These in turn become key material upon which many important economic decisions are made and policies are formulated. As the reliability of the data released by the Bank of Greece had never been questioned before, this news had a negative and depressing effect in business circles.
There may, however, be a more cheerful side to this story which no one has yet considered. There is a familiar ancient conundrum which runs “All Cretans are liars.” The philosopher who made this statement, however, was himself a Cretan. By his own words, then, he was a liar, too. Therefore, his statement must have been false. By analogy, it stands to reason that if the data collected by the Bank of Greece is unreliable, and the circular in question is based upon it, then the claim to unreliability is itself unreliable.
The depression and pessimism which the statement caused suggest that this interpretation is correct. The Statistical Services of the European Community regularly publish reports in Brussels whose reliability no one has ever questioned. Some of these reports deal in matters of a sociological nature and are very soberly collected and processed. Within days of the Bank of Greece’s supposed revelation, a survey published in Brussels stated categorically that Greeks are the most optimistic people in the Community. It follows, then, that if the business community here is depressed, it clearly has its nose on the wrong traces, and those traces lead directly to the back door of the Bank of Greece. If correct statistics are the foundation for effective decision-making, the business community better wake up fast and get optimistic.
The secret of optimism lies in the capacity to roll with the punches and keep smiling. The tourist rate may be down in Greece and the jellyfish rate flourishing, but that doesn’t prevent Athenians from skipping down to the water’s edge carrying their First Aid kits. A national rail strike may turn a northern Community Brother into a shambles in a few days. Athens can have a forty-three-day bank strike, together with a taxi strike, a trolley strike and a newspaper strike, but the city goes about its optimistic concerns taking it all in stride.
Commenting on figures recently published here on smoking, pediatrician Spyros Doxiades expressed concern last month over the rise in sales of cigarettes. As Minister of Social Services in the last Karamanlis government, Dr. Doxiades launched a vigorous anti-smoking campaign, and for several years the consumption of tobacco remained steady. A year ago, the campaign was dropped, and since then smoking has increased by ten percent.
Reading slyly into these statistics, one might draw the conclusion that Greeks have become increasingly ill at ease, anxious and manic-depressive during the PASOK regime. Not so, say the figures from Brussels. According to the EEC Suicide Statistics published on July 6, Greece has the lowest rate in the Community, with only three out of one hundred thousand doing away with themselves annually. And, who knows, many of these may be fishermen who often dynamite themselves by mistake. According to the same report, Danes come first, with thirty-two out of one hundred thousand committing suicide every year. According to yet another set of figures from the same source, Danes read more than all other Europeans, and Greeks least. Analysing statistics is a tricky business, and even trickier in cross-reference, but it might be worth pointing out that Hamlet, a nonsmoking Dane, did turn over the question of being and not being while reading a book. In any case, no such thought would have crossed the mind of a Hellene lighting up a cigarette while watching the Mundial on TV last month. As an exception to prove this rule, one Greek who got over-excited by a match did leap off his balcony. There is no evidence whatever to show, however, that he was not optimistic. In fact, the team he was supporting won.
Optimism means taking the good with the bad and laying one’s bets on the good. The drachma may be down, the balance of payments wanting, but, for example, the number of ministers in the new cabinet is way up. There are enough for every optimistic week in the year. So rich and diversified is it, that it may be the only cabinet in the world today which, during meetings, has to sit at two tables. With this fresh political deck of 52 ministers in hand, not only reshuffled but restructured, Greece can look forward optimistically to dealing out another grand slam in the game of life.
For Better For Worse
A next-to-final step towards a milestone in social liberalization was reached on July 9 when the first full-dress rehearsal for a civil marriage in Greece took place at the Athens Cultural Center. To all outward appearances, the prova generale was a grand success. The bride, all in white, was beautiful; the groom, superbly turned out, was handsome; the officiating officer with greying sideburns was distinguished; and the twenty-or-so members of the wedding party, all gathered together on the steps in front of the Cultural Center when the ceremony was over, all looked absolutely certain that the newly-weds would live happily together for ever and ever. The whole occasion got nation-wide coverage over television, and at the end of it there was not a dry eye to be found in the length and breadth of Greece.
The first post marital-rehearsal shock came when it was discovered that beautiful Alinda Rodaki and handsome Nikos Hitas were not getting married after all. To highlight the drama of the occasion, ERT had arranged that all those participating in the televised event were hired actors, and even the wedding party, guests were stand-ins.
As if this weren’t bad enough, a hardline bishop warned the following day that those who married outside of the church were threatened with ‘excommunication arid might be refused Orthodox burial rites. The facttlikt the clergyman in question coupled the concepts of marriage and burial in ike same ominous sentence, led observers to believe that the church hierarchy takes a rather grim view of this “blessed estate”. While the reception room for the wedding at the Cultural Center was shown on the program as alluringly sumptuous, no one in the socially liberal Ministry of Justice seems to have thought where civil funerals are going to take place.
None the less, civil marriage became law on July 18, and it appeared that no matter how many wet blankets were being laid on the civil marriage bed, those who wanted it would have it, and would be willing to go through with it — like their religious counterparts now and for centuries earlier – “for better for worse”.
