Archive for Greece
Coincidence or selective attention?
It’s funny how you go the longest time without thinking of someone or something, and all of a sudden it hits you at once, and it’s everywhere.I found out today that Leonard Cohen (about whom I wrote earlier this month, but hadn’t thought much about before) lived for a while in the island of Hydra (where I was earlier this month (see picture), but whose existence I didn’t know of before). I’d known Cohen was born in Montreal, but didn’t know that he’d been an undergraduate at McGill (where I too was an undergraduate back when).
Today I saw a documentary about Leonard Cohen, which wasn’t the greatest documentary I’ve ever seen. But the scene where Bono comments on “Hallellujah” really made me go, “Woah! I was just talking about that!” (the scene where Leonard Cohen himself sings “Tower of Song” with U2 as supporting band wasn’t bad either).
I also liked what Bono said about Cohen going to work on his writings as a carpenter works on his furniture. Very humbling. Not like some of us that just hope that the inspiration will hit us. Or maybe it will, if at least we keep working at it…Was it Einstein who said something about genius being 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration?Another thing I also didn’t know was that Cohen had been ordained a buddhist monk. Maybe at any other point of my life this fact might have passed unnoticed. But when I was in Greece a couple of weeks ago, I saw a friend of mine who I hadn’t seen in years, and who was ordained a buddhist monk last March… The coincidences just keep getting more and more tangled, like a brilliant, though highly implausible, short-story.
Maybe it’s just me, ready to find coincidences just because I’ve been thinking about all these things, like Freud’s story about selective attention. I don’t know. But there is something unsettling about not seeing something that is right in front of your nose, until you’re ready to see it, and then you wonder how you never saw it before. Is it that we don’t try hard enough? Or is it really 99% inspiration and 1% perspiration?
If it can happen there, it can happen anywhere
Warning: this post is rated R for reference to sexual body parts and mild violence content (gotta call a spade “a spade”). Completely based on true facts.
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After a post on being childish, here’s a serious one.
Lately I’ve been thinking about a lot about violence against women, which was something I knew about, but never really knew about. Until now. I always knew it was something that could happen to any woman, but for some reason (presumption? arrogance?), in some subconscious level I tended to think I was immune to it. Not anymore.
The text below is copied and pasted from an email I sent to a friend of mine when I was in Athens last June 7th.
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Ok. A very pleasant and then a very unpleasant thing just happened to me, after I wrote to you a couple of hours ago.
The pleasant thing was that I climbed Lykavittos Hill, the highest point in Athens, to have to most amazing view of the city, the Acropolis, the sea, the islands. Unbelivably pretty! The path leading up there reminded me a bit of the paths in Mont Royal, but not as not as well taken care of, or wide, or busy.
I took the back way up. On the top, where there is a little chapel, a lookout point, where there were a handful of tourists, an old man sleeping on the steps to a little belltower, two policemen. Going around the chapel, then a little further downhill, there was a fancy restaurant and a tram. After taking a couple of pictures, I retraced my steps from the restaurant entrance back to the top where the policemen were now talking to the previously-sleeping man.
On the way down, I decided to take the main path, which was more structured, shorter, wider, with a bit more tourist traffic. And here’s where the unpleasant thing happened.
A passer-by overtook me and tried to start chatting with me. Between Greek, English and Italian I gathered that his name was Eric. After three minutes of trying to get me to sit down and smoke a cigarrette, to which I kept replying (as I walked as fast as I could) that I couldn’t stop because there was someone waiting for me and I was late, he simply unzipped his pants and pulled out his penis as he said something about making bambini, standing there in the middle of the pathway, in broad daylight, 4pm, at the main access to a major tourist attraction in Athens. Definitely not very attractive to this humble tourist writing to you.
I just kept on going with quadruple speed (from my centre of gravity, belly button and whole being), at which point he ran after me saying “sorry sorry” and grabbed my bum. At this point, I turned around (it was actually the first time I stopped and/or turned around), raised my fist, looked very fierce and said something like “don’t you dare!”
To my great surprise, he froze and turned pale. As I suddenly realized that I couldn’t remember how to break any of his bones, and shouting for help would probably be useless, I turned on my heels and ran. Within 15 seconds I passed by another passer-by (by this point, I’m not trusting passers-by that are male, unaccompanied and look in their thirties). In another 10 seconds I got to the bottom of the hill, back to civilization.
And now, less than half an hour later, I am here writing to you. My legs now have just stopped shaking, and my heart is almost back to regular speed. But now I’m thinking: I definitely have to calibrate this “adventuresome” attitude of mine: this was definitely not fun… I only wish that there were policemen at the bottom of the hill too…
You be careful,
Ester
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The Lives of Others
So, I said that reading signs was one of the things I enjoyed doing in Greece. The one posted here is a perfect example. It reads:
“‘Oi Zôes tôn allôn”
‘Oi = article masculine plural = “the”
Zôes = “lives” (like in “zoology”)
tôn allôn = genitive plural = “of others” (like in “allopathy”)
I get that, and being able to get that gives me the kind of thrill a child feels when she is learning how to read.Now, I saw this movie a few weeks ago, and have been meaning to write about it for a while, and never getting to do it. It’s one of the best movies I’ve seen. The character development is fantastic, and it just left me with the type of liberating feeling that I got from Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables”, or Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities”.
In particular, it made me think of the distinction between justice and mercy; about self-righteousness; about observing — and judging — others as if one were invisible, or above and beyond reproach.
I have no acting experience, but I do wonder whether good critics are also good actors. It seems that in life the most perceptive critics are too busy being perceptive to do any acting of their own (and as an academic, I must say I do more than my share of this). So they (we?) kind of live through the lives of others, like the guy in the movie.
But at some point, if one is fortunate, one just gets tired of reporting on how sour the grapes are over the fence where the grass definitely looks greener (though we would never admit it). So we just jump over the fence and realize that the grass is only greener because the people take the trouble to garden, and the grapes are not sour at all.
And then all of a sudden we’re too busy with our own gardening and our own grapes to be too picky about the lives of others. At most, we’re just happy they’re there to receive and enjoy all those flowers and grapes that we wouldn’t want to go rotten after all the work and care we put into them.
Brazil-like Greece
So I’ve said that Greece is the place in the world that reminds me of Brazil the most and you, dear reader, must be wondering:
“What does she mean by that? She can’t just say ‘there’s more to this feeling than that’, as if that was self-explanatory!”
And right you are — it’s by no means self-explanatory. I’m not even sure it is explainable at all. But here’s roughly what I mean by it:
1. As I said, it’s a “feeling”, and feelings are notoriously hard to explain, or even describe. I do not know what it is about Greece that really reminds me of Brazil: whether the people, the streets, the stores, the climate, the vegetation, the colour of the earth…
But both this time and last time I was there six years ago, I repeatedly have this feeling of “not being abroad”, and that happened in the oddest places: some parts in downtown Athens reminds me of downtown Rio; the countryside reminds me of the rural part of Brazil my family is from; some beaches reminds me of some Beaches in the Brazilian northeast. And this is something I haven’t felt anywhere else, and I’ve travelled a bit.
2. I have encountered an unusual number of Brazilians in Greece (which probably contributes to my impression in point 1). This is also something that struck me both times I was in Greece. Again, I’ve travelled a bit, and I’d say I have a good radar for detecting my compatriots. But I think the only other place I’ve seen so many Brazilians was in Florida and maybe… maybe New York.
If it had been only this time, I’d attribute this fact to a soap opera that was on for a good part of last year in Brazil and had a Greek component to it. But I had felt this way before, years before the soap opera, so maybe the soap opera was the consequence, and not the cause, of the number of Brazilians in Greece.
So that’s that. The real cause for this phenomenon remains to me unexplained. And whether it is true or not that the actual proportion of Brazilians in Greece is higher than in other places I visited, in any case it remains true that I have this impression. And not even Descartes could find fault with my explanation.
Greek Week
I spent these last seven days in Greece, and as I think over the balance of the week, these are the things that struck me the most:
1. Greece reminds me of Brazil. This might have something to do with the large number of Brazilians I’ve encountered here. But there’s more to this feeling than that.
2. For someone like me who loves languages, and who studied Ancient Greek for years, going around trying to infer what signs and ads, and film titles and subtitles meant was one of the funnest parts of the trip. I know, I have an unusual — maybe geeky — sense of “fun”. But there is something about navigating the internet and using Windows, with all those familiar commands in Greek, and realizing they make perfect sense, that could not but make me giggle with pleasure. Call me a geek for Greek.
3. But there were other, more scenic pleasures. The view from the top of Lykavittos Hill, overlooking all of Athens, the Acropolis, the sea, the islands, all in front of your eyes all at once, absolutely breathtaking (the fact that it was quite a climb going up might have contributed to the breathtaking component). Likewise, sitting on the Aeropagos Hill at night, the Acropolis shining right on your shoulder while fireworks filled the sky — how can I describe something like that? Walking around the beautiful island of Hydra wasn’t bad either. And I won’t even get started about the food…
4. Not all experiences were pleasant, however. The two things that bugged me most were a) the repeated feeling of being ripped-off (being wide aware of it, and completely helpless about it) and b) how easy it was to stumble upon situations of unwelcome sexual forwardness, whether prostitution, sexual harassment in broad daylight, or pornography as you browse through newstands during the day, and tv channels during the night. Never before have I felt so vulnerable as a woman travelling alone, and I’ve been a woman travelling alone for a while.
5. As the week approaches the end, I feel I have a lot more to say and do, but that my mind and my body feel overwhelmed. There is only so much you can absorb. Sometimes I feel like I’d like to come and spend a few months in Greece, so that I’d have enough time to soak in, to go and visit all the many sites that I never have the time, the money, the means of transportation, the energy to go and visit in a trip as short as this.
But then again, the thought that Greece, ancient or modern, might sometimes not be as homogeneously beautiful as we fantasize makes me wonder, and doubt whether I’d prefer to cling to the fantasy or embrace reality as is… And in the end, all I can say, is that all that I know is that I know nothing. Or maybe very little.
Silent voices
I said in the last post that Timothy Reagan’s “Paideia Redux” was an excellent source of references. One such fascinating reference is to classics scholar Page du Bois.
Quite a polemic writer, du Bois’s main agenda is a call for rereading the
classics. Far from embracing ancient cultures as our ideal, the idea is to critically examine not only how much we have inherited, but also how much we have improved, and how much more there is to improve still.
Some of du Bois’ titles include:
- “Trojan horses : saving the classics from conservatives”
- “Slaves and other objects”
- “Centaurs and amazons : women and the pre-history of the great chain of being”
- “Sappho is burning”
- “Sowing the body : psychoanalysis and ancient representations of women”
- “Torture and truth”
One can see from the titles a concern with the history of “second-class citizens”. These are groups of people like women, foreigners, slaves and even mystical creatures who, in virtue of being different from the dominant class, are often denied the status of “fully human”.
I´ve had a chance to read the chapters on Plato in her “Sapho is burning” and in “Sowing the Body”, and thought they were really excellent. Du Bois argues that even though Plato is ahead of his time in presenting a Socrates who surprisingly regards women as having something clever to say, the women themselves are actually never present in the philosophical discussion. A memorable point, I thought.
Aspasia, Diotima and Sappho speak through Socrates, but they themselves are absent, and have no voice of their own. When women do appear in the dialogues, like Xantippe in the Phaedo, and the flutegirls in the Symposium, they are presented merely as a disturbance in the men’s serious discussions and are asked to leave.
Even the wise Sappho is presented in a voice and terrain other than her own. In a very creative move, Du Bois imagines what a Sapphic poem would be like if Sappho had decided to return the compliment and write a song about the wise Plato.
Page du Bois seems to me another excellent link to make when answering the question “why study the classics”. At the moment I am eagerly waiting for her “Trojan Horses” to arrive in the mail. I´m already ecstatic in the expectation of a “the-harm-done-can-only-be-undone-from-the-inside” approach to the classics.
After all, as we have learned from the Ancient Greeks, there is nothing more powerful than the power that comes from within.
Mastering Civilization
People often wonder what the point is in studying classical cultures, like Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt or Ancient China.
Some people say that it´s because the ancients were the high point of civilization and all went downhill from there.
But I think that, first, that this is to disconsider all the achievements of the last 5, 10, 15 or 20 centuries.
Second, this view neglects the fact that civilizations do not develop linearly. Anyone who has played the computer game Civilization III knows that at any given point, the Zulus might be more technologically advanced, though not as widespread as the Greeks, just as the Iroquois might be more culturally developed, though not as strongly armed as the Romans.
To say, therefore, that one given civilization, present or past, or is more civilized than another is one-sided, not only in the sense that it is simplistic (“what counts as civilized?”) but also in the sense of being parochial and borderline unfair.
Another view would be to say that we study ancient cultures for mere curiosity. In this sense, it does not really matter whether you study Ancient Rome or Ancient Tupi-Guarani: they are all dead and gone, and equally irrelevant to the current reality.
I also find this view parochial, though in a chronological rather than geographical sense. To have this attitude is to disregard an immense wealth about what makes human civilization what it is. It is like running the risk of reinventing the wheel just because we have no time for realizing that it’s already been done before.
Timothy Reagan´s “Paideia Redux: A Contemporary Case for the Classics” is the best lead I found for the question of “why study the classics?.” Not only does it make a great case for the relevance of the Classics on the issues that press the post-modern world, but it is a great source for other fascinating reads on the topic.
The connections that Reagan makes between current theories and ancient theories, and with other authors writing on this topic, illustrates well both my personal take on why study the classics, and my best strategy for doing well in the the Civilization game.
That is, both as a civilization and as an individual player, we all start in different locations, with access to different resources and different specific skills. Our specificities are at same time a plus and a limitation: a civilization with lots of hills has more access to iron and more defense points, but more difficulty for locomotion and for agriculture. A military civilization makes stronger armies, but takes longer to develop culturally.
We only have to gain in connecting with other civilizations as early in the game as possible. In this way, we can multiply both our access to resources (which depend on the specificities of our territory) as well as the speed in which we make technological advances (for while one invents the wheel the other is already inventing literacy, and the willingness to share makes both civilization stronger).
One might complain that the purpose of the game is still to outdo the other civilizations, and we can only win if at some point we break our allegiance with them, and leave them behind.
To this I reply that it all depends on why and how you play the game. For those who, like me, play it repeatedly, simply beating the adversary has no thrill. The fun is in playing a better game than before and in improving on my previous scores. And this (as I found from trial and error – lots of it), comes from making as many allegiances as possible, as early as possible.
But there are other games we only have the chance to play once. As far as I know, life is one of those.
References, Alusions and Recommendations:- Sid Meier´s Civilization III
- Reagan, Timothy. “Paideia Redux: A Contemporary Case for the Classics.” Journal of Thought 38.3 (2003): 21-39.
- Burbules, Nicholas C., and Rupert Berk. “Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy: Relations, Differences, and Limits.” Changing Terrains of Knowledge and Politics. Ed. Thomas S. Popkewitz and Lynn Fendler. New York: Routledge, 1999. 45-65.
