Cyborg's Contemplative Corner: Stolen centrepieces and the Cyprus question

Thalassa_mikra blogged the events of an American-Hellenic council dinner at: Cyborg's Contemplative Corner: Stolen centrepieces and the Cyprus question.

I've always maintained that Greeks in the Diaspora make up a separate race, more akin to other migrants, to a migrant race, rather than to the modern Greeks living in Greece. The binding characteristic of the Greeks of the Diaspora is in the way that they embrace the archetypal Greek identity, an identity based more on a static interpretation of ancient Greekness, rather than a Greekness that develops and changes (and therefore risks becoming less Greek or a different kind of Greek as it responds to the pressures of this new globalised age). In this way, the Greeks of the Diaspora are either to be praised (for their persistence in maintaining traditional ideals at risk of being forever lost) or to be laughed at (for their comedic grip on the past, above all else, above even the present).

It's a kind of death this insistence on tradition and culture. I also find it is a way of degrading what the modern Greek has become. As if he/she has fallen from grace.

[Note to thalassa_mikra: I couldn't comment at your blog, so I respond with this, here. How's the flower arrangement coming along? ;-)]