Culture is Destiny

Three generations celebrating Greek Orthodox Easter: my grandfather, my father, and me (plus the remains of one lamb in the middle) during the spring of 1996.

The Double-Headed Eagle, emblem of the Byzantine Empire

My family came from Greece over the course of the 20th century... my mother's parents arrived in the 1920s, and my father came here in the early 1950s. Yes, plenty of Greeks have fairly light hair and complexions, believe it or not.

I am fascinated by foreign cultures (to you all) and philosophies, of course, some of what you all may consider "foreign", is to me, native. My favorite aspect of Greek culture is Romiosini, the idea from medeival Roman/Greek/Byzantine culture that their job as a people and culture was uniquely commissioned with a Messianic duty to save the world. Much of this was influenced by their Orthodox Christian faith which first came to the Greek speaking people during the early years of Christianity (the New Testament having been written for a Greek-speaking audience). This attitude was inherited by Russia in the 15th cenutry as Moscow was declared the "Third Rome" (after the fall of Rome and Constantinople), and, sadly, lost when Russia fell to Communism and killed their Emperor and his family.

I am also fascinated by China. I studied Mandarin Chinese at MIT, Harvard, and Peking University. Chinese history is fascinating, and paints a picture of what Europe could have been like had their been a common identity bonding them more closely after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Mandarin is a fascinating language, with a grammar that is much easier to grasp than most Indo-European languages. Throughout the 1990s, it has been amazing to see the rise of China as a the most influential power in East Asia. Part of my fascination with China certainly involved the fact that I commisserated with my Chinese classmates in high school who also came from immigrant families and shared my sense of ambition and duty.