Mount Parnassus from Galaxidi. Emma Hooper, 2015. All rights reserved.
The Greeks are a proud people. This week has seen what many - both on the left and on the right in Greece – have termed a humiliating surrender to the combined force of the fiscal hawks in Northern Europe. A “destruction of national sovereignty” (Paul Krugman) “extensive mental water boarding” (an EU official).....extreme terms for an extreme situation. But the debt crisis apart, how do ordinary Greeks view the outside world? One word best sums it up: ambivalence.
On the one hand, Greeks have a long maritime and trading history of close interaction with, and emigration to, the rest of the world: Africa, the US, Australia, the UK. Many Greeks living in Greece today have relatives living abroad. Greece is a country where both the US and the UK have long represented political interference in national affairs – but are both countries which Greeks admire, respect and enjoy – and live in. There is therefore an inherent sense of connectedness with “the world beyond”. For Greeks, their country is regarded as the birthplace of “Ev̱ró̱pi̱” – Europe, a word of Greek origin. In particular, modern Europe is seen as a civilisation that Greeks consider themselves a fundamental part of, and most definitely want to belong to.
