Prologue
Prologue
Self-birth
A hula dancer had just finished her alluring hip-gyrating number. I was in the South Pacific, dining alone at a small Cook Islands restaurant. It was in 1994. As I had nothing better to do, I tuned in to the conversation at the next table. A family of about a dozen was wrapping up their dinner.
"We need to destroy it all, to tear it down and not give a hoot about improving. Nothing's worth improving. Keep destroying. Satisfy your needs and desires," the young lady at the head of the table was proclaiming.
This is nihilism, I thought to myself. I had heard it all before.
"All ideologies are defective," she continued, "all societal norms are wrong, and all social structures are meaningless."
This sophomoric depiction was by now getting to me. But there was more to come:
"Get rid of all institutions, political frameworks, and cultural values. Don't waste your time and energy trying to improve America – it's pointless and futile. All existing systems in America must be torn down."
I had heard enough and just could not take it anymore. As if suddenly stung by a scorpion, I jumped to my feet.
"Excuse me!" I said, unable to control the tone of my voice or behavior and not even thinking about what I would say. "How right the young lady is; sure, there were no houses, roads, electricity, or infrastructure before. Why do we need them now? Why do we need airplanes? The young lady swam here all the way from New York City. And she even gave birth to herself, raised herself, planted the crops and harvested the fields, built the roads and trucks, and brought electricity here tonight. Oh, yes, the meal and the drinks we all enjoyed this evening fell from heaven."
I had only gotten started, and it seemed I would never stop. The people around me in the small restaurant initially looked at me as if I was crazy. In rapid succession, their faces began lighting up like light bulbs one after another until they were all lit. Well lit. They began nodding their heads in approval with every point I was making. I was in a messianic mode. The young lady seemed at a loss. She had been broadsided. Unexpectedly.
"All you people want to do is destroy, tear down, and offer nothing in its place." I continued, somewhat emboldened. "You depress me. You lack substance or purpose. What's the matter with you?"
Then I sat down and shut up.
I had also shut her up. I felt relieved no one had attacked me physically. The couple at the table across from me silently clapped when our eyes crossed. The waiter approached my table with a fresh beer – "It’s from the gentleman over there by the bar,” he said, pointing to a man sitting on a stool raising his drink. I acknowledged the gift by lifting my glass in his direction.
We have some friends here, I thought.
And I indeed needed that beer just there and then. Like a pufferfish, I hastened to pass that cold liquid through my lips to increase my defenses.
The nerve that young person had! America, the country she was deriding, was my savior; its institutions and people had thrown me a lifeline and enabled me to reach enviable heights. I was not about to sit there and allow such abuse. I owed it to America to rise in its defense out of mere decency.
Come on, people! Don’t we, immigrants, and all children of American immigrants owe America something?
Preface
Education? No way!
What if you aspired to higher education, but everyone around you believed it was impossible without money or political clout? What if your own family were against education and prevented you from getting one, exploiting you, beating you, and tossing you into the streets hungry and penniless? Would you then give up?
I was born in Greece.
Greece had just emerged from six years of World War II and was in the grip of a brutal three-year civil war as I was growing up. Dark, perilous, and pessimistic times. Brother killing brother, father and son killing each other -- killers on the loose.
I wanted an education.
The response was loud and clear: Everyone discouraged me from pursuing my education with absolute finality and authority:
“Forget about it!” was the general chorus.
“You’ve got to help with your sisters’ dowries” was my family’s mantra.
“You need to do your military service. You owe a duty to your country.” was the community president’s response.
All doors were shut. The deck was stacked against me. My future had been programmed for me. There was no choice. The mentality was: “We’re all in the same situation. We’re all together; who are you to flee? No higher education for you! Period.”
I was locked into a family and community conspiracy, a captive, a prisoner, and a slave, suffocating by the war-traumatized mediocrity that encircled me like a thorny noose around my neck. That environment was not about education; it was all about survival -- totally existential.
Education was a privilege reserved for the upper crust. It was only for the fortunate few, the rich, and the well-connected. Everyone else, get lost!
Desperate for success
I was an avid reader.
Literature, history, and foreign languages fascinated me. My reading must have engendered the notion that possessed me: I always thought destiny had a loftier design for me. I was unsure of what it was. Still, I dared to hope it would be higher than most, if not all, of my peers in my limited social environment. I imagined myself as a successful and respected individual embarking on a fulfilling journey through life. I knew that education was my only option, a necessity. I craved knowledge and distinction, but a gluey mass of confident and comfortable ignorance held me back; it filled every void around me, poisoning my being with asphyxiating despair.
I had to make a name for myself; I had to succeed!
The bleak future I faced meant spending the rest of my life working for my authoritative and abusive father's small family businesses. That could not possibly have been a viable alternative for me. In my idealistic adolescent mind, death seemed preferable.
Not through perseverance alone
One can endure a great deal for a worthwhile goal.
Persistence and perseverance helped me overcome obstacle after obstacle to burst out of the oppressive abyss of collective obstructionism, earn a high school diploma, and step into the beautiful world of university education. Indeed, as I found myself inundated with incredible educational opportunities in the United States, I am baffled as to why so many people do not value and don’t take advantage of them.
Oh, how I regret that I have only one life to live!
Along the way, fortuitous encounters proved pivotal, some in a good way, some not. Showing gratitude is an integral part of man’s better nature. However, we forget to do so often. When we show appreciation, we pause to acknowledge someone who has benefited us and reward ourselves for doing the right thing. I am deeply grateful to all those good people whose intentional or unintentional actions benefited me.
One’s life is like that. It contains unplanned, unexpected, and surprising pivotal moments, which can be beneficial or harmful. They can lift us up or drag us down. We do not control them or know why or where they come from. Whether they fill us with joy or sorrow, they significantly alter our lives.
But we must be alert to perceive their occurrence and respond whenever possible. “Winners are not born; they’re made,” one hears. But I believe they are both born and made.
Occasionally, in my less rigorous intellectual moods, as I try to comprehend and explain the timely appearance of certain people at singular moments in my life’s path, I flatter myself, wondering if some extraneous caring force has not been looking out for me. The skeptic’s skeptic that I am, I go no further.
Why this book.
Along my life's path, people familiar with some details of my educational marathon have urged me to document it, confident that it would inspire others to dream, persevere, and pursue their academic goals regardless of obstacles.
While acquiring my formal education, my cultural heritage clashed with other cultures; I was forced to scrutinize and reexamine long-established social and religious premises and thereby gain substantial enlightenment. The multicultural and multi-lingual exposure shaped me beyond formal education. It provided the equipment to think better; it opened my mind to other possibilities, allowing critical thinking to replace darkness, pushing ignorance aside, avoiding it, fighting it, and keeping it sequestered. I consider this the culmination of my life’s achievements. This is why I decided to write this book; otherwise, why would anyone be interested in my life’s details?
I believe education is one of the most worthwhile goals in life. Education should be a life-long process for everybody according to their aptitude and resources. It does not need to be academic or vocational, but it should be mind-opening. Education helps one become a better human by cultivating the highest of our assets, our minds.
Socrates’ examined life is all about juxtaposing one’s life events with the advantage of hindsight, getting a sharper focus, comprehending, and extracting more sense. When confronting events in isolation, we miss the contrastive aspect -- we do not examine one event in the background of another, one occurrence as a consequence or cause of another. We are prone to forget and rationalize, to revise and rewrite life’s events in some favorable light.
Be careful what you remember.
An “examined life” must also be an examining life, a probing life. This is a much broader goal, one of a loftier nature. Granted, an examined life leads to a better understanding of oneself. But it also sharpens the tools for a more enlightened examination of our world, enabling critical thinking.
We are born ignorant. Ignorance breeds intolerance and vulnerability; intolerance necessitates action and elicits strong emotions. It has been said that you should not make assumptions; the most common assumption we make is that we know. We'd be more cautious if we knew that we didn't know. Above all, a good citizen must develop critical thinking skills and an enlightened mindset.
This is what I have aspired to do.
∞∞∞
An examined and examining life leads to a developed life. What a developed life might be is an individual matter. It could include developing latent talents and utilizing more time to create. At all events, it would undoubtedly have to be a life beyond mere “consuming.”
As events unavoidably involve others who may be unavailable to present their viewpoint or defend themselves, aspiring to objectivity is imperative.
Objectivity is the path to the truth but it is also challenging to attain. Our prejudices stemming from social, cultural, or individual perspectives obstruct objectivity. We tend to nurture and develop prejudices of all kinds. Tendencies exist within us; given the right stimulus, they go unbound. How do you feel toward fat people, short people, dark-skinned ones, people with an accent? Check yourself the next time you go to Walmart. How would you classify your neighbors? Why do you like some and not others, and what may change your liking? What do you think of your associates’ politics? Did you notice what they subscribe to and how you feel about that? And what about Gatekeeping? Do you believe it’s fair to restrict those you disagree with but not those you agree with? Indeed, biases proliferate. Doubt yourself next time you feel inclined to pat yourself for your exemplary objectivity. Objectivity is not an achievable destination but a beacon showing the right path.
I am keenly aware that autobiographies, by their very nature, are subjective. I have striven to be as objective as possible, considering that such a lofty goal is challenging and occasionally unattainable. To that end, I have relied on my extensive diaries and correspondence rather than my fickle memory as I tried to understand and explain the world from the current status of my consciousness.
∞∞∞
I used Microsoft’s marvelous Bing Image Creator and exploited Microsoft Design’s technology to generate and alter the pictures in this book. I am grateful for such a dream gift, which, without A.I., would have been unthinkable until recently. I hope you will enjoy them as much as I did creating them.
I am also indebted to Leslie Sullins for being a tireless sounding board and for her occasional technical assistance.
This book is dedicated to all the eager intellects, extant and future, who cannot wait to improve our world.
