Tuesday 13 November 2012

The problem with fantasia (Deus ex machina)

In Disney’s masterpiece Fantasia, Mickey Mouse, the Sorcerer's Apprentice is tired of fetching water by pail. When the sorcerer departs from his workshop, he seizes the opportunity and enchants a broom to do the work for him using magic in which he is not yet fully trained. He gets mesmerized by his newfound powers but soon the floor is awash with water. The apprentice realizes that he cannot stop the broom because he does not know how.
Not knowing how to control the enchanted broom, the apprentice cuts it in pieces with an axe. However, instead of stopping it, each of the pieces becomes a new broom and takes up a pail and continues fetching water, now at twice the speed. When all seems lost, the sorcerer returns and in a “biblical” fashion he quickly breaks the spell and saves the day.
The story is based on Goethe’s poem “Der Zauberlehrling”, written in 1797. It is a very graphical representation of a situation where someone overwhelmed by his problems summons the help of others –allies in politics- that he cannot control. Soon he realizes that he ends up with a far worse mess than the one he was trying to resolve in the beginning. Sounds familiar? Probably yes!
But there is another lesson to be learned. That is “don’t mess with things you don’t fully understand”. For example; it is very self assuring to think that a magical solution exists for Greece’s troubles.
“We first curtail the remaining public debt; then we erase all the conditions (MOU’s) and relevant legislation and because we are young and innocent we will renegotiate our magic with the universe from scratch. And if that was not enough, because we want it the universe will conspire to make it happen.”
But this doesn’t happen, even in fairytales and poems; why will it happen in real life?
And now a real life question: assuming you are wrong and the universe doesn’t conspire to make it happen. What happens next? Is there an old sorcerer to save the day? Is there a “Deus ex machina” to save us all? Not really unless you are Euripides or Goethe or a Mickey Mouse apprentice.

Tuesday 6 November 2012

Thanks Giving

In contrast to our Continues Daily Complaining … I suggest we adopt the Thanks Giving custom and be thankful, for once, for what we have, instead of nagging for what we don’t or for what we should (not even could) have. Even more when we are being deprived some of what we used to have (like these days).
But I guess we feel like the Native Americans (those we call “Indians”) that stage a protest on the occasion of the “American Indian Heritage Day”. Like them that lost their world when the ex. European pilgrims and settlers took over their lands, we probably feel the same.
Since 1821, those same “pilgrims” from the East and the West (Great Powers) come to our land and took it over from the natives, the indigenous peoples of “Ynanistan”. And if that was not enough, they gave it to the Greeks, the descendants of Aristotle, Plato, Pericles and Archimedes, those that gave to the world all of what it makes it today. (The western world that is) Science, Philosophy, Democracy, Fine Arts and Architecture, Poetry, Literature, Drama and Theater; and I must be forgetting some other contributions of ancient Greece to the western Civilization.
So let’s be thankful, for once, not to the “Great Powers” that hunt us but to our Greek Heritage. That is why we stand today as a nation. That is why today there are National States. That is why there is a Europe and a Union to fight for. That is why we are not still an “Ottoman Province” or not called “Former Turkish Province Of Yunanistan”. 
(www.thefreedictionary.com/Former+Turkish+Province+Of+Yunanistan)
Let's be thankful for what we have!