Translator: Robert Tucker Reviewer: Chryssa Takahashi
I feel a knot in my stomach,
not because I'm speaking in front of an audience of ambitious young people,
not because it's the first time I've stood on this red spot.
I'm afraid, that in one or two years the video of this speech
will be proof of my personal failure.
I'm afraid that I will have returned to the world of law and order.
That would mean a glass office,
in a rainy European city,
I will have become another graphic young idealist
which landed short,
being trapped in an economic dead-end and forced to drop
grand plans and valuable partners.
I'm afraid that - I rather see people,
family friends in Luxembourg, telling me,
'I told you so, Greece is a done deal.'
It was the same people that called me crazy,
when, in 2011, I decided to return to Greece.
To Greece that hurts them, wherever you travel.
To Greece, which devours her own children.
To Greece, that's only for your vacation.
What gives me strength now, however,
is that from the first day I returned to Greece,
the stereotypes with which I had grown up
as a woman of the Greek diaspora were overturned.
I arrived in Greece, that day.
This was the banner that was carried at a rally of the Indignants.
Democracy, I thought, will be reborn in Greece.
From the first days I started an adventure:
to find answers to the stereotypes.
Starting from this, which triggered my curiosity most:
that in Greece there is no civil society.
I started to map out NGO's, to take part in actions,
to join groups.
I started the Elliniko Theatro, a non-profit organization
for the promotion of Greek culture abroad.
I travelled to ten countries,
I set up marathon readings, of 'The Iliad', 'The Odyssey', 'The Republic'
with 200, 500 people of all ages and nationalities.
I toured with Socrates' 'Apology' in countries such as the Ukraine, Mexico.
I travelled throughout Greece, to schools, to universities, to theatres, to squares.
We worked at urban reinvigoration through the network 'Imagine the City'.
I saw the exhibitions 'Imagine the City' giving pulse to local communities
in ten cities in Greece.
I overturned the stereotype within me.
However, I realized that civil society in Greece
remains blocked institutionally.
It is suffocated within legal and institutional frameworks
that don't allow people
to be creative.
I saw initiatives spark only to die out,
actions develop only to have no measurable results,
people becoming exhausted before they succeed
in implementing their ideas for the benefit of society.
I saw civil society being ignored by the government
locally, nationally and at the European level.
A feeling of uselessness overcame me; no matter how many actions we develop
in health, in education, in culture, in the environment,
we are tiring ourselves dealing with the effects of the crisis
rather than the actual causes.
I was overcome by the futility, disillusioned.
A year ago, I collapsed, both mentally and physically.
I could see no reason in getting out of bed.
I felt like all my energy had dried up.
And at that point, as I sank into my own personal chaos,
I watched the media all around the world reproduce the same character,
the same word, for my country.
'Chaos' is etymologically related to the Greek verb 'lose'.
And actually, I think every one of us has experienced a loss.
We have been passing through the five stages of grief.
We have passed through denial, 'don't owe', 'won't pay',
to an intense state of anger.
We have experienced a rage that has stemmed from a deep sense of injustice.
We asked for negotiation and renegotiation.
We fell into depression.
But I believe that we are now in a very similar state
to the fifth stage of grief,
which is none other than acceptance.
Acceptance is also associated with 'chaos',
because when you accept a loss, you're left with a hole.
And this hole is a nothingness.
From nothingness, you can create anything.
Dee Hock, founder of the colossus Visa Credit,
invented the term 'chaordic',
which characterizes this field between chaos and order.
Beyond chaos reigns doom and destruction;
beyond order, control and oppression.
In nature, all innovation goes on in this space.
In chaordic space.
Between chaos and order.
There, non-linear solutions are created
and new connections made.
Therefore, in any transition from the old to the new,
we see a divergence characterized by chaos,
until the creation of a new possibility
that puts things in order and through convergence,
creates a new reality.
What innovation, though, can come out of this chaos?
I made an attempt to unite the two theories
and this is what came to me.
Maybe we did indeed pass from loss, from chaos
and now are close to acceptance.
So we are one step from a great innovation.
I won't talk to you about innovation in terms of 'start up' and 'mobile up';
others can do that much better than I.
From the fields of technology I would like to keep the characteristic of 2.0,
which characterizes the second generation Internet.
Applications such as Facebook and Wikipedia
which allow participation, interaction, co-creation,
and are open source.
As science and technology take off,
we see our social and political principles crumble.
Could it be time to deal with social innovation?
What constitutes political innovation?
If we really want to innovate,
we need to get rid of what we think we know
and to adopt
the simple and yet so hard quote:
'All I know is that I know nothing'.
For example, a show of hands, how many of us know,
what the word 'democracy' means?
Very nice.
And how many of us believe that we experience democracy here in Greece?
Alright.
Democracy, if you think about it, is a social innovation.
A new concept, created, developed, to serve
the specific needs of a society.
Originating from our homeland and since developed and tested,
above all else, its value recognized, as well as the suffering that results
where it is lacking.
Today, throughout the world,
we see citizens disenchanted by politicians.
People divorced from public decision-making processes.
Experts call this phenomenon a democratic deficit.
And it exists even in the most developed countries.
In our country we have a deficit in our finances
which is known worldwide.
But, is there another deficit, not measured in numbers?
We see policy implementations
which reflect less and less the standpoint of Greek citizens,
often offending our intelligence,
our social cohesion, even our human dignity.
And you know what?
This all went on prior to the crisis.
It was cultivated during good times for our country.
Might it not be that the crisis is an opportunity
to review our state institutions?
To recreate,
to rethink what democracy means?
To create a new State?
Perhaps our country could become a new cradle of democracy?
This is a question that preoccupies not only me
but also many friends lately.
A year ago we started a grand design,
a social project, called 'State 2.0'.
A second generation state, and as you can see,
the subtitle is exactly what I had on my banner two years ago.
Our vision is to create, in Athens,
an international research and innovation centre for policy and democracy,
and to develop Greece as a model of applied democracy.
So we create a mainly physical but also digital platform
for exploring the concept and the implementation of democracy.
We develop new procedures which will minimize
the democratic deficit in our country and will recreate the concept
which is so valuable.
We go beyond party ideologies, political beliefs, to focus
on designing new procedures.
And we start from the basic contract, the social contract, here in Greece.
The contract that defines the relationship
between citizen and State.
We start with 'Constitution 2.0',
a scientifically structured process through which Greek citizens
will create a new constitution for Greece.
Yes.
A new constitution for Greece.
(Applause)
You have applauded yourselves, because you yourselves will do the creating.
Well, in collaboration with leading researchers,
we design local workshops, editorial€ workshops, throughout Greece.
Quantitative and qualitative surveys, but also a summit,
in which hundreds of randomly selected citizens
will, over three days, create new constitutional principles
We don't know what the result of this process will be.
We know where we want to go, whether we get there, remains to be seen.
But we do know that it is a worthwhile course.
We recognize that there is not only what we know,
rather more there's what we don't know.
What we have not yet devised, what we haven't even imagined.
What the result will be, we don't really know.
What inspires me personally in this venture
is that alongside the constitution,
a broad information and citizen participation campaign
is being developed.
As well as cultural and scientific institutions,
such as a European Philosophy Festival,
an International Congress on Applied Democracy,
which are intended to reinstall the words 'city', 'citizen', 'culture'
'politics', 'state', which in our language are cognates
and should remain interdependent.
The details, I hope that we will find them out soon.
What I just wanted to share with you, is that the relevant projects
carried out at the global level,
were developed through chaos.
In Belgium, a thousand citizens enacted new laws
when their Government collapsed
and they were left without a Government for 589 days.
In Iceland, after bankruptcy, they developed a process
by which thousands of citizens created a new constitution for the country.
Their experience,
according to the people we work with,
classifies our own methodology as a world leader.
The search for principles that unite us as a society,
and not ideologies that disintegrate us,
mobilizes me to invest time and energy.
To integrate with my fellow citizens,
to convince financiers, to deal with the media.
I alternate daily between chaos and order.
Chaos challenges me to take chances, to become exposed.
To consider solutions, which, by their nature,
cannot emerge in the world of absolute order,
where I lived until recently.
Chaos, it frightens me.
Recently, I've been getting vertigo.
I realize, however, that here, now, on the brink of the abyss,
what is required by each of us personally,
but also from all of us together, is a bold jump.
And this jump implies chaos.
It's into a vacuum and it causes dizziness.
It requires extending our thinking level, responsibility in our spoken word,
integrity in connection with our actions.
One thing is certain: Our way of thinking until now,
'Relax, we're in Greece',
will bring about the same practices, that will bring the same results.
Desirable results for us and for our country
can come only from original acts
that come from original thoughts.
This is Greece.
And creative minds deserve to stay here.
And to contribute rather than fleeing to foreign surroundings to excel.
They deserve to stay here and bring order to our own society.
I think it's time to stop wasting our energy
combating the existing reality,
and to focus on creating a new model for our country.
This new model, of course, will have elements of order.
But I suggest that we, as individuals, keep up this highly progressive speed,
and don't ever sit back in tranquillity and the smoothness of order.
The path to any large, systemic change
passes through chaos to a new reality.
I therefore urge you to embrace chaos.
To seize its creative power.
I challenge you,
to recreate democracy.
To create a new State.
A second-generation State, for Greece and for the world.
Thank you.
(Applause)