I was with my friend Christos when a fellow farmer asked him how much he had paid for his new olive grove. His response was a huge exaggeration of the truth. So, why did he lie about it? Most of us would have been only too happy to show off how clever we were in snapping up land at a bargain price.
"It's not lying. I am just not telling him the truth," explained Christos "Why should anyone else know my business?"
As is often the case here, I can see his logic - it's just totally different to mine.
However, I believe his reasoning must date back to the 400-year Turkish occupation of Greece (which only finally ended around 1912). The ordinary Greeks had no hope of overthrowing the conquerers so they adopted a policy of wrong-footing them with unreliable information. It wasn't lying, it was non-cooperation.
This mistrust of officialdom still seems endemic in the cultural psyche. You are forced to fill in plenty of forms, but why reveal the truth? Exactly how far you have strayed from reality is only to be guessed at. This must make life difficult for beaurocrats and tax collectors as any information supplied by citizens is, in reality, no information at all.
So, how to instill an atmosphere of mutual trust and respect between citizen and authority? Answers on a postcard please.
