I heard the rustle while writing. Usually I write sitting at a cafe or taverna, but I had trouble waking up so I decided to write first, do yoga second instead. Luckily I was home because otherwise I would have missed their visit. The same four goats from last week showed up along side the house munching the shrubs they had failed to taste last time (assuming the last time I saw them was indeed their last visit). This time, they had ropes tying their right fore and hind legs together – presumably to prevent them from running too fast and jumping fences. Apparently this little trip of goats was not deterred by their farmer's not-so-clever trick. Tasty landscaping is tasty landscaping and a goat's gotta' do what a goat's gotta' do to get some.
They let me come close and photograph them. They were unashamed of their destruction. Then, I told them they needed to go so they didn't get in trouble. As if understanding, they moved up a few steps in the wrong direction, signaling their intention to stay despite my warnings. Further conversation did little good and eventually I clapped and told them to move, chased them around the building after which they headed to the low place in the side wall whence they had come and headed back down the hill to the rest of their trip.
When they came back an hour later, I called George, the property manager who said this was beyond either of us and he would pass it to Manolis the gardener to parlay with the goat farmer down the hill and see what can be done. This time, the goats didn't stay long. A little later as I headed into town, I found them on the field up the hill, slinking around nervously like escaped convicts, then competing with the resident horses for the tall grasses. In the end, how can I blame them? Just like all of us, they are in search of a better life for themselves, or at least tastier munchies. I share their goals – so I wished them the best knowing the horses may not feel the same.
I don't hold out much hope for a goat-horse alliance because in general, the animal kingdom tends to separate out by species. Of course there are some symbioses and tolerances – but more or less we classify and separate. I can't say whether or not humans are best of the separators, but we must certainly be up there.
"Ehhh….business is so-so," Manolis the organic shop owner told me today.
"But there are TWO cruise ships in the harbor today! I think one boat is mostly French."
"Yes, but the problem is Europeans, they don't spend much."
"Who does?"
"Americans! Americans spend money. And British. Sometimes people from Spain. People from Cyprus have good money – they sometimes come and spend. But not Europeans."
On an island dependent on tourism, nationalities matter. But really, nowhere in the world do people separate from one another more than in Europe. Since the advent of the modern nation-state, Europe has divided itself into 44 countries across 3.9 million square miles. Africa, with its 54 countries – the most of any continent – does so over 11.73 square miles – roughly four times as much space as Europe.
The European propensity to form many distinct cultures and languages within a relatively small space has made it both the continent with the most war, but also for hundreds of years prior to the Second World War, the continent with the greatest wealth and financial success. How?
UCLA Professor of Geography Jared Diamond (who also has degrees in biochemistry and physiology) hypothesizes in his Pulitzer Prize winning Guns, Germs and Steel – which explores the causes of disparities between societies – that as you span the globe, there will be a certain ratio of more conservative and progressive societies. Some will naturally be inclined toward innovation and others will resist change. This holds true pretty much true everywhere. Thus, a region or continent with a higher volume of distinct cultures is likely to have a higher volume of innovators per square area. And when one group innovates, it tends to force neighbors to consider doing the same – or else risk being subsumed or subjugated by another culture with superior technology. By contrast, a small continent with many distinct cultures would naturally find itself more prone to innovation and development. Compare that to pre-colonial Australia with an extremely low population density and absolutely no domesticable plants or animals and there was both little drive or means for innovation.
Of course success comes with costs. Many distinctive cultures mean many divisions – an increasingly fractured world composed of "us" and "them". Us – or "We" – are always better than "them". Mixing a lot of "Us" and "Them" in a relatively small space with technological innovation, and healthy competition can quickly ferment into hatred and war. Obviously, World War II is the most scarring and defining example of that, but European history is filled with more "limited wars" than you can count like The Crimean War, The Franco-Prussian War, the War of Spanish Succession (which oddly resulted in the independence of The Netherlands), The First and Second Shleswig Wars, The Russo-Swedish War, the numerous Greek Wars of Independence (which are a series of rebellions against numerous powers – although mostly the Ottoman Empire), ALL of the Silesian Wars and I honestly haven't hit more than a small fraction of them (and if you count civil wars then the fraction gets even smaller).
All of these don't count the wars between European powers and all the peoples of the world they subjugated. They also don't count the wars European countries fought among themselves overseas over who would control a foreign territory or colony – like the Boer Wars or the French and Indian War in North America (which could be framed as an extension of the Seven Years War in Europe). Nor does it count tense rivalries with an occasional military action like the Anglo-French Rivalry in Southeast Asia.
It makes sense that from a continent with many cultures, rivalry and advancing technology that competition for local/regional resources would mean a lot of war. So another strategy for success was turning outward and forming global empires. The European Imperialist Era represented the largest transfer of global wealth in history. Because if you're willing to see people who look or act a little different than you (like French and German) as "other" – then people who look and act REALLY different from you (like Indians, Africans, Asians and Native Americans) are barely human beings and certain inferior. Never mind that they may have extremely valuable goods and resources…. those gorgeous fabrics, incredible art and spectacular jewels are just strokes of luck for otherwise inferior people.
The antidote to war and cruelty is usually cooperation and redefining the "us" more broadly. In both World Wars, it took alliances to win. The British and French who almost instinctively see one another as "other" suddenly found themselves as being part of the same "us". Twice. Eventually, the idea of the Allies stuck and the prevailing "us" which expanded to included the United States created the new world order which reintegrated former enemies into it, solidified it with NATO and then cemented it with the European Union. If you think about it, the amazing thing about the European Union is that it accomplished in peace what Napoleon, the Kaiser nor Hitler could accomplish by force and hate. Europe now has a free-trade zone with mass cooperation and Germany and France in the drivers' seats.
Europeans are less "other" to one another perhaps than ever before.
Nonetheless, they love to talk about their differences, caricature one another and stereotype. Since being here, I've heard about how lazy Greeks are; how Italians are messy, lazy partiers; that the Spanish know how to really live; that French are cheap and that Germans are stuffy and hard to deal with. I'd love to know what they say about Americans when I'm not around.
Today Europe has a new group of "others" to classify. The literal boatloads of refugees sparked by war in Syria was a catalyst to a variety of struggling people who also crossed the Mediterranean from Iraq, Libya, Eritrea and Nigeria. Greece was a landing point for a large portion of these migrants and most of the refugee camps are here in the Dodecanese on the neighboring islands of Leros, Lesbos, Chios, Kos, Leros and Samos. Without a better plan of what to do with them, tens of thousands of refugees remain in camps years after migrating. Others have been absorbed into Greek and European life. This trip I have noticed more people I would guess are Middle Eastern migrants. A woman in a burqa with her family. Kitchen workers who don't look Greek and who don't seem to speak it well. Darker kids the others don't play with. Unsurprisingly, migrants seem to fit into the menial labor jobs when and where they fit in at all. Patmos has some, but not a significant population – nothing like its neighbors.
But what to do with these migrants who are so culturally and socially dissimilar in a continent of homogenous cultured countries? There doesn't seem to be consensus more than seven years after the migrant crisis first began. One thing for sure is the migrants are "them".
Humans are interesting in how we define and can readily change our "us" and "them" definitions. When abroad, Americans can quickly define themselves as having a common identity with people we might not even talk to in line at the supermarket at home. I've been to conventions and trade shows where I meet up with colleagues from my own company who I've never met before, but we are a team for the event. Suddenly, there's a "we" that has little more to do with the fact that we get our paychecks from the same source. Dog owners, bicyclists, bird watchers, mothers, fathers, parents of kids at a particular school, Democrats, Republicans, Juggalos – people can find themselves identifying as "we" over such a variety of things that may not have much to do with their deeper values or personalities. We change and redefine so fluidly.
Interestingly enough, we even do it with animals. Anyone who has ever had or loved a dog knows people can be more compassionate and attached to a four-legged family member than to other humans. Yet, we also consider our pets chattel property. So we love them and they are "us" but without rights because they are also "them". Confusingly, they have some rights and protections, because if you hurt or killed my dog, I could press charges or sue you. We hold people responsible for being inhumane to animals – acknowledging their sentience on some level.
In recent decades advancing research has taught us more about the animals with whom we share our planet. We now understand that elephants, for example, are deeply psychologically distressed when detached from a herd. The American Zoological Assocation's standards and best practices recommend elephants live in groups no fewer than three. But realistically, that number protects them from severe trauma – it doesn't represent thriving. Elephants can pass "the mirror test" meaning they can recognize themselves in a mirror – something previously thought only to be the domain of humans and chimpanzees. This is actually a major factor in a case before the New York Supreme Court in which an animal rights organization seeks habeas corpus for Happy, an Asian elephant who lives alone at the Bronx Zoo. The issue: habeas corpus is available only to humans who have been imprisoned. Is Happy chattel legally housed in a cage or is she a sentient being suffering under wrongful imprisonment and deserving of mercy?
The Court hasn't ruled, but it hasn't thrown out the challenge.
Personally, I would let Happy go. It is Passover, after all and while I'm not sure I'm capable of defining how habeas corpus should and shouldn't be defined, I feel pretty sure Happy is the opposite of what her name suggests. She is living a tortured life. She's an elephant and needs to be able to walk, graze and be with other elephants. Let My Pachyderm Go!
Sometimes I wonder how our brains get so scrambled. We can fight for the rights of an elephant (who totally deserves it, don't get me wrong), but we can leave people to rot on sidewalks under freeway overpasses - thrown away humans. We can be understanding enough to not send Syrians back to their destroyed, God forsaken country, but we leave them in camps and can't find a new place for them. We are more ready to find a solution for a war in Ukraine (not that I don't fully support the AMAZING Ukrainians who deserve all the help we can give them) than we are to end mass shootings in our malls, places of worship, colleges and schools – the HEARTS of our communities where we place our most precious resources. My children have lockdown drills while we argue about masks. Our humanity is amazingly spotty.
What is it about the human heart and mind that is so fickle? How do we frame and reframe our stories to be compassionate and heartless so easily? After all, Stalin is responsible for the deaths of arguably 60 million people, but was an excellent father. My wife and I have everything, but might throw so much away over the perceptions and perspectives in which we get entrenched. How many people at the end of their lives no longer care what the quarrels were about and wish they had just been more loving and forgiving? At the end of mine, what will my missed opportunities for greater compassion have been? How much pain and suffering could I have solved if only I saw the person better? It seems to me the more we can see everyone as "us", the better our world. I struggle with it as much as anyone – but it must be possible to do better.
