Orwell’s elephant

«In Moulmein, in lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people -? the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me,? George Orwell wrote in his essay ?Shooting an Elephant? in 1936. At the time, the young Eric Blair (before he took the penname Orwell) was a police officer serving a colonial apparatus that he did not believe in. Today, with Greece at the center of a cyclone that threatens the global economy, the Greeks have become important enough to inspire fear (and perhaps hatred) among people who have never met them. This is the case with foreign citizens who believe that their taxes have been raised to bail out the wastrel Greeks. It affects us as well: as deprivation and fear spread over the land, we see each other differently -? some with greater sympathy, others with greater suspicion. We have acquired greater ?importance? as individuals, as a society and as a country. Now we live with the consequences.

Orwell?s essay describes his experience when a domesticated, working elephant broke his chains during a periodic hormone explosion (known as musth), and, on his rampage, killed a worker. When the young English police officer arrived on the scene, the elephant had calmed down and might easily have been led back to his owner?s home. Orwell, however, was unable to resist the large crowd?s silent demand for blood, and, against his will, he shot and killed the elephant, which took a long time to die. ?I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys,? wrote Orwell, who went on to become a dedicated enemy of colonialism and all types of fascism.

Greece today is a little like Orwell?s elephant but also like a foreign body which draws the enmity of all. Even as we try to control the excesses which caused the problem, we also react so strongly to the demands made of us that the others worry that the Greek disease could reach them. Fear and anger lead to the demand that Greece be contained and the Greeks punished. It is like the crowd pushing for the elephant?s destruction ?- the expectation of shooting becomes a demand, which leads to the death of the threatening object. That is how many see the Greeks; this is how many Greeks see each other. Defenseless, in cities without walls, we fear lest our neighbor is the elephant who will trample us ?- at the same moment that others see us as elephants…

In our weakness, we became important, we became frightening, regardless of the fact that our fear is greater than that which we provoke in others. Others are afraid lest they become like us. Many would like to see us confined to an island ?- but our debt ties us to them, like a peninsula, and they can neither avoid us nor ignore us. That is why our creditors and the faceless markets demand action. Expectation becomes a demand and leads to greater suspicion and action, resulting in ever more austerity measures, greater interest spreads and more ?suggestions? for a ?controlled default? or even Greece?s exit from the eurozone. Foreigners see a rampaging elephant in their orchards, not a nation that is battling to stay on its feet as it suffers one blow after the other, losing the gains of decades, deprived of every sense of security. When they see someone else as an elephant, however, they are blind to their own problems. When they demand action, they will not wait for delays and excuses.

So far, our partners have provided support; the problem is that the measures are always too late, too tentative and perhaps too far off the mark, thereby maintaining the climate of suspicion and disappointing the citizens. Faced with the danger, under pressure to do something — anything — the man with the gun fires: at the elephant, at the crowd, at himself.

We are in the gunsights. We have to find a way out fast, before we become victims or forces of destruction.