On the Unhappiness of Being Greek by Nikos Dimou

Author:Nikos Dimou [Dimou, Nikos]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-78099-255-6
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
Published: 2013-02-21T16:00:00+00:00

Myths And Fears

85 A major symptom of the modern Greek soul: mythopoeia.

86 We fashion myths about ourselves. And then we are unhappy because we appear inferior to the myths (that we ourselves fashioned …).

87 One myth: ‘A Greek’s neck subjects itself to no yoke …’20

88 Try as I may, I’m unable to find any other people whose neck has been subjected to as many yokes as ours.

89 Except that here too we’re saved by our mythopoeia. As soon as (for whatever reason) the tyrants fall or the foreigners leave – we leap up (like Karaghiozis with the Dragon21) and say: ‘It was we who got rid of them!’

90 More myths: The Greeks as a ‘chosen’ people. The myth of Greek shrewdness. And the counter-myth of the gullible foreigner.

91 (Someday someone should write the strange romance between the xenophile and xenophobe in every Greek …)

92 Another myth: ‘foreign intervention’. The modern Greeks have never been able to accept responsibility. Someone else was always to blame: those ‘pulling the strings’, the Intelligence Service, NATO, the CIA …

93 And this same myth also operates in our personal affairs: which candidate ever believes that he deserved to fail his exams? Which employee ever accepts that his colleague deserved promotion? The others always have ‘the right connections’.

94 The myth of ‘the right connections’ is the opium that benumbs the sense of responsibility in the soul of the Greek.

95 Of course this is not to say that ‘the right connections’ and ‘foreign interventions’ are purely imaginary. All myths are based on reality. Yet the importance that all this intervening acquires in the ordinary Greek’s imagination is truly metaphysical.

96 Another symptom: the constant demythologization of others and mythologization of ourselves. The total inability of the modern Greek to talk of any notable fellow Greek without qualifying: ‘Yes, but …’

97 The comparison of everyone else with ourselves is compulsory. Necessary. The simple presence of the other personally offends us. It threatens us. It has to be ‘annulled’. The anxiety of constant competitiveness.

98 We are sometimes a small people with great ideas -and sometimes a great people with small ideas …

99 Is there any modern Greek, I wonder, whose manliness has never been questioned?

100 (At this point, we might recall the two most common Greek invectives …22)

101 Another symptom in the absence of self-assurance: the modern Greek suspiciousness. The immediate reaction to whatever you say: ‘Are you … kidding me?’

102 The Greek doesn’t feel comfortable in the world. Like a relative from the provinces, he sits on the edge of his seat and conceals his lack of self-assurance behind his air of seriousness. He rarely laughs.

103 And yet laughter is perhaps the only proof of human freedom.

104 It is between myth and fear that the Greeks live and create.

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