The laughing stock

I am not a big fan of India, but I am rather fond of Indians. For some reason I refuse to abandon my stereotypical views of the country: suffocating heat and humidity, extreme poverty, and an attitude towards life that is too passive for my taste. But Indians are a different thing! Friendly, impeccable masters of the English language with a rounded education and a keen interest in the world, Indians (at least the ones I met in grad school and while working for an influential Internet company) are the surest social resource a poor foreigner can hope to attach to for some educated company.

It is one of those Indians, Gandhi, the political genius who managed to oust the British from his native land by employing peaceful but highly effective and traditionally Indian means, who described the universal path to victory in the following stages:
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

Now, it is hard to explain how my brain works, but apparently, my failure in grad school to master the deep field of stochastic mathematical systems has created some kind of complex in me. As a result, some of its most fundamental ideas are constantly present in the back of my mind. They are my personal Furies if you will.

Reversibility is one of them and it means more or less what its name implies: from the evolution of a system an external observer cannot deduce in which direction time flows. In other words, and very liberally, you can read the system backwards too!

That is exactly what I thought when, who knows why, the above quote came to my mind while reflecting for countless hours on the current crisis that has been plaguing Greece for the last 7 years.
Assuming reversibility holds in the realm of geopolitics, then the road to becoming insignificant starts from a period when you mattered, then you face resistance, then you become the laughing stock of the world and suddenly you are too small a fish for anyone to care.

Don't get me wrong: all the stereotypical references in the international press about those lazy Greeks who consume more than they produce and have a good time under the sun while the hard working Northern allies are trying hard to innovate and export goods, are part of the second stage (in reverse order :), i.e., this is the attack and personally I do not give a damn about it. What I do care about is when I see signs of the next stage.

I try to repel any pessimistic thoughts but every time I visit back home or when I find myself among a big congregation of Greeks, e.g., observing fellow passengers in an airport terminal waiting for a flight back home, I cannot help but reaching the same bleak conclusion: we have become the laughing stock.

I am not trying to imply anything too deep or sophisticated here. I mean even visually: the sight of chain smokers, frequently overweight and obsessively preoccupied with their electronic gadget, victims of the latest fashion, i.e., nicely trimmed hair and a bushy beard for males and dyed hair in provocative colors with inelegant apparel and accompanied by an intricate nail art for females, does not inspire any confidence. Actually, it confirms the verdict.

I am no moralist, and if I were I am actively trying to suppress any such tendencies, but I cannot help to wonder how we got here? It is fair to say that the blame can be casted in many directions but for sure the leftist counterculture had its fair share. Undermining established conservative social values for almost half a century has taken its toll on the nation.

At school, my generation was brought up by the official state with an attempt to rectify the responsibilities of the Left for its bloody attempt to usurp power after WWII. Part of the official indoctrination was listening to the Greek transcription of Brendan Behan's poem the "laughing boy", a fine artistic effort indeed. The author dedicated the poem at the tender age of 13 to the memory of Michael Collins, Ireland's hero in the war of independence and eventually it was included in "The Hostage", one of the author's most acclaimed theatrical plays.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the song has become part of the Canon of the Greek Left and acquired connotations that exceed the absurd. To add insult to the injury it has been widely used for political purposes, e.g., to mobilize crowds in political rallies, thus debasing the artistic value of the original piece to a mere means of propaganda.

Refusing to participate blindly in this modern version of the Stockholm syndrome, I had to read the original play and find out what it is about, an act that I sincerely doubt most of the leftists aficionados of the "laughing boy" cult ever did. "The Hostage" is indeed one of the finest plays of the modern European repertoire! More importantly, it is not a battle cry calling the masses to the arms for social struggles. It is rather a desperate but universal appeal against fanaticism and division.

Behan, employing a literary technique that goes back to "The Persians", narrates to us the story of an Irish political prisoner, the "laughing boy", through the parallel story of Leslie, a lowly British soldier of similar age, who is held captive too by the Irish and is meant to be exchanged for the Irish hero. In the place of his captivity, Leslie falls in love with Teresa, a young girl of the house, and the two of them dream about their future life together after the exchange takes place and he becomes free.

Unfortunately, they are surrounded by fanatics of all kinds, Irish and British alike, who live only to fight and refuse to see the potential of the route that Leslie and Teresa want to follow. Monsewer, is the one who stands out in my eyes as the most ridiculous of them. A caricature of a committed and fanatical "idealist", in the play he is described as a person of mixed birth, British by his father and Irish by his mother, wearing a kilt and walking around playing Irish tunes with his bagpipe. He lives in an imaginary world of his own where he does not really care for human companion or show signs of compassion for his fellow comrades and the only thing he really aspires to is organizing imaginary battles against the British. The play is a modern tragedy and at the end, the forces of hate and division win, leaving Leslie and the "laughing boy" dead.

I hope it is now evident what inspired the title of this post.
In Greece, the generation of the "laughing boy", has become the laughing stock and the faces are sad.
Thousands of young Greeks are leaving the country in despair, betrayed by a political system that in many ways they still worship and Greece, yet again, finds itself in the position of the hostage.

One always hopes for the best, but reason fears for the worst. I fear there is a Monsewer out there playing his bagpipes and planning his battles. Indeed, the Monsewers of the world can be found in both the Right and the Left but it seems that lately the Left is going out of its depth to incarnate that persona, e.g., Mr Tsipras, the ultimate golden boy of the "laughing boy" generation, already threatened that "he will be beating to the drum for the markets to dance to his tune". Other members of his party are already planning the imaginary battles they will fight against the EU, foreign investors, the antiquated "bourgeois" institutions, national values, you name it. What annoys me above all is that, like Monsewer, most of them are of mixed birth: proletarians with a capitalist background.

Unlike Leslie and Teresa, Greeks have the opportunity to vote for their future in the upcoming elections, no matter how inconsequential elections can be in modern democracies. Unfortunately, I have no doubt that the majority will cast its vote in favor of Mr. Tsipras and his crew. I do not like that but partially I can understand why it will be so and at the end of the day such is democracy and I have to accept it.

Still, allow me to be amazed at how Mr Tsipras, the ex-head-squatter during the student riots of the 90's and his accomplices at school, senior and junior, managed to pull off such a magnificent task: to dumb down an entire generation of Greeks to the point of raising to power Mr Tsipras' scrappy coalition. After all, maybe the secret sauce behind Mr Tsipras's success is to combine different views and approaches. Indeed, he will be the first Greek PM from the "laughing boy" generation but not the first one of the laughing stock kind.