I’m astonished at how many people seem to have an opinion on Greece. Since mid-May or so, most people I know have bandied about words like ‘Syriza’, ‘Oxi’, and especially ‘Varoufakis’ (the cool bloke with the bike, by some coincidence) as if they were second nature.

I’m afraid I’m not one of them. I admit that what little I know about Greece is the result of my leisurely and not-terribly-systematic reading of news websites and magazines. I do not feel entitled to have an opinion, let alone to share it. To do so would be to insult my readers’ intelligence.

To make matters worse, I shall argue two things. First, that it is not possible to have a useful opinion on each and every thing that happens in the world, no matter how relevant it might be. Second, that it is legi­timate, if not necessarily desirable, to own up to one’s limitations, and to shut up where applicable.

But first, a caveat. I know that the situation in Greece affects me directly and fairly profoundly. That has to do partly with the existence of the EU and the single currency and all that, but also with a more general relatedness of things.

Still, that alone is not enough to convince me that I ought to take an active interest in and take pains to have an opinion on Greece. US dollar interest rates and the economy of Somalia, for example, affect me at least as much as Grexit does. And yet, I’m fairly resigned to the fact that I will never know enough about the dollar, or Somalia, to have an opinion that’s worth discussing with anyone except the fishes.

The one place I feel fully comfortable talking about is Malta. The fact that I was born and brought up here gives me a bit of a head start, but I’ve also gone to consider­able lengths to try to understand this place and its foibles. I imagine many readers will share my experience.

I also have a fairly informed opinion on the politics of Switzerland, and of India. The first I’ve read much about and lived in for personal reasons, the second for work-related ones. In any case I didn’t wake up one morning, read a few pages of Steinberg’s Why Switzerland? and India Today, and march off with a confidently-held opinion.

I know I could be accused of confusing ‘opinion’ with ‘expert opinion’. I am not an expert on India, and certainly not on Switzerland. The point, rather, is that, expert or no expert, it takes years of sustained reading and study to really begin to understand a situation of any complexity.

Which is why I marvel at and envy the many people who appear to have mastered, in record time, the intricacies of contemporary Greek politics and economics. With a few exceptions, these are people who never had a word to say about Greece until the financial crisis hit the news. I imagine they will have kept their interest and ever-growing knowledge to themselves.

Expert or no expert it takes years of sustained reading and study to really begin to understand a situation of any complexity

At the risk of sounding like an insufferable snob, I get the impression that many of the opinions on Greece that are doing the rounds have to do with formulaic ideas of right and wrong.

Funnily enough, almost all the left-leaning people I know believe that Oxi was Oxi, that Tsipras sold out, that Merkel is the unlikely embodiment of capitalist evil, and so on. The opposite applies to the right-leaning type. Not much of this is based on an understanding of things Greek. It is more a matter of slotting Greece (as it happens) into a preordained moral geography.

It can hardly be desirable to not know about Greece, dollar interest rates, or Somalia. Clearly, the more stuff one knows, the better. The question, however, is not whether or not it is desirable, but whether or not it is legitimate. I’d say it is.

It’s a matter of intellectual honesty and of owning up to one’s limitations. I would love to be able to speak confidently about the crisis in Greece. But I also know that to do so I would first need to spend much time studying the society, politics and economy of that country. I would also need to look into the recent (at least) history of EU strategy on debt, currency, and so on.

Then and only then would I consider myself to have an informed opinion. The problem is that by that time, the topics of the day will have moved on and people will be talking about an agricultural revolu­­­tion in Romania, or a pensions’ crisis in Spain. There really is no escape: the best thing to do is be realistic about the breadth of one’s knowledge, and to shut up about the rest.

So, should one limit oneself to one’s patch? Of course not. First, my point is not that the Maltese, Greeks, and Somalis are the only people who can talk about Malta, Greece or Somalia respectively. To say that would be to accept a kind of radical localism.

Second, there is some pleasure to be had from talking about things one knows not very much about. It is entirely agreeable to read about Greece at a leisurely pace, and to while away the time discussing the results. I would call it a flâneur approach to world events.

The point at which that leisurely and aimless divertissement decides to masquerade as some kind of informed opinion, and especially at which it is shared as such, is where I part company.

mafalzon@hotmail.com

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