At the moment, we feel bewildered by Turkey’s authoritarian leader because we can’t decide whether this threat, addressed to us every day, is stupidity or a provocation. Confusion means not discerning the boundaries that make it possible to distinguish between differences and to think. It is a melancholy identification of the self with the other, so that the loss of the other means the loss of the self. How can we want to be different from an arrogant dictator who thinks we are one with him. He tells us: either you are with us, or you agree, or you are our enemy.

Stupidity and provocation clothe the dictator in a mantle that makes him invisible and makes us blind. The night will come. He will enter our dining room, our bedroom, he will find us at the scene of the crime … having fun carelessly and will punish us mercilessly, cruelly. Melancholy is the fate of hatred. This is pure cultivation of the death instinct.

Bion said that in the mental life pride, together with the vital impulse (love), creates self-respect. Pride with a death urge (hatred) breeds arrogance. By analogy in public life, pride with the impulse of life constitutes patriotism. With a death wish they make nationalism. Admiration for the impulse of life becomes jealousy, rivalry. With the death drive comes envy. Patriotism is the narcissism of life. Nationalism is the narcissism of death. A sadistic nationalist dictator neighbor feigns death and threatens us that he will come one night. He not only wants us to fear and obey Him, but He also requires us to love Him. This requirement makes the evil narcissist perverted. In addition to the violence that the aggressor narcissist does, he also makes it impossible for the victim to think differently from him. “I am doing this for your own good. Because I love you (lie) That’s why you have to love me too (you will make lies true for me).” He envies us as ungrateful and spoiled if we do not agree.

Society responds to the trauma of war by division. One side forgets the horrors, while the other is fascinated by the violence of war.

We, too; We feel offended. We need to stop feeling like victims. It is true that the Young Turks committed genocide against the Greeks of Pontus, and the horse-drawn Hats destroyed the villages and property of the Greeks of Asia Minor before the Greek army entered Smyrna. But we must not forget the atrocities, the disasters against the Turks committed by our own children in the Asia Minor campaign. Now it is reassuring when we meet our Turkish counterparts at conferences as ordinary people sharing experiences and interpretations of our world. The more often we see death next to us, the more we want to celebrate and enjoy life. But the threat is real. There are people who have power and hate us.

And yet, the people vote for these leaders and tolerate them. They don’t have control. They do not understand. The world is becoming more and more complex. Art helps us to understand reality. However, The Catastrophe in Asia Minor is not a film by Maria Ilios, not a novel, not a play, not a photo album, not an exhibition of paintings, not an exhibition at the Benaki Museum. War is a painful reality. We don’t want to remember all this. But we must not forget them. In Stand I of Iphigenia at Aulidis by Euripides, the Chorus sings: “Strife. Discord began all evil./ The destructive offspring of the Night, harsh Eris/ And her children tear people apart one by one:/ Pain, Hunger, Calamity,/ Battles, Murders, Cannibals,/ Lies, Discord, Lawlessness, Destruction./ All born Eris./ And worst of all, Oblivion… The worst of the children of Eris is Oblivion. We forget that the allies were lucky. Hitler could have won. Margaret Macmillan believes that if we want to understand the past, we cannot forget the war. Society responds to the trauma of war by division. One side forgets about the horrors, while the other is fascinated by the violence of war.

Will we never rest? We had a financial crisis. After the pandemic. Now we want war? The climate catastrophe has begun. And inflation brings a global recession and a new wave of bankruptcies. In order to create and share meaning and experience, we need contexts in which we can feel safe. The security of our country is the first thing we must take care of. But this is not the only one. To think, judge and act accordingly is our primary responsibility as citizens. Greece is going crazy with war, Euripides told the Iketides. Today the world is ready for war again. Do we want to actively take destructiveness into our own hands? Have we lost the ability to feel guilty? Do we have to commit a crime to make guilt a reality?