GREEKS ARE GODS
(For Doing So Much With So Little)
Ravaged by recession,
Undaunted by unemployment,
Athirsted by austerity,
Bashed by Brussels,
And targeted by Turkey.
The Greeks long known for their human gods,
Became gods themselves.
Only God can withstand the
Financial barrage from Brussels,
Painful barrage from citizens,
Human refugee barrage from Turkey,
And scornful barrage from its neighbors.
In these dire times,
They flooded the Greek Island of Lesbos,
Like crabs molting on the shoreline,
They came in inflatable rubber dinghies,
They came in inflated inner tubes,
They swam, drowned, and floated,
Towards the Greek shoreline.
While the Turkish human smugglers,
Fed fat on the blood money,
Extracted from the deprived and dispossessed refugees.
Greeks had to dip into their empty treasury,
To rescue, feed, and resettle the forgotten.
If this is not God in action,
You must be kidding me.
No wonder the early Greeks depicted God as human.
Maybe gods and not God
Yes.
Modern Greeks are simply practicing what their 5th and 6th BCE ancestors taught them about being human, curious, and inquisitive, regarding man’s place in this universe, his relationship with the universe, with himself, and the “other” and moreover, the care for self and the “other” in good and bad times. They developed these ideas and ideals in other to survive the otherwise chaotic world by mankind.They asked questions like: what is man?, what is the good life? what does it mean to exist? what is man’s relation to nature?. Race and racist ideas did not matter much for them, their cities were mainly stratified along status line not as such defined by race, because, they even referred to some so-called European countries as “Barbarians”, and had rules that guided their relationship with slaves and women, not based on skin differences. They were the first to engage in the proper scientific exploration of the almighty human mind.
They manifest again and again, with their little space and time, and economy, their capacity to understand in depth, human connectedness and brotherhood of humanity, as such, more than the countries from which these young people are forced to disown, due to unbridled ill-governance, in most of Africa. The refugees modern quest for greener pastures, and services in the kitchens and the gardens, and sick and elderly homes, in the land of their former oppressors, seem as such, understandable. Sometimes prisoners finding life incomprehensible outside, tend to desire to return to life inside the gates of, even bigger hell. African countries, from which most of the refugees come say and do almost nothing regarding the flight to the former colonizer’s lands…ours appears to be rather double jeopardy, indeed. Thanks Africastallestman.
Mr. Madu, your knowledge of philosophy is profound and all encompassing. You make Africastallestman envious. Thanks for your enlightening comments.