Legal rock music for your downloading pleasure
Posted on Fri 29 Feb 2008 at 11:54 PM PST. Filed under Entertainment.
For 50 years, but most importantly, for the last 15 years, the Republic of Macedonia and Greece are having some problems. Greece maintains that the “ancient Macedonia” is part of Greece and that this newly created country should not be using this name. The Republic of Macedonia on the other hand, maintains that they are descendants of the ancient Macedonians and that they should be using that name.
The problem is not really in the actual name. The problem is that Greece is afraid that after 25 or 50 years from now, Macedonia would start a war to “free” the Greek part of Macedonia and make it its own (a part which btw, is populated by 90% ethnic Greeks who even if they might be descendants of the same ethnic group, they now feel Greek more than anything else). Ancient history is very important to Greeks, and they won’t tolerate anyone telling them otherwise.
Macedonia today is nothing different than Greece was circa 1740. If you were asking a Greek person back then what his ethnic background was, he would tell you that he’s “a descendant of the Roman empire”. Only after the west powers decided to “enlighten” the Greek population (for their own purposes, of course), the Greeks became the fanatical chauvinistic Greeks we all have come to love today. Same with Macedonia, they were for too long under a regime that did not let them find a identity. When they gained their freedom, they HAD to find an identity. It’s something that’s essential to any group or country. And Macedonia, well, decided to be identified with ancient Macedonians. I can’t really blame them for doing so, even if not the whole of their country ever was part of the ancient Macedonia. All I am saying is that their claims are only humanly natural.
These days, Greece has vetoed the inclusion of Macedonia to NATO and EU if they don’t change their naming wishes. Currently, the UN is trying to help both countries to find a solution. They will debate for years to come. I have a different solution, a solution that should have been done 2,500 years ago.
The solution is to make both countries, a single country. Call it “Macedonia and Greece”, or call it “Macedreece” or call it “Greedonia”, I don’t really care. The point is, these two cultures have MORE in common than they think they do. Ancient Macedonians were very similar in their culture and religion with the rest of Greece. It takes guts to merge two countries, but it has been done in the past, and it can be done again, peacefully. Sure, that didn’t stop Athenians and Spartans from being into war every 5 years or so. And by the time Rome became strong and attacked, Greeks were so have killed each other, that it was too late to fight together against them. But they did think of themselves as ethnically similar.
My final argument is this: both cultures adore Great Alexander, and each one wants the hero to be their exclusive hero. And yet, all Great Alexander wanted for both, was a united Macedonia-Greece. By not having the wisdom to merge after 2,500 years, neither of you deserve him as its hero.
If your reply is: “yes, but modern Greeks and Macedonians are not as similar as ancient Greeks and ancient Macedonians were”, then my answer is simple: if that’s the case, then NONE of the countries should be using the words “Greece”, or “Macedonia” in any of their territories. But I doubt they would accept that. It might even be more politically acceptable to merge rather than see their peoples lose their identity. Because when losing your identity and ethnicism, politicians lose their grip to that country, and politicians are not ready to let this go. It’s all a game of power you see.
