A GREEK WORD FOR IT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 769, 15 April 1954, Page 5

A GREEK WORD FOR IT

Sir,-Squeezed between an item on Koestler, and advertisements, in a recent Listener was the following challenging excerpt from a BBC talk by Bernard Keelan: "The Greeks had a special word for the man who took no interest in politics. They called him an ‘idiot’; and we who believe in democracy must — ‘that the word is not too harsh. The implications of this excerpt are somewhat misleading. In these days of the world’s wariness of an ideological version of an earlier century’s Russian "bear," "politics" is a word the mind often hastily skirts in favour of another less weighted. Some "politics" are "safe"; others not. In any case, the word and its derivatives have endured a sad loss of prestige. Many prefer to use the ungainly "statesmanship" about the activities of our admired leaders, and "international relations" is now a more favoured term where world "politics" are concerned. To the Greeks the word had a purer denotation surely. Politics was then an "art" to which attached a high prestige, to the Greeks almost a divine art-a living, evolving process whase end tools were to be polished and refined until the near-perfect was attained. Each man had a burning, personal interest in a government which took many of its decisions direct from the people in a public square meeting. The early Greek, then, who took little interest in "politics" was certainly more of an idiot than his counterpart today, who may even be exhibiting prudence in ‘his real or simulated disinterest, For, from current reading about America, one gathers that a college professor must even take care not to have too comprehensive a collection of Tchaikovski concertos, lest he have his political leanings assessed for him, gestapo-fashion; and this week’s top radio or television commentator must not express too openly his approval of the latest abstract sculpture lest he, too, be assessed-and speedily become "last week’s" commentator. Even that standing institution, the great American Clubwoman, has become a little frustrated. It is only the "idiot"

who has not heard of "McCarthy." Thus it would seem that although we imagine that we have adopted the Greeks’ tool or form of government-democracy--we have done little to improve on its mechanics and mould it effectively to our own uses. The party-system has not even allowed it to retain the flavour of idealism. Rather, we are well on the road to sullying a word other than "politics." Bernard Keelan out of context may have been misleading, but the Greek "tt. nt of context. was certainly

more so.

P.

WILTSHIRE

(Wellington),