The Culture of Tolerance

Today, on my way home, I had a particularly unpleasant, appalling — I’d dare to say — encounter.

I was peacefully waiting for the bus, when loud voices reached my ears. There was this old woman, whose face was severely struck by the traces of time, preaching about the danger of the current refugees issue, and about Greek people not being able to speak their mother tongue in public, exactly because of the refugees. And her suggestion was to bully every foreigner we encounter in the streets. The reason for this remarkable “lecture” was a young girl passing by her, talking to her friend in Albanian.

Living in a suburb with proximity to the centre of Athens, I am familiar with these phenomena; what terrified me, however, was that people around this monstrous woman, were listening to her outrageous statements, without a mere reaction. They were actually accepting this approach to the facts and some were even shaking their heads in a commendatory way. I thus considered it my obligation to express my deep disapproval for the woman’s loud statements in a polite way, as her advanced age imposed. She showed immediately that she was not willing to enroll in a dialogue, and starting cursing me. Quite expected I suppose, but I had already won my bet…

At the very moment I turned towards her and expressed my disagreement, two ladies took the courage to tell her off for her previous statements and an old man behind me defended my opinion. I suddenly found my lost faith and hope and felt that common sense and gentleness have not been lost in the obsolete peninsula of Greece.

What I was thinking on the rest of the way home was that this woman was clearly lacking socialisation and compassion. And I was therefore wondering what is it that can yield people these very qualities, which are in the brink of extinction. One is, and has always been, the answer; culture.

I wanted to make this small introduction, so as to connect it with the subject of the following series of articles. Prompted by this observation, which constitutes a daily Greek phenomenon, I will try to draw conclusions of a social character, from pieces of art that have plenty of things to teach us.

Farewell to everyone, until the first piece of art to be analyzed.

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