I would trade just one swim on an afternoon in September for a whole week of swims at noon in August. Same beach, same bikinis, same tent, same cash availability; same outcome: September beats August and afternoon beats noon in swimming pleasure. It’s the bitter sweetness which lurks in September afternoons. It’s Greece making public her most precious secret: humans need to accept the supremacy of the dialog in their life. September is the conclusion of a dialog between August and October. October said: we do not care for so much heat and blinding light. And August said OK but we do not care for much rain either.
The afternoon is the conclusion of a dialogue between day and night. The day said: it’s great to look at all those gorgeous figures, to see and be seen, to chat and skirmish flirtingly. And the night said: OK but that entire outward stance will dry you out. You need the serenity of night, time to sit and breathe and relax and do your daily ration of soul searching. A September afternoon at the beach is the conclusion of a dialog between soaking life with all your senses under the intensity of the Greek sun and turning inwards to discuss things with yourself or your closest friends in the discretion of the silent Greek night.
The greatest gift Greece made to mankind is not Democracy, or Theater, or Philosophy. All those are derivatives of the Dialogue which is the really important gift of the Greeks. This capacity to see opposing perspectives and to get past them to a synthesis is what we call dialectic process. If you endorse it in life you are equipped to endure difficulties and to keep your cool in successes. If you endorse it in politics you acquire a broader spectrum of reference and also a broader social impact and appeal. If you endorse it in human contact you open to more people and so you open more to friendship and love, to fulfillment and happiness in life.
It’s good to remember all that today when a very negative stance has “the floor”. Inevitably a positive stance will follow. People may be all gloom. But not life. Life is unintentional and as a result full of opportunities for this and that according to our perspective.But on dialog and the dialectic process, with your permission, I will return.
Greece goes bust; Greece will return to the drachma; Greece is bound to resign from the EU till things balance out in the Euro zone; 15 state members in the euro zone secretly agreed to expel Greece; Germany will return to the mark and Italy to the lira.
A New York ceremonial courtroom was graciously provided for an ancient Athens court session to take place with a 2.410 years’ time lap. On the 12th of May 2011 the ancient philosopher Socrates was retried and this time acquitted.
Greek film director and producer Nicos Koundouros gives us the chronologically first account of Thanassis Vengos: they both were exiled on the island of Makronissos after the end of the Greek civil war in 1949.
In January of this year Harris Ikonomopoulos, President of the British Hellenic Chamber of Commerce and Faye Leoussi, of Leoussis Advertising had a meeting with a double agenda
People from abroad who really mean well for Greece and the Greeks use the paradigm of “illness and cure” to symbolize our situation.
Zagori is an area of great natural beauty and unique architecture in the Pindus Mountains in Epirus in Northwestern Greece. The area is of about 1.000 square kilometers and contains 46 villages. Zagoria villages is called by Greeks “Zagorochoria” meaning the villages behind the mountain.
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In 1989, Professor of Byzantine Studies, Helen Ahrweiler is appointed Chairman of the Cultural Centre Pompidou in Paris