Ridiculizing the Socratic "Self-Knowledge": the new ethics of Greek political discourse?

This is only an attempt to contemplate upon couple of elements of the modern Hellenic cultural character:

a) knowing yourself and acknowledging your weaknesses is an element of "virtue" (areti) - the Socratic "Self-Knowledge" which is a sufficient condition to the good life;

b) make the best out of the few things that you have: surviving with few things is again an element of "virtue" closely related to the heroic modern historical national legacy of deprivation, external threat and domination.

Without being able to come up with a full-blown analysis of those two elements, I believe, however, that their combination, determine significantly the relationship and political communication between the Greek political elites and the citizens.

The first element describes the top-down communication process (elite -->citizen), whereas the second describes the bottom-up political communication process (citizen--> elite) - if the latter exists. However, both have become today an excuse of political inefficiency. Those two processes of communication do not lead to an effective unified process of communication, because in the end both of them are formulated in a way that they do not ask for interaction. It looks like a really old married couple where everything that it is being said does not have any meaning or does not produce any reaction because the man and the woman are in the phase of "used to living together". The political officials, on the one hand, tend to use the "TV-accountability" of Socratic "self-knowledge" without producing any constructive political debate, whereas on the other hand the citizens seem to be content in living with little "official" means, and at the same time being proud of bypassing and cheat on the system.

What I mean by the current political Socratic "self-knowledge" is the governing political elites' tendency to claim that "nobody is perfect", that "the government makes mistakes", that "problems cannot be resolved automatically", that "we are sincere and we do not want to promise things we cannot fulfil". The paradox is that when you are in power responsible to deliver your political program and to give answers to the problems the citizens of the country face, sincerity, political humbleness, and self-knowledge are not enough. And it seems to be more ridiculous to use those "qualities" as your main political leverages during electoral campaigns.

There is one point also concerning the mentality of cheating on the system: mentalities change. They change slowly, but they change. The new generations - although living with the parental experiences of bypassing the system - seem to struggle for a more "honorable" future. The problem is that today's political leaders seem to forget that people's mentalities do change and that there are people belonging to the new generations who fight everyday for the 500, 600 or 700 Euros per month, who do not have their parents to help them, who do not own a house or appartment (most of the times provided by the parents or the with the help of the parents). And there is also the part of the people of the new generations who do not even a have a fix job (young unemployment in my birth town Thessaloniki, is around 25%) and who extend the period of their studies because of the uncertain professional future.

Those young generations deserve more than the "sincerity" and the "acknowledgment" of governmental weaknesses and mistakes, or the "pragmatism" of step-by-step slow changes. Those young generations deserve educational and professional opportunities, and not the politically manipulated "prorgammes des stages".

The political discourse of the Socratic "self-knowledge" is valid when there is real commitment for positive developments and constructive work in order to resolve the socio-economic problems in the society. On the other hand, if the commitment and work are not there, the proclaimed "sincerity" and "self-knowledge" become a ridiculous consumed "media-time" without any sense.

....

Is Political Science relevant?

A friend of mine posted on his Facebook page this interesting article on the field of Political Science:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/books/20poli.html?_r=1

Is Political Science really useful/relevant? And how it can assure its future funding if policy-makers do not consider it useful?

I think it is a very interesting issue that should be addressed clearly at some point. Following Robert Putnam's and Theda Skocpol's convictions, Political Science should answer the big questions. From my point of view, I would not go so far as saying that Political Science should "answer" the big questions. I would merely expect that Political Science "addresses" clearly the big questions. I think that the big complex of Political Science is to prove itself being as "Science" as the hard sciences. In this sense, preoccupations on methodology have the priority over the presentation of the problems as "political". Political Science should become more "political" and for that it is necessary to come closer to the people's beliefs and needs.

Prof. Stephen Walt has worked on the relationship between academia and policy-makers. However, he did not mention one important reason why policy-makers find academia sometimes incomprehensible and/or "far from the practical realities". And the reason might be the fact that amidst the competition of the various schools of political thought or the competition of the "university presses", the real issue of addressing the basic question of social sciences (to which Political Science belongs) - the structure vs./and agency problem - has not yet been pursued with the appropriate fervor.

In his contribution in the edited volume Democratization, Christian Welzel holds that mass beliefs can constitute a factor that brings structure and agency together. I hope the discussion on the usefulness of Political Science continues, because through such a process of introspection and self-criticism this discipline of thought in social sciences could progress itself and contribute to the progress of the human being as a reflective and social animal.

Political Science should sell its power of non-conformity. Its ability to transcend the frontiers of established structural arrangements and dependencies, in order to propose alternative paths for the improvement of people's lives. That's why political science is still useful and relevant. And something else: a discipline that is also defined by the force of human's intuition (except for the evidence of physical observation), is a discipline worth of fighting for; it is a shame to evaluate it on the basis of national public or corporate private budgets!!!

Political science, in the end, is useful/relevant for the "useful" policy-makers. Apparently, Senator Tom Coburn does not seem to belong to this category.

Inglehart - Welzel Cultural Map of the World

An interesting map showing that Greece and Israel are cultural "islands" in the middle of the numerous cultural zones. We see also that there is no cultural zone mentioned as "Orthodox Europe". Apparently, there is no specific combination of values that could account for the existence of such a cultural zone(?) Or, instead we can understand that the cultural impact of Communism was stronger than the Orthodox cultural particularity. And given the fact that the group of former communist regimes consists of both Catholicism and Orthodoxy, that may explain why the cultural "Orthodox Europe" is missing on this map.

See more: http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/

Quote of the Day

"If President Obama can find a way to balance the precise number of troops that will stabilize Afghanistan and Pakistan, without tipping American into a Vietnam there, then he indeed deserves a Nobel Prize - for physics"

Thomas L. Friedman, International Herald Tribune, 15 October 2009, p.7