Over the course of history the peoples of the south have shared the same fate, and they formed great civilisations at times when human relations and richness of character held importance. Later, in the industrial period — a time that required a workforce that was transformed into abstract labour and when human relationships became worthless – they lost their power, their supremacy falling to northern Protestants. Now they look up on the technical superiority and social organisation of the north in awe, yet they continue to go about their lives following their own traditions based on human relationships, shared customs and friendship

Opoios biazetai skontaftei. Those who rush, trip over, he explained.

Generally, when we read a translation of Platos work we come up against the word “time”. The word is scholé and it means “time free from material necessities”, in other words time free from what we do to support ourselves, free from work. This is the most important dimension for a human being. When time is used for work, on the other hand, the Greek language defines it in terms of the negation of scholé. Using the famous “alpha privative”, the vowel that negates what follows it, the Greeks refer to work as ascholía, in other words an “absence of free time”. This is a fundamental concept in understanding the civlisation that originated in the Mediterranean. In the Roman world the idea was reinterpreted through the opposition between otium (leisure) and negotium (business). The Italian term ozio (sloth) derives from otium, which was increasingly reviled as equating to neglect and loss. But the positive force of the Greek term prevailed over its Latin equivalent, and, in fact, scholé is the root of a word that has subsequently appeared in every European language: school.

Mediterraneanity is acquired, not inherited; it is a decision, not a privilege.

Once the melting pot of civilisations, it[the Mediterranean] found itself relegated to a corner of history and from then on was simply the quarrelsome courtyard of a building contested by powers whose interests lay elsewhere.