There’s Australia, there’s Greece and then there’s sociologist/children’s book writer Eugene Trivizas and his ‘Land Without Cats’.
I was reminded of the story following the Samos earthquake where earthquake diplomacy once again prevailed between Greece and Turkey and, as a result, high school acquaintances of different ethnicities, obviously ignorant to the intricacies of Greek-Turkish diplomacy, gave rudimentary arguments on Facebook that this loss of life was “God’s intervention” supposedly sent so that the two rival countries could “get their act together”.
“That an earthquake would be described as ‘God’s intervention’ is ignorance beyond belief,” I quipped hoping to hear intelligent arguments refuting this and hopefully offer me another way of thinking about life, politics, even religion.
But all I got back was “be kind”, “be tolerant”, “be nice” for want of a better argument as though perceived niceties are more important than getting to the nitty-gritty of the fundamental questions of life and politics.
One quip led to another until the Facebook debacle was strategically interrupted by a phone call from my eldest in another state, who probably saved me a few Facebook friendships by explaining it to me.
“It’s because they live in a land without cats,” an analogy from a Greek children’s book by Eugene Trivizas which I’d read to her so many years ago.
READ MORE: Samos has risen 18-25cm following last Friday’s earthquake
The story goes that there was a mouse who was tired of being chased by cats so he went to the land of no cats, but found mouse traps instead. Unhappy there as well, he moved to another land where there were no cats, no traps, and an easier life in general. By extension, though Trivizas did not mention this, were free to create their own perceptions of a “nice”, “kind” though not always genuine world. But our hero mouse saw he was becoming a lackadaisical well-fed, perhaps even dumped-down mouse. Seeing his predicament, he ran as fast as he could to the land of fierce cats and state-of-the-art mouse traps where he became an agile, adrenaline charged, but perhaps ruder though more genuine mouse who enjoyed the rest of his years grappling with the nuances of world politics, understanding the fragments of the Balkans, and seeking the underlying questions to global issues.
READ MORE: Earthquake victim numbers rise in Turkey as two teenagers are mourned in Samos
In his tale, Trivizas wanted to show that there’s always a downside to a simple, carefree life.
No Facebook friends were lost (yet) or mice trapped for the purposes of this yarn though in Samos two teenage children died and in Turkey dozens were killed.