A social contract, broken

Contrary to western Europe, where property has been the prevailing value of the ruling elites, in Greece it has been rent-seeking. Throughout the Ottoman period, local authority was based on tax collection, as performed by the local elites, the “kotsabazes”. When Greece revolted in 1821, they quickly managed to regain control, albeit through a civil war (that started in 1822!). Greece’s current ruling elites are their descendants, either by blood or spirit. What the kotsabazes did was collecting taxes in the name of the Sultan and keeping them, mostly for themselves. Thus the “State” has always been something that everyone looked upon as a source of income. The “kotsabazes” had the “connections” that gave them the authority, and their subordinates were given a small part of the spoils, as rents for their obedience. Those small parts, as soon as Greece became independent, translated into jobs in the civil service, i.e. employees of the State.

This has been the social contract upon which Greece has functioned for the past 180 years. The ruling elites milk the country's resources (or borrow on its behalf) to fill their coffers, and the ruled (the voters) keep them in power in exchange for jobs in the public sector. This is how we ended up with almost a million and a half public employees.

Following Greece’s virtual bankruptcy and the obligatory measures that the government must take, this social contract has been broken. Hence the riots. The riots bring together the beneficiaries of the social contract; civil servants, pensioners, and other indirect beneficiaries of the state. They are angry because they feel betrayed. And truly they are. Their rulers became rich at their expense, and now, their rulers tell them that they have to reduce their wages, or even leave them jobless. The ruled want “justice’, meaning that they want the rulers to pay as well.

Letter from the abyss

History is aplenty with ironies, so here's one more: Greece (the ancient one) the foundation of the European idea, and Greece (the modern one) bringing about its undoing. The Greek communists that unfurled their banners on Acropolis today saw it otherwise. They believed that revolution is back. That capitalism, having failed the peoples of the world, is about to crumple into dust and that communism will prevail. Conveniently, they tend to forget that Greece has failed not because of an oligarchy snatching away the country’s wealth, but because of socialist politics that benefited one and a half million workers (who are employed as civil servants and produce nothing), propped up with borrowed foreign money. Should we blame the bankers and the hedge funds for this? It’s like blaming a rich uncle for giving too much money to a delinquent, adolescent, nephew who went and spent it all on candy. The adolescent became fat in the meantime. And is now crying for more candy without crossing his stupefied mind that a diet is now in order.In failing, Greece has exposed the weakness of European institutions. Whenever I see that pathetic Luxembourgian guy who is supposed to be the “President of Europe” my shoulders drop and I get a tendency to stare at the floor for hours. We have entered a period of uncertainty that will make the recession of 2008 look like nothing.

Can Greece be reinvented?

The Financial Times reporter finished his grim report from debt-stricken Greece with the wishful suggestion that only the “reinvention” of Greece may bootstrap her out of her recurring bankruptcies. First, let me take issue with the invention part. Then, I will look into that prefix “re”.

The invention of Greece

The idea of modern Greece, like any human artifact really, has been an invention. In the late 18^th century the Balkans were fermenting with nationalism, inspired by the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. For most people in the Balkans it was straight forward to define their national identity. Serbs, Croats, Romanians (to a certain extend) and Bulgarians knew who they were from the start. But most people who lived in the Greek peninsula and parts of Asia Minor did not. Certainly, there were several individuals identifying themselves as “Greeks” in very high places in the Ottoman Empire, as well as across Europe. These “Greeks” were inheritors of the dominant ideology the Easter Roman Empire (Byzantium) that came to be following the Crusades and persisting after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. This ideology had journeyed a long way from original Roman Universalism in order to arrive around the 11^th century to a loosely-defined “Greekness” by way of language and in comparison with its other Christian contender, namely “Frankisness” (i.e. the emerging Latin West). And yet “Greekness” did not fit comfortably with the Ecumenical spirit of Eastern Orthodoxy because, simply put, neither religious dogma can coexist with free thinking, nor nationalism with universalism.

Not managing to confound this apparent contradiction the intellectuals who defined modern Greek nationalism in the late 18^th century produced an ideological chimera: a Greek identity based on Christianity.

The Greek Uprising of 1821 took place in the midst of this ideological confusion adding one more extra layer; the virtual absence of “Greeks”. Greece and Greeks did not really exist. What existed were communities of Christian farmers and herders that lived in the Greek peninsula and spoke various mutually-incomprehensible Albanian, Slavic and Greek dialects. But Greeks had to be invented. And they were. The “philhellenic” movement helped decisively towards this invention, creating an ideal Greece of romantic allure. When the Modern Greek State was organized in the late 19^th century, a German prince came to become the first King of Greece and make the romantic dream into a reality. You can look at it as a first attempt of the western world to create a Disneyland. He failed of course. It was too early for Disneylands and the Balkans are a tough place anyway. He was succeeded by a more pliable royal dynasty of Danish origin who quickly integrated into the convenient confusion. The simulated image of classical Greece reborn of its ashes into a modern state (something similar to, say, Israel), was adopted as the national myth and ultimately became the country's tourist, and not only, slogan.

The politics of division

From the start then, the country was divided. The soul of the people was divided. And so was the language. Not wishing to delve into many historical details, the essence of the political history of Modern Greece is this.

The clan-based Ottoman society of mainland Greece (the core of the modern Greek State), rural in its base and loyalty, paternalistic in its nature, non-national but local, non-idealist but practical, infused the spirit of the institutions of the State. Government, instead of shaping a new, national society of law-abiding citizens, was consumed by the previous Ottoman social morphs. The clans transferred their power to members of the parliament, ministers, political families, kings and dictators, etc. The inequalities stemming from this state of affaires became intensified after 1922, when millions of Asia Minor Greeks (i.e. Christian Orthodox but not necessarily Greek-speaking) arrived in mainland Greece. They, not being part of the clan system that held sway, were marginalized from the start. Soon, and as Greece became increasingly industrialized, the new labor force from Asia Minor became the backbone of socialism and the labor movement, demanding a new deal. This “new deal” was in fact a desire to transform society into a really modern state. This movement was subsequently appropriated by the communists, became extremist and led to the pointless, albeit bloody Civil War of the late 1940s. As a result of this disastrous fratricide, the hope of a “new deal” was killed at its infancy and the old clan-based Ottoman status quo survived even stronger. The rise of the so-called “Left” of the Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement in the early 1980s was another appropriation of nationalistic idealism, this time in the darkest and most sinister form. Creating even deeper divisions in the already divided Greece, two decades of third-world “socialist” rule solidified the model of a state that serves an oligarchy. The only difference was the type of the new oligarchs. When during the preceding decades the ruling class was families who exploited the mineral wealth of the country, now it was the turn of media, public contractors and telecommunication magnates. Since the 1980s, whenever Conservatives and Socialists exchanged places in government, they made sure that the paternalistic status quo remained intact, whilst serving their respective oligarchies and buying out political power by means of recruiting voters into the civil service.

The dual nature of Greece

Today, after almost two centuries since 1826 when Greece became an independent country, it is a country of two people. What divides the people is their relationship to the State apparatus. Those who have a relationship with it – let us call them the “Old Greeks” - people like the civil servants and the entrepreneurs who deal with public contracts and procurements, are the direct or indirect beneficiaries of the State. The lowest in that clique (i.e. the civil servants) enjoy relative prosperity and security. The highest strata, the media barons, the construction company owners, are multi-millionaires. The State makes sure that laws are enacted (or not enacted) with such frequency and fluidity so that, in the end, anything goes - as long as it creates wealth for the ruling oligarchy and keeps the State-supported underclass (teachers, policemen, low-paid civil servants) clothed and fed and constantly wanting.

The West as the inventor

Europe invented Greece (modern and ancient) in the 18th and 19th centuries because Greece is what unifies Europe. Greece, not Rome with its savage history of power and deceipt. Greece, of white marble and pure thought, of brave heroes and the rest. Greece, of carefree walks and dance and wine and worrying little about anything. The Epicurean Greece. The place that must exist somewhere in order for life, the hard-working life, to have meaning. Greece is a western utopia. The irony, and tragedy for modern Greeks, is that the utopia of their country has become their reality.

Modern Greece, regardless my analysis, is a dream come true. Sometime the dream is a nightmare, sometimes is not. In any case, the dream is disconnected from reality, hence the billions in public debt. The Greek government did not really “lie” – it just said what everyone expected it to say. That, somehow, life can go on without care. Greeks have bought into the unreal and went on to sell their unreal treasury bonds to the world markets, which bought them too.

Reinventing poor Hellas

The process of reinvention can only come from the outside, not the inside. Greece cannot reinvent itself. It cannot awake from the dream world that has been pushed in for the past two centuries. The country and the people have been into it too deep. Even if the current crisis is overcome, Greece will return to business-as-usual soon afterwards. Make no mistake of it.

But the West, the original culprit of invention, can reinvent Greece. It can anihilate the dream of the inheritor of ancient glory and replace it with a model state without memories (false or not). The cost would be dire but, given enough time and peristence, even the anarchic Greeks can be taught a lesson in submission. So the current crisis is not just about money. It is about Europe, the other, bigger artifact. The reinvention of poor Hellas will be the reinvention of Europe.

The Edge Annual Question: How Is The Internet Changing the Way You Think?

There is no doubt that the Internet has changed the way people work, communicate, and relate to each other. It has created a new collaborative environment where teams can form ad hoc and work seamlessly in a manner not possible in pre-internet times. In doing so it has caused an economic paradigm shift from a molecule-based economy to a bit-based one with enormous impact across most industries.

The Internet has also changed the way people relate to each other. Social media have arrived at a time where a great number of people in technologically-advanced societies prefer safer and therefore shallower social relationships. By providing a middleware of make-believe personalities and touch-and-go messaging Facebook, Twitter and the rest are undermining much of the emotional depth of humanness. “Friends” are no longer what friends used to be.

Its impact on the western political system is perhaps less obvious but not least important. Representative democracy is being undermined constantly by the de facto disintegration of political constituencies as well as national borders. The Internet’s effect on newspapers and the media is more prominent and corrosive, but is comes a late second to the radical transformation of citizens allegiances.

All in all, the internet is facilitating modern globalization in unprecedented ways. Historically, various eras of nascent globalization (e.g the Achamenind, Hellenistic and Roman Empires, or the British Empire), lacked the communication technology to evolve into the next level; which explains, partly, historical regressions. This is no more the case. The Internet, thanks to its decentralized architecture and built-in redundancies, hinders regressions. For example,it is now virtually impossible to return to the days of nationalism because the net, and its users, can bypass whatever legal or physical obstacles nationalism may put on their way. This single fact has transformed much of the way we think about our own national identity, by changing traditional narratives of nationhood. Coupled with the current demographic tsunami of millions migrating from the poorest regions of the planet to the richer ones, it accelerates the challenging of many century-old ideas (or “myths” as they tend to be termed nowadays).

Which leaves us with two extreme scenarios for the future - and the most likely possibility that tomorrow will fall somewhere in between. The cyber-optimist would envision a digital noosphere morphing into a collective consciousness; the dawn of a brave new, truly global, civilization. National borders disappear, communities flourish, and so do free markets, liberty and free speech. The luddite-pessimist an era of strife where pre-Internet ways of thinking, nationalist philosophies, entrenched political systems, legacy legislators and post-romantic intellectuals, will desparately try to control the uncontrollable.

Click here to read texts by several Third Culture thinkers

(c) Image by sanchezdot

Darwin 101 for politicians

No other idea in human history has had a more profound impact on modern society than the evolutionary theory, independently conceived by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace 150 years ago. In neat, concise, transparent terms, it explains the multiversity of lifeforms that have replenished Earth since billions of years, the shooting of species from other species and, ultimately, the emergence of human beings. Its explanatory power is omnipotent. Evolution occurs because of natural selection. In the ever-changing environment of our planet creates conditions where certain, randomly appearing, traits in a species favor particular individuals over others, who then go on to procreate more often. By procreating they pass those favorable traits to their offspring, and this, over time, changes the whole profile of the species. A new species is thus born. From humble bacteria and viruses to sophisticated, intelligent, car-driving mammals, there has been not a single case in biology that has countered evolutionary theory. On the contrary, evolution has been confirmed again and again, not only by fossil records and discoveries in geology and the past climate of Earth but, more importantly perhaps, by probing into the nexus of life, the cell itself. The discovery of DNA as the principal promulgator of genetic information across generations has confirmed Darwin and Wallace beyond any doubt. We, and the apes, and the fish and the trees and every living thing, are indeed the products of natural selection, the descendants of a common unicellular great-great-grandfather that appeared on Earth some four billion years ago.

It is therefore not at all surprising that such a powerful idea spilled over quickly from the curious observation of amphibious lizards and garrulous birds in the Galapagos Islands and the Amazon forest, and entered the controversial realm of human society. Francis Galton, Darwin’s cousin, was first to coin the term “eugenics” and reinterpret evolutionary theory as political philosophy. Faced with the dilemma of altruism that lead to medicine being supplied to the “poor”, the “feeble-minded” and the “sick”, and therefore ease the propagation of “inferiors”, he suggested that human society should develop towards a world of “superiors” by selectively breeding the best with the best. Being a liberal, Galton proposed that active measures should prune amongst the “poor” for those with talent.

His proposition inspired, several decades later, the instigation of the welfare state in the UK. In the US, a virtually apartheid state in the beginning of the 20^th century, eugenics were taken more literally and several States introduced forced sterilization of mentally-ill patients and others who were deemed “inferior”. Interestingly, Karl Marx was very excited about evolutionary theory. He sent Darwin a copy of his book “Das Kapital”, and wrote to his friends how evolution and class struggle seemed to go hand in hand happily. As species evolved through strife towards perfection so would human society, ultimately arriving at a classless utopia through the uprising of the oppressed workers. And yet later on, in Soviet Union, Darwinism fell quickly out of favor. Orthodox communists of the Stalinist era supported instead the acquisition of new genetic characteristics during one’s lifetime, which could then be passed on to one’s offsprings. This idea is called “Lamarckism” (from the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck) and it made more sense to communist visionaries who dreamt of shaping man as the ultimate altruist. Trofim Lysenko, a notorious charlatan agronomist, denounced Darwin with the full support of the Communist Party and applied the flawed Lamarckian theory in Soviet agricultural projects, with disastrous effects.

Evolutionary theory trumps all other explanations about life on Earth. Nevertheless, it is one thing to scientifically and unequivocally explain why bats have wings, or why we have five fingers in each hand instead of six, and totally different why the variation in intelligence, or prowess, or beauty. Implying a genetic cause for such inequalities - as evolutionary theory surely does - smacks of biological determinist: i.e. that you are who you are because you were born like this, and there is nothing you can do about it. Which goes against the liberal ideology of freedom to chose and the right to prosper, as well as the socialist ideal of equality and justice. Thus, Social Darwinism, the idea that competition drives evolution in human societies, ultimately collided with almost every color in the political spectrum of the 20^th century, except perhaps fascism and Nazism which saw in the “survival of the fittest” the foundation of their totalitarian and racist ideologies. Eugenics, originally inspired by a liberal thinker in Victorian England, was corrupted and ultimately led to the crematoria of Auschwitz. That tragic event alone was enough to tarnish Social Darwinism with a terrible reputation which persists to our day.

Enter sociobiology, which many critics consider as Social Darwinism in disguise. Originally inspired to explain complex behavior in the animal world, sociobiology is routinely applied to interpret just about everything, from the dot com and real estate bubbles, to why rich men attract women more and why wealth is relative and never absolute. A new breed of economists, inspired by evolutionary thinking, takes issue with Adam Smith’s original assumption of rational players in the economy. These “behavioral economists” explain the stock markets in terms of instincts genetically inherited from our hominid ancestors that rummaged the ancestral savannas of Africa. Greed that drives markets up is seen as a battle for status amongst players who want to increase their wealth and therefore their chances of mating with a preferred member of the opposite sex. Fear – the factor that swings markets down - as the result of not wanting to lose high status, which in human societies is determined, and defined, by money.

Notable sociobiologists such as E.O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins, contend that sociobiology is science, not ideology. That, unlike Social Darwinism, it does not say what ought to be done butwhy something happens. Yes, but surely if one has an explanation for social behavior then oneought to be compelled to take action according to that scientific knowledge. If Darwinism explains, for example, murder as a way for hierarchically-low (i.e. poorer or destitute) young males to assert their dominance, then punitive measures should be restructured accordingly. Moreover, critics of sociobiology, such as the late evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, argue that traits such as genre or identity are social constructs and have nothing to do with inherited genes. It is nurture not nature, they say, that carries the day and therefore a socialist utopia of socio-economic equality is ultimately feasible.

The debate of nature versus nurture is bound to define political thinking in the current century too. For, if evolution provides us with a scientific insight to human nature, we must rid ourselves of ideology, whether liberal or socialist, and embrace a neutral, scientific perspective on society. The only caveat, alas so common in science, is to distinguish between cause and effect. Are we humans what we are because of our genes? Or are we because of what we think ourselves to be?

Literary Constructivism

Immanuel Kant held that there is a world of “things in themselves” but owing to the its radical independence from human thought, that is a world we can know nothing about; thus stating the most famous version of constructivism. Thomas Kuhn took the point further by stating that the world described by science is a world partly constituted by cognition, which changes as science changes.
Constructivism as an idea becomes very obscure when one tries to determine the connection of “things in themselves”, e.g. the “reality” of, say, electrons, and the “scientific concept” of an electron. My take of the problem is that science is a human endeavor and therefore inherently and implicitly bound by our brain’s capabilities, however, we do not “imagine” the world. The world exists, it is just not catalogued.
Things become a lot less murky when we shift from science to literature. Here, the author does not pretend to understand “things in themselves”. The literary agenda differs from the scientific one because it is assumed to be human-made. Books and book-worlds are of the imagination and for the imagination. Whenever I read about a flower I know that it is not the flower “out there”, in the “real” garden, but it is an imaginary flower, a rose inside the imagination of the writer given to me to sample and behold in my own imagination. Thus, free of scientific intentions and false pretensions about realities, literature is constructivist by its own nature. The writer constructs her own world. There are no electrons in that world, only thoughts, of electrons, sometimes, perhaps – but words nevertheless.
But, what is the real difference between a literary and a scientific narrative? There is much difference, one would argue. The Big Bang could be described by words, and therefore constitute a narrative in a literary sense, however, that narrative is underpinned by observation, experimentation and – most importantly perhaps – mathematicalization. Yes, math seems to make the big difference. The mathematical correspondence between scientific theories and the ticking of natural events, is the definitive factor that appears to differentiate a scientific narrative from a literary one.
But does it, really? Can’t one “translate” maths into narratives too? I would suggest that it ispossible. Even the most obscure of mathematical entities can be described in words, and indeed it must be described in words if it is to be understood. If one draws a parallel between math and music, then yes music is beyond words, but so is everything else of the Kantian “things in themselves”, and only when music is descriptively articulated (as an “experience”), it becomes part of the communal pool of ideas. Therefore, one arrives at a scientific narrative that is multi-layered and has many subplots, but starts to look like a literary narrative more and more. Could we then take the point one step further and suggest that, as literary criticism is the evolutionary force of literature, guiding it towards new directions, scientific peer review does similar wonders with determining directions of scientific research, shifting paradigms, and revolutionizing theories (i.e. narratives)?

The Idea Delusion

Recently, a postgraduate student asked me, as part of his thesis (http://vasilis-thesis.blogspot.com/) , to comment on the following claims by Keynes and Galbraith.
Keynes claimed that: "The ideas of economists and political philosophers (etc), both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else.” While Galbraith argued that: "Ideas would be powerful only in a static world because they are inherently conservative."
The student’s question was: These statements were said almost 45, and more, years ago. According to your opinion, which of the fore mentioned statements seems valid in the modern world?
My answer was: “I would definitely side with Galbraith. Of course ideas appear to be powerful and they seem to exercise enormous influence in the way we perceive and interpret the phenomena of the world. I believe that Pol Pot is a case in fact, as well as the hapless millions that were killed because of political ideas that he carried inside his head. But were those millions killed because of political ideology, or because this ideology "happened" to take root in Pol Pot's head, who "happened", through an amazing series of coincidences to live long enough and become powerful enough in order to enact those ideas against the poor people of Cambodia? Alas, our world is not shaped by decisions but by happenstance, by the dynamic confluence of sometimes interconnected and sometimes disparate factors, that lead one way or the other, by virtue of systemic forces beyond our control - or comprehension. Only by hindsight do economists and political philosophers apply ideas to the facts and develop their "theories". The feeling of "power" ascribed in their ideas is therefore an illusion, and it has been so not only today but always and forever.”

I would like to expand somewhat on my answer. Firstly, let me point out that I am referring to economic and political philosophy, restricting therefore my tackle of the term “Idea” - at least for now - to these fields.

I believe the ultimate acid test that shows the delusion that I am claiming is very simple. Economic and political theorists develop ideas which explain (or try to explain) the past. Even those theorists who claim that they speak about “today” or the “present” are in fact speaking only about the past; the recent past but the past nevertheless. The “present” is physically and intellectually unattainable as any Zen story will easily convince you. All economic and political theory, every “big idea” – Marxism, anarchism, liberalism, whatever - fails in various degrees when it comes to predicting the future. Why is this so? Why can’t anyone tell us how the world or the economy will be in five, or ten years time or, in fact, tomorrow morning?

Two reasons: Firstly, economic and political theories do not have – not yet anyway – a solid scientific base on the natural sciences. Secondly, economic and political theorists do not really believe that they need such a base in order to develop and debate their ideas. They inherently accept that the economy and the society are governed by non-natural forces and laws and that they are “human-made” – whatever that may mean. Therefore, they strongly contend that their theories and ideas are, or potentially could be, the driving forces of economic and social phenomena. That, for example, “believing” in market economics, “accepting” the theory and developing instruments that support it (e.g. IMF, World Bank, etc.) will surely transform the world into a free market economy. That invading Iraq and installing a western-type democracy will transform Iraq into a western-type democracy. These notions are delusions, of course. It should be very obvious to any rationally thinking person that human beings and societies are not controlled, “closed” environments of deterministic interactions. We are a social class of animals partaking in the evolution of the cosmos whether we want it, think it, or not.
I suggest that the roots of this “Idea Delusion” are Platonic and rest with Plato’s Republic. It is, however, about time, that such a delusion is revised and economists and sociologists begin to approach the workings of society in the same way as natural philosophers and natural scientists do. We need a new paradigm of social and economic theory based on biology and systems theory with predictive powers. Ideologies belong to the past.