Youth violence in an adolescent society

When, truth be told, do we talk to children about violence? The answer is, practically all the time: when we're giving it our blessing for national, social, class or political reasons; when we're justifying it as hot-headedness or a response to a presumed provocation; when we're baptizing it a "genetic disease," be it among Greeks who "have division in their blood" or attributing it as a trait in certain specific social groups.

Generally speaking, violence is not, per se, abhorrent to Greek society; there's ample proof of that in the fact that it elected a party into Parliament on the promise that it would "beat the tar out of the politicians who bankrupted us." Domestic terrorism reared its ugly head all over Europe; in Greece, however, it was tolerated for decades. "Terrorism is the 'tail end' of the statistical distribution of violence, a tail that leans much farther than...