This seems to me to be at best rather touching. It's nice to think that there is still enough symbolic life in this drunken juvenile thug that someone wants him for their nation. At worst, it is faintly silly. The antecedents of Alexander are a bit murky, but in truth there isn't a cat in hell's chance that he was a Slav. I can see also that it could be a bit annoying to some Greeks who might want to try to claim Alexander for themselves (this is a better claim than the Slavic one, but not exactly cast iron).
But what on earth has persuaded over 300 classical scholars (several of whom are good friends of mine) to sign a letter to President Obama (copy to Mrs Clinton et al.) asking him to intervene personally to clear up this FYROM historical travesty.
I hope Obama has got some more important wrongs to right. But supposing that he has had a minute to look at this missive, I trust that he won't be won over by the outraged arguments.
There is the usual stuff about how Alexander's ancestors must have been Greek as they competed in the Olympic Games (in fact there was originally some dispute at the time about whether they were, or were not, Greek enough to qualify). But the worst argument is the claim that 'the Macedonians traced their ancestry to Argos", and so were bona fide, not FYROM-style, Greeks. Well of course the Macedonians said that. It was a convenient and self-serving MYTH, no truer than the Athenians' claim that they were born from the soil of Athens.
By putting their names to this rubbish, I cant help feeling that my friends are stooping to exactly the kind of nationalsm that they are trying to oppose. If you really wanted to undermine the Macedonian claims, wouldn't it be better (and academically more credible) simply to laugh at them and just refuse to take them seriously?
heypasteit.com/clip/9I2
ReplyDeleteThe below posting was posted with reference to Professor Miller's letter on the following site:
ReplyDeletehttp://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2009/07/was-alexander-the-great-a-slav.html
I believe it would be worthwhile being posted here as well.
I do apologize for the length of this post, although I believe the post does presents salient arguments that have not, as far as I know, been presented in this context.
Dear Richard, you say:
"2) I agree that socially constructed ideas of ethnicity are very important - important enough to count as "facts on the ground" in some ways. This - how people themselves perceive and describe their origins - is sometimes called "subjective ethnicity".... However, it is not a good argument for you to lean on this alone. The FYROM Macedonians clearly consider themselves to be the heirs of ancient Macedonia.... It's dangerous for you to claim "the ancient Macedonians believed they were Greeks, and therefore they were". What if somebody replies "the modern inhabitants of FYROM believe that they are the descendants of Alexander and the ancient Macedonians, and therefore they are""
Richard, firstly, I am not appealing only on those grounds, as you have suggested. Rather, I focused on this point, because it has been under discussion. It should not be misinterpreted or misconstrued to mean that I am using this as my only support, by any stretch of the imagination.
Instead, we Greeks have always pointed interested parties, who genuinely wish to learn about this maelstrom, to a sate of objective facts that with their own research and critical faculties will, on their own, be convinced that the ancient Macedonians are Greeks, and at the same time, understand that the state sponsored pseudo-historical propaganda (which operates at different levels) emanating from the FYROM and its diaspora is entirely manufactured.
Secondly, Richard, to be clear, I am saying that it is the *collective* human acceptance that is important in this case, which cannot be framed as a solipsistic construct, where just that cohort, who choose to accept their subjective ethnicity, are said to be participating in our collective “reality”, since another cohort, who are being directly affected, are emphatically rejecting such a false subjective “reality”, by demonstrating that the Slavs, of the FYROM, do not have, neither the necessary, nor sufficient Macedonian qualia that is required to make them Macedonians, since the objective and factual evidence to support their case, clearly demonstrates an incongruity in their behaviour, and thus between their subjective reality and the collective objective reality.
The Greeks, including many different foreign peoples of the Classical period, *collectively* considered the ancient Macedonians as Greeks, save the sate of alternate objective facts that can be presented as objective evidence to support such an assertion.
Whilst, on the other hand, the Greeks and many other foreigners of today will never, ever, see the Slavs, of the FYROM, as anything else but Slavs of Bulgarian extraction, that have nothing at all to do with the ancient Macedonian Greeks, given the fact, the Slavs, of the FYROM, can neither produce a single shred of objective evidence that remotely demonstrates their connection to the ancient Macedonian Greeks.
It’s like the ludicrous notion of asserting that a modern digital computer can think, where it cannot, or to suggest that because a front load lifter can lift more than an Olympic weight lifter, it should ludicrously have the right to compete in the Olympic games. Or in our case, the ludicrous idea that the Slavs, of the FYROM, who are attempting to mimic the Macedonian behaviour, but lack the content, where the content is founded on Hellinicos Politismos (Hellenic Civilization and Culture) that are composed of Hellenic mimetic markers that are firmly grounded and supported by the objective and factual evidence from deductive nomological reasoning of the scientific method.
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ReplyDeleteLet me by way of analogy posit the following as an attempt to add clarity to this dispute. My reasoned analogy is founded on the meme and the qualia.
A meme can be defined as cultural characteristics or artifacts that are passed down throughout generations. Moreover, a meme can be defined as any characteristic of a culture, be it, for example, memories, language, ideas, toponyms, inscriptions, peoples names, norms, customs, sensibilities, religious practices, educational prerogatives, maintenance of family customs, legal codes, festivals, dance, rituals, codes of behaviour, history, myths and story telling, and social gestures. These characteristics can be considered as mimetic markers of a society/civilization. These markers can be transmitted from one generation to the next in a way, analogous to the transmission of genetic information. A corpus of mimetic markers together forms a mimetic strand, or thread, which, as a single unit, identifies a society/civilization.
A mimetic strand carries with it, both the social structure and culture of a society/civilization. The social structure can be thought to be comprised of relationships among groups, institutions, and individuals within a given society/civilization. Whilst, the culture, composed of memories, language, ideas, toponyms, inscriptions, peoples names, norms, et cetera, provides a sense of meaning to individuals within a given society/civilization.
By way of example, in many societies the family unit is a core institutional building block of social structure. Whilst, for example, marital monogamy or polygamy, expectations of a certain number of children, manner of child upbringing, and willingness to live with in-laws are highly variable in different societies. These latter characteristics can be said to be of a cultural nature. Social structure can be thought of as a skeleton, with culture being the muscle on the bones. The two are inextricably connected, mutually dependent and reinforcing. A change in one results in a change in the other. The mimetic strand represents this unity, which is simply referred to as society/civilization. (See here a further discussion on the mimetic analogy that I recently discussed http://archaeoastronomy.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/macedonia-from-bad-to-worse/#comment-39240)
A qualia can be said to be an essential quality, a property of something, such as, its feel or appearance, rather than the thing itself. Moreover, any theory of the mind must take into account an interesting fact, and that is namely, all of our conscious experiences have a certain qualitative feel to them. That is, there is some sort of qualia, or the what’s it feel like consciousness, whenever we have any conscience mental phenomenon occurring at all.
I shall refer to the term mimetic strand, or thread, from this point on, simply as a strand, and equally, the term marker to mean mimetic marker. To further illustrate my argument, permit me to use some linguistic terminology in my exegesis.
Formal linguistic symbols, by themselves, have no content or meaning, they are purely syntactical tokens. Our thoughts have content; we don’t think in meaningless symbols, we think in words, which have meaning. That is, our mind contains semantics that are required to form our reality. These semantics are part of our qualia. Moreover, the qualia, in part, contain what in essence defines ones identity, such as being a Macedonian.
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ReplyDeleteFurther, ones mental states or semantic thoughts also affect their behaviour, and thus the body’s interaction with the world. Moreover, our behaviour individually and collectively influences and is influenced by our interaction with the world, where social and institutional phenomena of reality exist because we humans have collective intentions, beliefs and desires, also known as collective intentionality.
Humans have this incredible capacity, through their conscious, to create social realities via:
1. Collective intentionality that creates an objective reality, which exists, only because we collectively believe that it exists.
2. Assignment of a function to an object, where all functions is observer relative/dependent. That is all functions only exist relative to assignments or dispositions. An observer relative/dependent function is, for example, a chair, a knife, or a Macedonian. These functions have only meaning within the context of us humans assigning these functions to objects. Equally, an observer independent function is, for example, gravity, light, force, mass, or magnetism. For example, a piece of metal used to be able cut things is assigned an observer relative or dependent function of a knife.
3. To move from social reality to institutional reality we require one further element. That is to move from a cohort of conscience sentient beings co-operating with one another to higher-level social constructs, such as, culture, identity, property, money, governments, universities, wars, names, language and titles etc. require a form of rule, which is known as constitutive rule.
All of institutional reality, that is, all of the reality of language, identity, government, marriage, toponyms, titles, etc. are explainable in terms of those three primitive notions, that is, collective intentionality, the assignment of function, and constitutive rules.
When the Slavs, of the FYROM, assign the observer dependent function, Macedonian, to their ethnic identity, this function and its assignment have no real meaning to the Greeks, and to other foreigners who are familiar with Macedonia and its history, because it is cognitively empty to them, because it has no content. That is, it has no semantic meaning in this context; because the Greeks at a social and institutional reality consciously feel that the Slavs, don’t have the necessary, nor sufficient, qualia to enable them to use the syntactic token, Macedonian, to identify themselves as Macedonian, resulting in the Greeks semantic emergent thoughts, which directly affects their behaviour, to instinctively reject the Slavs, of the FYROM, as Macedonians.
For the Greeks, this word only has meaning when reference is made within the Greek cultural sphere and never the Slavic cultural sphere. To illustrate my point, when the Slavs say ‘I am Macedonian’, they might as well have said ‘I am a helicopter.’ But what does it mean for someone to be a helicopter (Macedonian)? That is, the semantic part, or meaning that contains the qualia of the syntactic symbol, helicopter (Macedonian), is missing in this context. The word helicopter (Macedonian), on its own, does not carry any meaning or semantics and is not the thing that is defined. Rather it is merely a token, and the meaning is entirely a cognitive process, where the meaning of assignment of function is strongly influenced and arrived at by our *collective* intentionality, which creates an objective reality that only exists because we collectively believe that it exists.
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ReplyDeleteTo further illustrate my point, let us consider an example, along the lines of the “Chinese Room Argument” put forward by Prof. Searle [1], but in this case let the Slavs, of the FYROM, be considered to represent a computational machine running a simulation. The Slavs, of the FYROM, whilst acting out the behaviour of a “Macedonian” by their act of implementing formal symbols, and performing formal symbol manipulation, they lack the semantic content of actually being a Macedonian.
To deal with this lack of semantic content and qualia, the Slavs, of the FYROM, have through necessity, created a mutated mimetic strand through a process of artificial synthesis to simulate the Macedonian strand, where they attempti to create artificial semantic content from which the artificial qulia emerges. Mimetic strands, by definition, are centered on mimetic markers, which in essence, define the culture and social structure of civilization/society. So it is essential for a cohort that lacks semantic content to acquire a mimetic strand that mimics as best as possible that which the cohort is attempting to simulate. In the case of the Slavs, of the FYROM, they are compelled to synthesize a mimetic strand with sufficient mimetic markers of the ancient Macedonians, as well as manufature, if need be, all manner of other mimetic markers, such as promoting a "Macedonian" language (essentially codified by communist propagandists), misappropriation of names, symbols, history, myths and story telling, establishment of a church (not recognized by Ecumenical Patriarch of the Orthodox Church), etc. to bulk up their faux mimetic strand.
One can attest to this strand synthesis by observing all manner of propaganda and misappropriation, Government sponsored or otherwise, against the Greek strand over an extended period of time. The acolytes of the FYROM have employed all manner of rhetorical devices and fallacies of thinking, in their attempt to garner support for their psuedo-history. Although they employ all manner of fallacies, the fallacy of weak induction, of which the appeal to ignorance (Argumentum ad Ignorantiam) has been their tool of choice. There is a plethora of this irredentist hateful propaganda emanating from the FYROM, it’s really not hard to find, be it Government sponsored or otherwise. The trend that this patchwork of evidence exposes, is important and worrying, and does not provide a foundation for good neighbourly relations.
The Greeks look at this Slavic strand, of the FYROM, and see it as a recent artificial mutation, synthesized via the Bulgarian strand. Moreover, this mutant strand is attempting to enter the Greek soma, or being, of the contemporary Greek society and use certain specific markers of the Greek strand, whilst, in equal time, discard other mimetic material that is also part of the Greek strand, resulting in a mutant strand that represents the society of modern day FYROM.
This attempted mimetic engineering, to create this mutant strand, using Greek mimetic material, in a selective manner, without the consent of the Greeks, is seen by the Greeks as immoral and in no way acceptable. The attempted mimetic engineering, has focused on specific markers, in this case, markers that are of the Classical Greek Macedonian epoch, and this is why the Greeks show their concern and specific focus on those mimetic markers of the Greek strand. Although, if they attempted to target and mimetically engineer other mimetic markers of the Greek strand, the Greeks would have equally been in uproar, and they would have focused on those particular markers.
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ReplyDeleteTo further illustrate my point, let us consider an example, along the lines of the “Chinese Room Argument” put forward by Prof. Searle [1], but in this case let the Slavs, of the FYROM, be considered to represent a computational machine running a simulation. The Slavs, of the FYROM, whilst acting out the behaviour of a “Macedonian” by their act of implementing formal symbols, and performing formal symbol manipulation, they lack the semantic content of actually being a Macedonian.
To deal with this lack of semantic content and qualia, the Slavs, of the FYROM, have through necessity, created a mutated mimetic strand through a process of artificial synthesis to simulate the Macedonian strand, where they attempti to create artificial semantic content from which the artificial qulia emerges. Mimetic strands, by definition, are centered on mimetic markers, which in essence, define the culture and social structure of civilization/society. So it is essential for a cohort that lacks semantic content to acquire a mimetic strand that mimics as best as possible that which the cohort is attempting to simulate. In the case of the Slavs, of the FYROM, they are compelled to synthesize a mimetic strand with sufficient mimetic markers of the ancient Macedonians, as well as manufature, if need be, all manner of other mimetic markers, such as promoting a "Macedonian" language (essentially codified by communist propagandists), misappropriation of names, symbols, history, myths and story telling, establishment of a church (not recognized by Ecumenical Patriarch of the Orthodox Church), etc. to bulk up their faux mimetic strand.
One can attest to this strand synthesis by observing all manner of propaganda and misappropriation, Government sponsored or otherwise, against the Greek strand over an extended period of time. The acolytes of the FYROM have employed all manner of rhetorical devices and fallacies of thinking, in their attempt to garner support for their psuedo-history. Although they employ all manner of fallacies, the fallacy of weak induction, of which the appeal to ignorance (Argumentum ad Ignorantiam) has been their tool of choice. There is a plethora of this irredentist hateful propaganda emanating from the FYROM, it’s really not hard to find, be it Government sponsored or otherwise. The trend that this patchwork of evidence exposes, is important and worrying, and does not provide a foundation for good neighbourly relations.
The Greeks look at this Slavic strand, of the FYROM, and see it as a recent artificial mutation, synthesized via the Bulgarian strand. Moreover, this mutant strand is attempting to enter the Greek soma, or being, of the contemporary Greek society and use certain specific markers of the Greek strand, whilst, in equal time, discard other mimetic material that is also part of the Greek strand, resulting in a mutant strand that represents the society of modern day FYROM.
This attempted mimetic engineering, to create this mutant strand, using Greek mimetic material, in a selective manner, without the consent of the Greeks, is seen by the Greeks as immoral and in no way acceptable. The attempted mimetic engineering, has focused on specific markers, in this case, markers that are of the Classical Greek Macedonian epoch, and this is why the Greeks show their concern and specific focus on those mimetic markers of the Greek strand. Although, if they attempted to target and mimetically engineer other mimetic markers of the Greek strand, the Greeks would have equally been in uproar, and they would have focused on those particular markers.
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ReplyDeleteThe final step, and most critical step to them is the attempt to have this manufactured faux mimetic strand *collectively* accepted by humanity. For until, this strand is *collectively* accepted it can *not* become their objective reality. However, when they come to have their mutated faux mimetic strand *collectively* accepted, in order to achieve their objective reality, the markers of their strand are compared to the objective and factual evidence, which humanity has at hand, describing, in part, what it is to be a Macedonian during the epochs of the Classical, Roman Empire, Eastern Roman Empire, Greek (Byzantine) Empire, Ottoman Empire, and Modern day, which exhibit an incongruity. That is, their strand dismally fails for many different reasons, the simplest of which is the law of parsimony (also known as Occam’s Razor or simply the “smell” test).
The important point to note is that for the Slavs, of the FYROM, to be able to use the word “Macedonian” as their ethnic identifier, they profoundly need the *collective* human acceptance by other societies, via an institutional constitutive rule, which gives them the credibility that they seek in freely using the word Macedonia. If they do not obtain this *collective* human acceptance, which manifests itself via an institutional constitutive rule, then they will have not succeeded in achieving an objective reality. Then they have no choice but to go back and deal with their Bulgarian orgins. Humanity must not hand them an objective reality that they have manufactured through their propaganda and outright lies.
When analysing this dispute, it can be said that the Slavs, of the FYROM, attempt to act as “Macedonians” and it can be seen to be equivalent to them merely operating as a computational machine running in effect a simulation that manipulates empty faux syntactic symbols that have a faux semantic content, whilst the Greeks have their semantic thoughts, supported by their Hellenic civilization & culture, which gives them the moral right to use the syntactic symbol, Macedonian. Greeks see the Macedonians to be firmly and entirely within the Greek cultural sphere, and never in the Slav cultural sphere. The Slavs, of the FYROM, are just synthetic and faux Macedonians, if that at all.
So, the Slavs, of the FYROM, are simply mimicking actions equivalent to a computational machine that attempts to simulate “Macedonian” behaviour, but lacks the semantic meaning, or content, as well as lacking the formal and causal cognitive process of actually being a Macedonian. By way of another analogy to make my point clear, just like a computer simulation of the digestive system is merely a simulation, that is it can not actually physically digest anything, because digestion is an actual physical process, likewise when we consider the essence of being Macedonian, that is, having Macedonian qualia or consciousness, which the Slavs, of the FYROM, lack, they are then simply simulatiing being a “Macedonian” and cannot actually physically be a Macedonian, that is to consciouslly be a Macedonian, where consciousness is in this case the actual physical process.
I ask you to think about how you would try to explain to someone else, what in essence, it is to be who you are. In essence this is why, in part, it is difficult for others to understand the Greeks position in this dispute.
I could write much more on this subject, but this post is too long as it is. I suggest interested parties, as a primer, read the paper by Prof. Searle [1], and examine the “Chinese Room Argument” to further understand the context of my argument, and in general, and also examine this dispute from the context of cognitive science and the philosophy of mind. See also papers from Crick, Damasio, and Edelman.
[1] John R. Searle, Professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, published in the Scientific American, January 1990, entitled “Is the Brain’s Mind a Computer Program”
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ReplyDelete"1) I cannot identify the alleged illogicalities of my previous point about the alleged Argive origins of the Macedonians or their royal family..."
&
"4) Anyway, why are you and/or Jim resistant to the idea that the Greek language arrived in Macedonia from the north? This would make them the same as the Athenians, Spartans, etc.: I would have thought you would like this...."
Richard, It seems you’re misinterpreting the jist of my riposte. The argument, in the manner you had framed it, was, on its *own*, insufficient to reach such a conclusion, but together with alternate objective facts, it merely adds further support to the ancient Macedonians Greekness. That is, despite whether they came from the north or originally from Argos, their Greekness is supported by other objective facts that demonstrate they are clearly Hellenes.
"3) I don't mind calling ancient Macedonians Greeks, or referring to Alexander as a Greek. However, I do mind that scholars who signed the letter effectively claimed that this was always an unproblematic question, and presented evidence in misleading ways.... The ancient evidence shows that sometimes they were and sometimes they weren't, and makes it clear that this was sometimes a contentious issue...."
The interpretation of this "contentious issue" by some scholars has really been over inflated, and often referenced out of context, when compared, on balance, to literally a plethora of evidence that overwhelmingly supports the case that the ancient Macedonians were Hellenes.
Whilst in equal time, the Slavs, of the FYROM, have been attempting to use this quibbling to construct and support their entirely delusional propaganda, which they attempt to morph into factoids, despite the fact that there isn't a cat in hell's chance that they have anything at all to do with the ancient Macedonian Greeks.
When one suggests that the Professor Miller's letter is being presented in a "misleading way", one is using emotive terminology, which elicits a subjective value judgment. Richard, many scholars don't agree with yours, or with Mary's subjective value judgment call.
By analogy, the scholars that signed up, see that we Greeks have a forest fire on our hands, and their interest is in helping us to put out the fire, in which the Slavs, of the FYROM, have started, and rather than sit and argue about which tree was the starting point of the forest fire, they are out there lending a hand and attempting to put out the flames!
The Greeks have a saying "Stou koufou thn thira, oso theleis vronta (You can bang all you like on a deaf persons door)." If people don't want to spend enough time to listen and understand, we cannot do much, but only, tirelessly continue to present our case as best we can to those that do.
The question is who will stand with us, shoulder to shoulder, and protect the truth from the communist style propagandists of the FYROM?
As PL said “truth matters”.
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Excellent explanation (so far...!). Saying you are something doesn't make it true. But studying history is a different matter; we need to ask ourselves, who has a greater vested interest in claiming the ancient Macedonians weren't Greek: They themselves? Or modern-day citizens of FYROM?
ReplyDeleteAnonymous,
ReplyDeleteit is somewhat unclear what your point is, can you please clarify your self?
Can you please demonstrate where the ancient Macedonians took such a position?
Clearly, the Slavs of the FYROM, have no claim to the heritage of the ancient Macedonians given their heritage is Bulgarian and not Greek.