Elective sympathies

I see, on the occasion of the occupation of the Athens Law School by illegal immigrants, a flood of sympathy flowing their way, in and through references to the sanctity of asylum in its ancient Greek meaning and the sanctity of the immigrants themselves, who, in the cradle of civilization and hospitality that Greece historically is, should have been treated better by authorities. All the ‘leftist’ humanists who argue so refuse to see the reality around them. They take the decadence that has stamped Greece in the last thirty years as granted. These humanists take it for granted that Greeks should feel like immigrants in their own country, against the bizarre background of the absurd institution of the university asylum, spineless politicians unabe to deal with it, religious leaders acting like opinion leaders and, most of all, endless symbolisms. Our humanists look above and beyond what ordinary Greeks live through in a free falling country, turning their eyes away: turning their eyes to the immigrants. There is no humanism more inhumane than the ‘humanism’ of shutting your eyes in front of a decadence that you have so much embraced, letting it become part of you, that you take it for granted: so much for granted, that you immediately and unhesitatingly label as ‘Right Wing’ or ‘racist’ anyone who might dare argue against you. Anyone, that is, who might argue that despite everything things may still take a positive turn, that not everything is lost, that Greece does not exist symbolically, despite the fact that it has been plagued for decades by all sorts of outdated symbolisms: the symbolism of the university asylum, the symbolic occupations of universities, schools, roads, public buildings, symbolic strikes by civil servants, the symbolic marginalization of anyone not wishing to take part in this feast of symbolisms. If we truly wish to leave symbolisms behind and return to reality, looking it straight in the eye, we have to see, before turning our attention to the immigrants, what we have to do, what is really happening in this bankrupt country – bankrupt not financially but, most of all, culturally.