The rage of many little Achilles
Since Homer’s epics we have known that a basic principle of the Greeks’ society is to help friends and harm enemies.
In this ethical framework, they could be united while also knowing at any moment “which side of history” they were on. The reason that we often do not abide by this primitive but successful axiom has also been known from Homer’s time – it is jealous rage. Children of a poor and brutal homeland, we live with the sense of being cheated.
Just as Achilles condemned his side to continued defeats at Trojan hands, after Agamemnon deprived him of the slave girl he had won as booty, we place our wounded pride above the collective good. The simple reason is that we believe (often correctly) that the game is rigged against us. Our pressing need to avenge any wrongs against us is our fatal blindness in the face of danger.
Whoever wants to divide the Greeks need do no more than provoke an incident (or exploit one that is already developing) in which one group can brag about its moral superiority, or where it might suspect that it is being deprived of what is its right.
Each new dispute is piled onto a pyramid of injustices, which may be real or the product of the need to justify the rage. And so, the revelations regarding the surveillance of the leader of an opposition party, a journalist, and others, were immediately inducted into a dark past, into a world irrelevant to the endless challenges of today’s technological jungle.
Also, the latest drama of refugees and migrants on the border with Turkey have provided SYRIZA with the opportunity to renew its narrative of a “heartless,” hard-right government, while the government was able to present itself as the determined defender of the border and to accuse its critics of serving Turkish interests.
Irrespective of the cause, domestic disputes always benefit the enemy. In our division, responsibility is not equal, whether this relates to who carries the greatest blame or who has the duty to find a solution. But when we see each other as our greatest enemy, then we are in collective jeopardy.
Even Achilles, blinded by rage, saw this. After a fatal delay.
