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Talk:Culture of Greece/Archive 2

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Archive 1Archive 2

Openly racist piece

Latest comment: 11 years ago17 comments4 people in discussion

A recent addition to the article is a new section generously titled "Civil society and corruption". It reads like some 19th century Victorian-morality pseudo-journalism or maybe a KKK propaganda brochure from the 1920s. It openly insults an entire nation (the Greek people) by claiming Greek society lacks "any tradition of volunteerism and altruism and is afflicted by extraordinarily high levels of selfishness and corruption. That is clearly not encyclopedia material. The new section then claims that it is "impossible for Greece to create an functional civil society or an efficient modern state". First of all this is racism. But it is also factually wrong since Greece is a high-income country (among the 30 richest in the world) with a very high quality of life and is a member of the EU (previously EEC) since 1981. Whoever added this section is obviously unfamiliar with Greek realities.Ανδρέας Κρυστάλλης (talk) 05:55, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

The section I added was based on reliable sources in compliance with WP:RS and accurately summarized their content in compliance with WP:V, WP:NPOV, and WP:NOR. Furthermore, Michael Lewis is one of the most widely respected and successful journalists in the world, whose reputation rests on his accurate and incisive observations. Are you seriously suggesting that his penchant observations about Greek culture in the Vanity Fair article "Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds" (which are thoroughly corroborated by the other sources cited) are incorrect? --Coolcaesar (talk) 13:12, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Mr Lewis is a journalist who is entitled to his opinions. But this piece simply does not belong to Wikipedia with phrases such as it is "impossible for Greece to create an functional civil society or an efficient modern state" or even worse "any tradition of volunteerism and altruism and is afflicted by extraordinarily high levels of selfishness and corruption. It's WP:FRINGE. It's like writing that "in German culture, it is perfectly acceptable to kill Jews and Russians for the greater good of the Aryan race" or "in American culture, it is normal for young children to take guns to school and shoot their teachers and classmates". Would anyone seriously write things like this? Ανδρέας Κρυστάλλης (talk) 21:09, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

I have to agree. These are extraordinary statements and are not backed up by any reliable academic studies. WP:FRINGE easily applies here because these are the untested and unproven opinions of a single and non-expert author without any scholarly research to back them up. WP:FRINGE, WP:UNDUE, WP:REDFLAG and WP:NPOV clearly apply regarding the removed section. It should not be reinserted. In addition this is a political attack piece, from a non-expert, on Greece based on the recent financial crisis. Therefore in addition to its other defects, the piece is also WP:RECENTISM. We cannot add recentist, negative opinion pieces from non-experts who make wild, unsupported, non-peer-reviewed, opinionated and sweeping claims about Greek society and culture in this article. Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις 05:28, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
In case you haven't noticed, I also cited to an interview with Jean-Claude Juncker, the prime minister of Luxembourg, published in the Politique international (a famous journal published in a country where it is illegal to openly express racist opinions), an article in Time magazine, an article published by WBUR (Radio Boston) by a Greek-American writer, and an article in the Globe and Mail. Are you seriously contending that all those widely respected sources are publishing racist opinions? Do you realize how profoundly silly and defensive that sounds to even make that contention? If you do not understand the significance of those sources, you are far out of your league intellectually. --Coolcaesar (talk) 12:41, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
Also, if you think a country has a functional civil society when people pass fakelaki around like cigarettes all the time and cheat on their taxes to the point where the government has to start cutting off their electricity to make them pay up, then you need to travel more. In the civilized world, that is not normal. (Of course, I'm probably a bit of a snob since I have been to 14 countries on six continents, including both developed and developing countries.) --Coolcaesar (talk) 12:47, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
In case you missed it I did not once mention that the piece was racist. I said that I agreed that the piece has to remain out of the article because it is fringe material and an attack opinion piece by lay people, unsupported by academic studies. I did not say that I agree with the racism comments. In any case I would advise you to not repeat personal attacks like If you do not understand the significance of those sources, you are far out of your league intellectually. because next time you will be reported. As far as the rest of your comments Also, if you think a country has a functional civil society when people pass fakelaki around like cigarettes all the time and cheat on their taxes... etc. and you being a "snob" or not, a fact that noone cares about, that's your personal opinion and it is irrelevant to the present discussion. You are welcome to hold these opinions of course, just do not confuse them with encyclopaedic material. And leave personal comments about my travels out of the discussion. The fringe, attack comments of a few lay people cannot define the culture of this or any other nation and they remain out of this article. Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις 15:21, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
Those were published by mainstream media sources which are considered to be among the most prestigious publications in the world. You haven't refuted that point.
I also note that you haven't pointed out precisely why they're wrong, besides engaging in conclusory ad hominem attacks upon the writers as expressing fringe opinions.
Let's try to falsify them. Can you cite one published reputable source that describes contemporary Greek culture as characterized by extraordinary altruism, generosity, honesty, and integrity, especially in comparison to other cultures? Kind of hard, isn't it?
The truth hurts. But that's what Wikipedia is about. After all, the first step to recovery is admitting there is a problem. --Coolcaesar (talk) 05:13, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
First, I suggest you tone down the aggro. If you continue like this I will report you, and I notice your talkpage is a graveyard of warnings and personal attacks. Now, the "most prestigious publications in the world"? I think you need to recalibrate your knowledge of what a prestigious publication is. Radio Boston WBUR or something like that? These are little better than tabloids. What exactly makes "Henriette Lazaridis Power" an expert on Greek society anyway? The stuff about "selfishness" and "atomized particles" is sheer sensationalist nonsense. In fact, that's much more applicable to Western societies, with their sky-high divorce rates and workplace shootings, than Greece, which is still very much a family oriented place. I think what we have here is a case of psychological projection by Western authors. But this whole discussion is anyway beyond the scope of the article, which is about culture. This stuff isn't "culture" any more than all the gun rampages in the US are American "culture". As for the "truth", I advise you to read WP:TRUTH. Athenean (talk) 06:17, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) This has nothing to do with the WP:TRUTH and everything to do with reliable and credible information by dependable, academic sources. Let us not forget that these commentators are making sweeping, extraordinary comments about Greek society and culture and therefore WP:REDFLAG applies automatically here. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary quality of sources and not just idle speculation. On the other hand, if there is a need for the "twelve step program", which you wikilinked in your comments above, it might well be for curing your apparent need for personal comments. But I'll leave it at that. Let's go now to the analysis of the piece, in detail:

American journalist Michael Lewis pointed out in a 2010 Vanity Fair article that modern Greek culture lacks any tradition of altruism and is afflicted by extraordinarily high levels of selfishness and corruption, which culminated in the present Greek government-debt crisis.

This is obviously Lewis's own opinion. Did Lewis research the sociocultural structure of Greek society and its effects on the economy of Greece and published his conclusions in a peer-reviewed paper? Is he a sociologist? The answers to all these questions are negative. So what we have here is just the opinion of a layman. Does it deserve a place in the article? Obviously not. We cannot go around cherry-picking layman opinions and add them to the culture articles of nations, especially when they make such extraordinary claims. If that were done, all kinds of uninformed opinions and silly generalisations would clutter such articles. As far as Lewis's claim ...that modern Greek culture lacks any tradition of altruism... ask many Jews of WWII who were aided by the Greeks, who, at serious personal risk of death, hid them from the Nazis to save them from being deported to Dachau and other Nazi death camps. If that is not altruism of the highest order I don't know what is. Not many nations can boast of such altruism by their citizens.
Then we go to the Boston radio piece. Let's examine its quality by quoting some of its content:

If you volunteer for something, you’re a sucker. If you pick up your garbage, or, god forbid, anyone else’s, you’re a fool.

How does the commentator makes these unsubstantiated generalisations? Did she sample the Greek public? Where is the statistical analysis she performed? What is the scientific definition of "sucker"? Did she publish her results in an academic journal? Or is this just speculative hearsay? I'll let you guess the answer. Then we come to the Karaghiozis-based socio-ethnocultural analysis:

The real ancestor of today’s Greece is not some Athenian holding a scroll of philosophical wisdom. It’s Karagiozis, the main character in the traditional shadow theater that’s performed in Athens even now. Karagiozis is a poor Greek man living under the rule of an Ottoman Vizir. He has a long left arm, the better to slip into people’s pockets with.

This kind of pseudo-philosophical analysis is of a very speculative nature and it is hardly credible. And last but not least the quotation by Lewis:

[T]he place does not behave as a collective . . . [i]t behaves as a collection of atomized particles, each of which has grown accustomed to pursuing its own interest at the expense of the common good. There’s no question that the government is resolved to at least try to re-create Greek civic life. The only question is: Can such a thing, once lost, ever be re-created?

What is this "atomized particles"? Atomic Physics at the service of sociology? This is nothing but speculation by a non-expert. And since when paying taxes has become a measure of "contributing to the common good"? What sort of nonsense is this? Why then everyone from major corporations to individual taxpayers from all socioeconomic strata in the US are trying to avoid paying taxes any way they can? Are these US citizens trying to harm the "common good" by trying to find any loophole they can to avoid paying taxes? Quote from our article on Tax haven:

A January 2009 U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report said that the GAO had determined that 83 of the 100 largest U.S. publicly traded corporations and 63 of the 100 largest contractors for the U.S. federal government were maintaining subsidiaries in countries generally considered havens for avoiding taxes.

Are these people, business and corporations "atomised particles"? Or do you reserve such derogatory nomenclature only for the Greeks while calling your own citizens "rugged individualists"? You even have a movement in the US, called the Tax protest movement with a long History, which holds tax-collecting by the Federal Government to be illegal. At least Greece does not have such a movement. Its citizens are more civic-minded than that. The reference by Rozenweig talks about the tax system and this is a financial and not a cultural matter. All in all this collection of speculative and unverified commentary by laypeople does not belong in this article. Finally your comment: besides engaging in conclusory ad hominem attacks upon the writers as expressing fringe opinions. is flat-out wrong and unfair. I expressed my opinion, as is my right, about their ideas, which I found to be unverifiable and extreme, not about these people personally. If you are unable to make this distinction, it is your problem and not mine. Except if you are trying to imply that I should not vigorously criticise their ideas, in which case you are attempting to censor my opinion. Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις 15:57, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
First of all, as you could easily have determined with a couple of Google searches, WBUR is one of the three NPR member stations for Boston, and like most NPR member stations is considered to be a reasonably respectable media source, as most American intellectuals know. (Or at least those who've visited the campuses of MIT and Harvard and bothered to turn on a radio while touring Boston.) Second, to label Time magazine, Vanity Fair magazine, Politique internationale, or the Globe and Mail "tabloids" is simply ridiculous. They are all among the most widely respected media sources in the world. Time magazine has the largest circulation of any weekly newsmagazine in the world, while Vanity Fair has published numerous groundbreaking or prominent articles, Politique internationale is a famous political science journal well known in that field, and the Globe and Mail is the most prestigious newspaper in Canada. These are all basic facts that educated intellectuals already know.
Next, Mr. Lewis holds a master's in economics from the London School of Economics, and established his reputation as one of the most famous and successful journalists of his generation by documenting the greedy, hedonistic behavior of traders on Wall Street, so he is clearly well-qualified to make broad generalizations about the behavior of economic actors. And keep in mind not that many authors get to see their books made into blockbuster movies starring Brad Pitt. (You do know who that is, right?)
Also, if you'd simply bothered to Google Mrs. Lazaridis Power, you would know that she is a Rhodes scholar who holds a doctorate from Oxford, is of Greek descent, and is fluent in both Greek and English.
I also note that you seem to not recognize that American libertarianism and individualism is balanced by American respect for the rule of law, which is drilled into all U.S. citizens at a very young age. When it comes to taxes, it is true that Americans complain loudly about them, but regardless, the vast majority of Americans actually pay them, unlike Greeks. The New Yorker magazine had an article exploring this exact issue of why Americans pay their taxes and Greeks don't, which points out that 27.5% of Greek GDP is in the shadow economy compared to 9% of U.S. GDP. The article ends with these words: "The reason tax reform will be such a tall order for Greece, in sum, is that it requires more than a policy shift; it requires a cultural shift. Pulling that off would be quite a feat. But the future of the European Union may depend on it." And Reason.com cites to an academic paper to point out that American taxpayers are overachievers at the international level when it comes to tax compliance.
And while you attempt to characterize the observations I cited about Greece as fringe theories, try running keywords like "Greece tax compliance" or "Greece corruption" or "Greece bribery" through Google. There is a lot of press coverage out there about Greece's problems and how they stem from its extraordinarily corrupt culture, which visitors from the developed world find to be absolutely shocking. Those are not fringe theories, they reflect the commonplace perception of hundreds of journalists and academics both inside and outside of Greece. If Wikipedia were to be limited to only peer-reviewed studies in journals, 90% of the encyclopedia would have to be deleted.
Furthermore, Greek corruption isn't just about failing to paying taxes; another major aspect of Greek corruption is bribery, such as the phenomenon of bribing medical personnel for priority service, as one paper documented. Try to bribe a doctor for priority service in any hospital in any civilized country and you will leave the hospital in handcuffs. The International Business Times has a good article that summarizes the various studies showing how bribery is extremely pervasive in Greece.
Finally, take a look at Transparency International's latest Corruption Perception Index for 2012. The United States ranks at 19. Greece is at 94, in the same company as Colombia and India. --Coolcaesar (talk) 09:28, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
Boston Radio may be a good source of information for many things but that does not mean that everything it broadcasts has to be taken as gospel and certainly the Lazarides piece may make for an interesting broadcast but the broad points it makes about Greek culture, and the way it makes them, leave a lot to be desired in terms of academic rigour. Ms Lazarides and Mr. Lewis may hold degrees etc. but they are not omniscient. For instance, they make sociological and philosophical assertions without being experts in those fields. When they try to make sweeping assertions about cultural anthropology without being experts in that field and try to create new theories about a large group of people, a whole culture in fact, these theories are just opinion pieces, good perhaps for a broadcast and suitable for publication in a pop-culture magazine but that doesn't mean that they have to be enshrined in an encyclopaedic article about Greek culture. Not unless they are proven by using scientific methods. Otherwise any commentator would be given carte-blanche to create new theories who would then be given credibility not because of the rigour of their methodology but because of their celebrity. Look at the Google search results for the keywords of America's Culture of Violence. Does that mean I have to go to the Culture of the United States article and promote the point that the American people have a culture of violence? I don't think so, at least not based on opinion pieces. Hard research is required if one has to paint the US culture this way. Similarly I want to see hard, scientific evidence that corruption is part of Greek culture, because that is a very broad and sweeping statement to make about a whole nation. I don't deny that there is widespread corruption in the Greek political landscape. But that can be covered in the relevant corruption article and not here. As far as Brad Pit etc. we all know that being successful in Hollywood doesn't necessarily make you a good academic. The Globe and Mail and Rozenweig pieces talk about corruption in Greek financial affairs but they do not make generalisations about culture and so they do not belong here. Time magazine is more balanced and it talks about southern Europe's "culture of tax evasion" but that article is about the economy and not about Greek culture. Finally, tax-evasion is an economic phenomenon not a cultural phenomenon. It is endemic in all cultures. In some nations it is more prevalent than others. But that is a structural difference of the local economic system not of the local culture. The term "culture" is in itself not very well defined and has connections to anthropology and psychology. Therefore, the term "culture" can be arbitrarily expanded and corrupted for political reasons and by non-experts to promote specific agendas. This is such a case. Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις 12:44, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
I just got back to this issue after finishing a huge emergency project. Your position still makes no sense. Cultural anthropologists do not have a monopoly on the social construction of culture, just as physicians or lawyers do not have a monopoly on the social construction of their own professions (that's why I was extremely careful to add sources from both within and without the profession when I drafted most of the article on lawyers).
I also note that you are consistently attacking the qualifications of the sources cited rather than whether they are empirically correct or not---that is, you have not denied the observation made by many of those sources that Greeks pass bribes at an extraordinary rate. The issue is not political corruption (i.e., abuse of power by senior politicians), the issue is petty corruption, the kind that takes place in ordinary day-to-day interactions between low-level government employees and the people they serve. That kind of corruption is far more cultural than political in nature.
You seem to constrain corruption, tax evasion and bribery as limited in dimension to either political science or economics. Wrong. They are all partially culturally mediated phenomena because they are directly dependent upon the rule of law, which itself is a culturally mediated phenomenon. That is, culture determines cultural norms, such as whether in general one should obey the law, or more specifically, whether one should not cheat on one's taxes or pass bribes. Just run "culture" and the "rule of law" through Google and read the enormous amount of literature that examines the link between the rule of law and culture. A couple of good examples are here and here.
Furthermore, the article on Culture of the United States already highlights the fact that the U.S. has a highly militaristic and gun-oriented culture. I see nothing wrong with also mentioning in that article that U.S. culture is also quite violent, as long as that assertion is backed up with reliable sources. For example, Robert Young Pelton has regularly included the United States in his famous book on The World's Most Dangerous Places because of its history of violence.--Coolcaesar (talk) 03:29, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

(unindent) Corruption is generally not considered part of a country's culture, especially in wikipedia. Wikipedia articles on "Culture of Country X" tend to focus on art, literature, cuisine, music, things like that. In terms of corruption Greece is about average globally. There are many countries far more corrupt, yet corruption is never included in their respective Culture article, including European countries like Russia, Albania, Ukraine, Georgia, all of which rank far below Greece in terms of corruption. I looked at a bunch of "Culture of Country X" articles, none of them includes anything remotely similar to corruption. We also have a dedicated article for corruption in Greece (as we do for many other countries). As such your additions are superfluous and beyond the scope of this article. Everything else is irrelevant. Athenean (talk) 06:46, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

But it is mentioned in the articles on Culture of Colombia and Culture of China (notice the oblique reference to guanxi). And if other articles on the cultures of notably corrupt countries (e.g., Russia) do not mention their culture of corruption, that is not an argument for omitting that information from this article, it is an argument for expanding the coverage of those other articles.
Furthermore, the vast majority of educated intellectuals in the English-speaking world (and this is the English Wikipedia) consider corruption to be deeply interwoven with culture. (Entering "culture" and "corruption" into Google Books returns over 1.2 million results, most of which expressly associate corruption with culture, although most of those works will not be visible to Internet users outside of the United States because most other countries, including Greece, have primitive copyright laws that do not allow for fair use.)
Again, I must reiterate that no one has denied the truth that corruption is a core component of Greek culture. Remember, one of the core principles of WP:NOT is that "Wikipedia is not censored." Just because the truth hurts is no reason to keep it off Wikipedia. If the truth hurts, the solution lies within Greeks to change their own culture so that it is one that celebrates honesty and personal integrity. --Coolcaesar (talk) 02:29, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
Please spare us your condescending moralising. And unfortunately you have a tendency to repeat yourself:

The truth hurts. But that's what Wikipedia is about. After all, the first step to recovery is admitting there is a problem. --Coolcaesar (talk) 05:13, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

The latter part of which:

After all, the first step to recovery is admitting there is a problem.

is a failed attempt at humour at best and is rather funny in its own way because of its inimitably simplistic view of the issues involved. By the way, by prescribing steps to recovery, are you also a pop-psychologist?
And:

Just because the truth hurts is no reason to keep it off Wikipedia. If the truth hurts....Coolcaesar (talk) 02:29, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Repeating like a broken record that "the truth hurts" only shows your heavy-handed presumption against other editors, it looks bad on you and unfortunately for you it is also irrelevant. Repeating yourself doesn't make your deeply flawed points better or your sources any more academic. You continuously fail to realise that your search for WP:TRUTH is irrelevant in the absence of reliable academic sources. Your sources are nothing more than idle speculation by casual commentators. Therefore, and I repeat this for the nth time, they cannot be included in the article. Idle speculation and simplistic, laughable comparisons to Karaghiozis by non-experts do not belong in an encyclopaedia. You can also always publish your thoughts and moralising in your own blog. But please stop beating this dead horse. Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις 18:59, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
@Coolcaesar: The articles on Culture of Colombia and Culture of China do not mention corruption. I see painting, literature, sports, etc...I don't see corruption. Certainly not anything remotely similar to the hate-piece you are peddling here. The vast majority of educated intellectuals in the English-speaking world (and this is the English Wikipedia) consider corruption to be deeply interwoven with culture.? No, they don't. And this is why not a single article on the English Wikipedia includes corruption into Culture articles. Where is that "vast majority"? In some primitive google search whose results you disingenuously hide by hiding behind this ridiculous "your-country's-copyright-laws-suck" excuse? Is that the depth of your scholarship? Then you lecture others about "celebrating honesty and personal integrity"? So much for that. No, corruption is not a core component of Greek culture, not any more than it is for other countries equally or more corrupt than Greece. You have dismally failed to prove that, and are now trying to shift the burden of proof ("no on has denied...", give me a break!). You also seem to have something of an obsession with Greece. If you were genuinely interested in this subject, you would perhaps start with the most corrupt countries and then move up the list. But no, it's Greece, Greece, always Greece, and only Greece. I don't know (and frankly don't care) where this comes from, but like Dr. K. says, your best avenue for venting such feelings would be somewhere other than a neutral, online encyclopedia. Lastly, I would advise you to knock it off with this whole "truth hurts" thing, not only because it is childish and reflects badly on you, but because it is dangerously close to crossing the civility line, something you have a history of, and which I'm sure admins won't look on kindly should I choose to report you in the future. Athenean (talk) 04:23, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
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