A Greek Tragedy (Spoiler Alert)
This blog contains details about Where Liberty Lies and is designed for those already to have read its sacred pages.
Athenia: an isolated town at the centre of Liberty Bound. Its inhabitants believed they alone nurse the remnants of civilisation. Well, that’s what isolation does to you. As Finbarl, Aminatra and Karlmon discover, having crossed the imposing mountain range, they are not alone and humanity will endeavour to rebuild, whatever its situation. Indeed, they find a world more complex than they might ever have thought possible. A single people, known as the Taliphians, have arisen from the crushing blow of global collapse, and, in true human tradition, have fallen out with each other again and now occupy competing, rival cities. All sounds a bit familiar?
Is there a better dynamic and narrative from our own history than the classical Greek period? After the collapse of one civilisation during the late Bronze Age following the invasion of the mysterious Sea Peoples, a new civilisation arose giving us the city states of Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Thebes etc. Their people, wars, philosophy, discoveries and art still resonates with us today. For all the qualities they shared, they each developed a unique culture and nowhere is that more striking than the democratic Athens and the kingdom of Sparta. While Athens enjoyed superiority on water and through trade, all recognised Sparta as the most efficient land power, with their society focussed on the pursuit of physical and military perfection.
So, without apology, there is a little of each in the creation of Parodis (Athens) and Adonelis (Sparta). I wanted to project into the future a vision of how we judge the past. Athens is held up in contrast to Sparta, named the birthplace of democracy and home of the great philosophers. But the Athenians had slaves, women were second class citizens and they exercised an imperial dominance through their trade with other city states. That is not to judge them but just to highlight that they had much in common with Sparta despite their overt differences. And I wanted to create that same ambiguity with Parodis and Adonelis. Their differences are exposed, your sympathies aligned. But as the truth is revealed, we start to see that each achieves its goals through different sides of the same coin of exploitation and force.
As an allegorical reference for today, this is not some global observation about West and East, but rather to a more subtle and complex relationship within our society. It is easy to spot the ‘Adonelisian’ with their forthright and offensive views and behaviour, but do we recognise the damage of the righteous ‘Parodisian’, championing an individual’s freedoms at the expense of community freedoms, demanding all believe as they do. The reason Parodis is defeated in Where Liberty Lies is to symbolise the inevitability of the Adonelisian’s unpleasant behaviours and beliefs taking over if Parodis continues on its own misguided path. In the Chinese Culture revolution of the 1960s, students, stirred by Mao Zedong and believing they were building a better future, ran amok destroying the past, attacking teachers and intellectuals and ultimately causing fear, chaos and damage. A more subtle form of this is happening to us at present. Ideologically driven emotion, carried on the currents of the internet, sometimes attacking the rational, evidence-based and/or the established, sometimes bringing about change for the better, but ultimately an unstoppable tsunami that will stifle the brave new world it hopes to create.
It is another example of the complexities of liberty. Wealth and power afford Parodis its ‘freedom’, just as they might for an individual in our society, but lurking beneath is the hypocrisy and contradictions that challenge the assumption of liberty. ‘Balance’ is the magic word for me. Balance between freedom and security, rights and responsibilities, the individual and their community etc. Of course, equilibrium is impossible to achieve at all times and society swings like a pendulum, edging towards one at the expense of the other. However, knowing where the balance-point lies is essential for policy-making and strategies, to help steer the good-ship Society down the calmer waters and away from the rocks of the extreme. To continue that metaphor and help bring this blog back on course to the ancient Greek theme, you also have to be wary of those alluring lies that draw you towards the rocks, the Siren songs of our modern age.