Greek exceptionalism

During the first decade of this century, Greece felt like a country where things were happening. Businesses were flourishing, the headline economic indicators were rosy and Greece was a proud new member of the core of Europe. The 2004 Olympic Games in many ways epitomized a unique way of Greek achievement.

There was perhaps a way of doing it in the rest of the world, but, the narrative told us, we Greeks operate under the rules of our own domestic Greek reality. The warnings that come from the outside do not apply to us, they are foreign, like the Trojan princess Cassandra, the original doom-and-gloomer. We Greeks will always find a way to make it work, we have the genes of "polymichanos" Odysseus.

This narrative (mythos) overplayed the virtues of inventiveness, "filotimo" and putting our best foot forward in adversity, and downplayed the vices of minimal...