ inaction in the face of a financial crisis that has been raging and deepening for months now; they protested the indecision and lack of vision that plagues the efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan; they protested climate change and the lack of any policy to combat it. They protested real issues affecting us all, in the presence of people who can do something about it. Not the junior associate from HSBC, but the presidents and prime ministers of powerful nations sitting in consultation with each other for the good of their people.

Well some of their people were outside the building trying to get heard but, as usual, they got penned in out of the way until the leaders were out of earshot. Predictably no leader or representative even attempted a sortie even though the protesters were peaceful.

‘We are not all like that Mr President’ said the Sun, juxtaposing a picture of a protesting crowd in the City of London and a photo of the Queen with the Obamas.
What does that mean anyway? We are not like what?
We are not all like a kindly, elderly monarch with a strange taste in clothes? No, I’d think not. But obviously that’s not what it means at all. What it means is we are not all like ‘the great unwashed’, the filthy hippy protestors. We wouldn’t protest, oh no, not us!
And what I want to know is how is that a good thing?
If something is worth protesting against and you do so peacefully and respectfully, how is a protest not proof of care, compassion, humanity and engagement?

Oh yes, the Sun never fails to offend me.
But strongly as I do feel about all this, I must confess that I was not out there on the streets last week.

In the past, I have joined demonstrations even though I knew the government would not listen. Stop the war coalition – I was there, in the cold and rain every time although I knew Blair would take no note. It was important to me to stand up to be counted.
Now?
I care. Oh do I care. I wish I didn’t, it may help me sleep at night, caring less. But much as I care, I could not take the G20 summit seriously enough to protest against it. And I could not take the leaders involved seriously enough to try and get their attention.
It was clear even before the summit started that nothing would come of it. No new idea, no commitment, no genuine debate, no genuine falling-out, even, helping to clarify where the global politico-economic fault-lines lie.
We knew, before the debates even started, that we couldn’t even hope for radical disagreement showing us, the voters, that there are genuine, thought-through viable options to choose from.
Nobody had any expectations from the summit. Nobody has any expectations from the leadership.

So I stayed at home alongside millions of people.
Some disagreed with the protesters. The Sun and the man down my local pub feel squeamish at the sight of a protest, those dirty hippies and all that. That’s not me.
The cynics say we are not in Kansas any more and only the protesters can’t see it. That’s not me. Others stayed at home because they have more influence when they are near their phones and laptops than if they are waving placards at passing cars. Well that’s not me either.

I just couldn’t shake the sinking feeling that even if we were to rally the mighty, it will make not a jot of difference as they are largely to blame for the mess we are in anyway. The feeling that the protests had loads of goals but no real aim. A lot of issues but no real focus because it is no longer clear who can solve these problems and how – our leaders lacking both means and will, both ideas and a backbone.

So I stayed at home.
But I am comforted by the fact that not everyone did.
Because when there is this much wrong with the world giving up and going home seems like the sensible option. But it’s not the responsible option.
And still I stayed at home.
Because I knew that everything would come down to cash injections and I just couldn’t muster enough enthusiasm or anger to get out onto the streets to be yelled at by policemen over that. Of course other things were on the agenda. I’m sure Sarkozy suggested radical solutions Obama shrugged off because, generally speaking, the sort of thing the French like gets shot down on the Hill before you can even blink. So we are left with cash injections. And the problem with cash injections is that you and I, long-suffering tax payers, finance those thus salvaging the banks the bosses of whom brought us to where we are today.

And the protesters know that, of course. And I know that.
The difference is I stay at home while they obviously still shout in hope and anticipation even though they are bound to know the paradox – the lack of clear solutions, the total lack of grounds for inter-governmental collaboration and agreement. They are bound to know. Because if they care enough to be angry, if they care enough to be there, they care enough to know.
They know. And they still hope.
They were out on the streets because they still have faith.
And I was at home because I’m all out.

Neo-ellines or ‘why I don’t want you blaming me for your character defects’

Enough is enough already.

I was browsing my favourite blogs this morning.
What do you want from me? I’m snowed in and work is slow.

So, while browsing, I stumbled upon a very interesting debate about whether the chaos that is modern Greece is cool or despicable; whether the general ‘it’s all about me’-ness you see in your everyday dealings is a trait of the rebelliousness and innate freedom of the Greek soul or a sign that ‘modern Greeks’ (Neoellines – the newbie Greeks) are a decaying civilisation.
This debate is neither new nor is it rare. Thinking about Greece, Greeks and all related problems as collective issues is not new. Neither is it helpful

So I say: enough already.
A group of rude, inconsiderate, narrow-minded gits who happen to be Greek are not the sum total of Greekness, no matter how many of them there are. And that’s not because ‘Greekness’ is something else. It's because Greekness simply doesn’t exist at this level.
How about we leave the motherland out of it and accept responsibility for our own defective citizenship, our own inability to function in a polite and considerate manner around strangers and our unwillingness to accept difference – of creed, politics, personal preference, colour, shape or football team?

Obviously enough, I do not consider myself as belonging to the group I castigate. You got me. And I know others like me. And I know many more who are not like me and are not like the ‘neoellines’ we all love to hate either.
We are all Greek, for our sins, and we are all ‘new’ enough, as in still alive and kicking. And complaining. About being parcelled up and labelled, burdened with behaviours we don’t condone or accept. Only that's not what most of us complain about. Rather the complaint is about the state of the neoellines, the state of us all. Well.
We are not all the bloody same. We are not even similar.

Obviously society exists. Obviously socialisation and the experience of living within a given society creates certain shared traits, common ground, recognisable behavioural patterns that are not necessarily meaningful anywhere else.
Yes, shared nationality gives you a nexus of meaning, a shared language in literal and symbolic terms. Yes you have narratives, stories, symbols and heroes in common – not to mention a language, religion and shared collective experiences courtesy of the school system, press and the thing called society.
But sameness? Shared personality traits? That, my friends, would not be nation, it would be a sci-fi thought experiment. Yet day in, day out we talk like we believe ourselves to be living in it.

If the ‘neoellines’ are overwhelmingly behaving one way, it does not follow on that they behave that way because they are ‘neoellines’.
Maybe they act like they do because it’s easy. Maybe they do it because they can get away with it.
And we make it easy because, those of us who disagree, let them get away with it.
And we let them get away with it by missing the errant person and deploring the state of the ‘neoellines’ as a whole. As if 'a whole' existed that was coherent down to the way we all drive, treat immigrants, scoff cynically at politics, dodge the taxman, park on the disabled ramp.
They get away with it because they make it about ‘all of us’ and we let them.

Well we are not all like that. And we are not all ‘the other way’ either.
And the sooner we say ‘enough is enough’ out loud and break the cycle of endless debates about the state of the neoellines, the better.

A bunch of inconsiderate bullies have been hiding behind a national banner long enough. And those who disagree with them shake their heads at the state of the neoellines as if they themselves do not fully belong.

Well, here’s some news for the new Greeks: no 'national character' in the history of humanity has determined behaviour to such depths and in such detail. Handy as it is to blame all ills on our shared Greekness, the joke is getting old and tired.

If every bad character trait, if every dark personality twist can be blamed on the burden and blessing of the national character, nobody will ever have to clean up their act. And that’s handy for some but awful for others and counter-productive for the group as a whole.

Who are the neoellines anyway?
Just over ten million people. as varied and different as the number suggests.
And if a bunch of them want to persuade themselves (and us) that their own indifference sum us all up, why the hell do we let them?

Enough is enough already.
We are not all the same damn it. And that’s a good thing.
And if you want to be rude, inconsiderate and narrow-minded, leave the rest of us out of it.

Theories of relativity

I live in a relative world. I do. So do you, even though you’d rather you didn’t.
So does a student of mine who, years ago, told me he’d pray for me. Why? Because I said that ‘legitimate’ government is peculiar to its time and place. It has always been so and our beloved modern, territorial nation-state is not the final destination of humanity’s political evolution.
I didn’t think I was being particularly clever with that one.
Religious fundamentalism, racism, eugenics (to name but a few now-distasteful sets of beliefs) have been at the core of government legitimacy across both time and space. Yes, in Enlightened Europe too.
In fact, today’s western liberal ‘standards’ are very new. But we like them – our new-found liberty, equality, fair-mindedness. We like them and we want to share them with the rest of the world, because we believe they are fundamentally good, esentially valid and universally desirable. Not to mention objectively cool.
Yet attempts at exporting said values have exposed the fact that universalism still eludes the human race. My truth and your truth can be worlds apart.

So the student was shocked and would pray. I am not joking and neither was he. And I don’t mind. You never know when a prayer may come in handy with the ‘whatever from high atop the thing’. The sad truth, however, is that I’d love to have a few absolutes to hold onto. Even more so than the student who, all else failing, still has prayer. But universality eludes me.

First of all there is the practical side of things.
Our shared humanity should make us all equal. But in reality, this equality is crushed by those who don’t believe in it – states, groups, people. And if some of us agree this should not be the case, those who go off and do it anyway, obviously disagree. So universality is shot to pieces.

Then there is the theoretical side of things.
Could universality exist in the first place?
I’d say yes and use Rawl’s veil of ignorance as exhibit A. If you could de-contextualise yourself, you could build a value-neutral system that respects human fundamentals. So what are they?
Well, since you cannot de-contextualise yourself you can’t determine this. You can only create a wish list.
Life. Freedom of thought, worship and opinion. Dignity.
I like this list. It’s not my ideal-world list. My ideal-world list is much longer, excruciatingly detailed and set to music. It’s my ‘let’s keep this real’ list, but real it ain’t. Because many disagree with me. Others would quite rightly want to know how I define freedom (freedom from? freedom to?) and what exactly dignity means before they commit. But leaving others out of it for a moment, the problem is I disagree with it myself some of the time.
I believe in freedom of expression. I do.
I believe in your right to believe in things I don’t and reject the things I believe in. I believe in your right to reject my life and lead a life I don’t want for myself.
But there is a type of belief that I am not comfortable with. It’s the sort of belief that doesn’t simply reject an opinion or way of life in favour of another, but rejects it as wrong, non-viable, misguided and evil.

I believe in freedom of expression.
But what about the bad guys? What about racist, homophobic, religiously-blinkered, morally superior beliefs that see their truth as the only truth and according to which everyone disagreeing should repent, reform or die?
What about the people whose opinions fundamentally entail a rejection of mine? Not a criticism but a fundamental rejection of both the validity of my opinions and my right to hold them?

Well, in principle they have a right to think what they think. In practice, I want to shake them really, really hard. So universality dies in my own head a million times over as, obviously, I believe in what I believe in and I believe in it strongly. Apart from when I don’t.
But I will prevail over my own tastes. Because I’m sure my opinions are distasteful to many, some of whom would still defend my right to hold them. Even if many others wouldn’t. Maybe that’s the main difference between those of us who wish for universality and those who couldn’t care less.

Still, it all boils down to the same thing sadly. Because even though you wish life was sacred no matter what and some freedoms were guaranteed irrespective of context, there is no place on earth where that is the case.
Cultural relativity, power differentials, religion, family, tribal justice, court justice or a chance encounter with individual violence and the sanctity of life and freedom are shattered in one blow.

And of course there is the argument of cultural imperialism. At the end of the day, how is saying ‘this is right because it’s how I do it’ different to my friend’s assessment of his tastes as ‘objectively cool’.
Whose right is bigger and whose truth is better?

Relativity reigns supreme. But you do draw the line somewhere. Or you should.
Because even if I grudgingly acknowledge your right to deny the holocaust, I will not acknowledge your right to act on this belief. Life, surely, is where universal values converge.
Of course that is not the case. Because there are murderers out there, capital punishment, honour killings, wars. People and states the world over fail to respect the inalienability of human life. Without that, discussing fundamental rights and freedoms may well be putting the cart before the horse.

So I live in a relative world.
Not of my choosing. Nor of my making.
I’d like to live in a world where human life is inalienable. Where freedom of thought, expression, movement and access were unfettered. Where dignity – however you understand it – is a fundamental. I’d like to live in a world where rights don’t collide. There's no end to the things I'd like.
But seriously.
I’d settle for a world where life is sacred. Always and unconditionally. Even if you are a bad guy.