Aside from watching the daily dramas of
working-from-home, living room yoga, and balcony horticulture in the apartments
directly opposite my window (those opera glasses have come in handy), my world
view is filtered by screens these days.
Not the bug repelling kind (murder hornets please pass us by) but the
alphabet soup of LCD, LED, E-INK screens of iPads, Kindles, televisions,
phones. And filtered is the
apposite word. By and large, the
information I receive is passively or actively chosen by me. I choose the channels, the social media, the
news feeds, that feed (yes, feed) my hunger for information and opinion. But that nourishment is the alimentary
equivalent of choosing Pringles over Lay’s chips, yummy, but neither satisfying
my nutritional or informational needs.
So of course, I started thinking about
ancient Greece. (Please do not make the
leap from the chips—Pringles are not greasy.)
In our longing to reopen, to go
anywhere and do anything, to take our public spaces back, we are hankering
after the agora. Originally, the
agora was a public space in ancient Greek city-states where citizens would
gather to hear military or political pronouncements. Later, market stalls for commerce were set up
around the gathering place, subsequently inducing the artisans who made the
goods to erect workshops in the area. As
more people congregated, the agora became the principal place for athletic competitions,
artistic endeavors, political and religious pronouncements. It is thus we have two Greek verbs ἀγοράζω,
agorázō, "I shop", and ἀγορεύω, agoreúō, "I speak in
public."
Direct link to today’s clamor for
opening the shopping malls and political conventions.
In today’s world ( well, yesterday’s
world, pre-covid) our public spaces had already begun to shut down to the free
expression of opinions (louder voices prevailing) but it was still possible to
go to city centers or town squares and see and hear a diversity of people;
young, old, racially and ethnically heterogeneous, car drivers and cyclists
arguing loudly, authentic Gucci bags
warring with fake Gucci bags, used Starbucks cups littering the sidewalk; all
the bad and good cacophony of people being people out in public.
Which brings me to agapē. Agapē is a form of charity, in the sense of
altruistic, humanitarian behavior. It is the unselfish love of one human for
another, even for those who litter while carrying fake Gucci bags.
Right now, we are in a period of
transition. We need both the agora and
agapē in our lives. Once this pandemic
is finally under control, I want to resume my interaction with others different
from myself. I want, in place of
accidental exposure to the virus, accidental exposure to information I didn’t
curate for myself. But I also want to
see kindness, to be kind, to accept all that diversity out there as the proper
exercise of freedom in the public space.
And I really want to shop.
Agora, courtesy of Adnan Charara. Art Heals.
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