I am not sure that anyone really wants to read about my life story. Spending half one’s life in a foreign country is not an experience I would expect many readers to relate to. A lot of that time was not notable for exciting adventures. And my childhood, even after its unpromising start, was rather sheltered and privileged.
My mother was never very keen to talk about her past. She was the eldest daughter of a family in Gerolimin (Γερολιμήν), a small village near the end of a rocky peninsula. Only once did I visit my birthplace, and my mother did not want to come with me. She never told me who my father was, if indeed she even knew. I can only assume that she may have become pregnant through some stranger, maybe a visitor, a raider or a pirate. I suspect that she may have been no more than 15 years of age.
Although her family saw her through the days of my birth, she was soon after told that she could stay in the village no longer. The only chance for her - and me - was to find her way to a big city and look for work. She knew that she was not the first to suffer this fate.
The nearest big city was Cornith (Κόρονιθος), which would have been five days journey on foot, less if she could manage to get a few lifts in wagons along the road. She had been given an address where she could stay a few nights until she found work.
On appearing in a market place which specialised in finding domestic servants, she met a young couple, the wife being very pregnant. Fortune must have smiled on both the couple and us, because they were keen to take my mother on as support for the wife through her own delivery.
It turned out that this couple, both from well-connected families, had a few years earlier left their families to live in a commune of philosophers outside the main city walls. But they had started to outgrow the group, who in any case did not want babies howling when they were indulging in their philosophizing. During the pregnancy, the husband’s father died. He had been a busy trader in the city and its nearby port. The husband’s brother had his own business, and the family decided that the husband, whose name was Idomenes, should take over the father’s business. The couple therefore took this opportunity to leave the commune and return to the family home, which was now unoccupied, the other family members having died or moved out. Only a couple of old servants remained.
The first memories I have are of living in this house, sharing a small room with my mother, and playing with another boy of similar age who was the son of the owners of the house. He was called Gino, and the owners I knew as Uncle Ido and Aunt Pipi.
It struck me quite early on that I was not quite in the same class as Gino, especially when his father was around. Aunt Pipi seemed a very morose sort of person, often given to fits of sobbing. Through all this, my mother remained very calm and sweet to everyone, although she seemed to imply that I should try to be more like Gino.
Most of the time though, Gino was a good playmate; he was not one to indulge in mean behaviour or nasty remarks. In some things I followed him, but in others he followed me. I doubt if I could have been happier.
Sometimes I was left on my own, and I wondered about Aunt Pipi’s unhappiness. Eventually, I plucked up courage and went to comfort her. To my surprise, she responded to my weak attempts at kind words, and I found I had acquired an unexpected new friend.
Over a number of months, she seemed to get better, and soon she took to telling stories to Gino and me. We really enjoyed this and discovered that she knew about many things. On occasions, she would fetch a book and read stories from it. I think some of the stories were about old times and heroes, although many were about crazy gods and magic animals.
I asked her to show me the books and explain the letters. This made me very keen to learn, and I gradually learnt to read. I was faster at this than Gino, though he did his best to keep up; but reading was something that my own mother found very difficult.
When Gino and I were a bit older, we were allowed outside the house to explore the neighbourhood. We found this absolutely fascinating, although not all the people we met were kind like my mother, Ido and Pipi. But we could not help being inquisitive about all the things that were going on.
But all this had to come to an end. Ido wanted Gino to go to the same school that he had attended, and I as part of the servant class could not go. I had to help my mother with the housework, just as all the other boys of my class did. This was a great disappointment, but Ido and Pipi agreed that I could try and read some of the books that they had collected. From these I learnt a lot, possibly as much as Gino would learn in school, except for the contact with other boys of my age.
One day Ido needed some messages to be sent to another trader in the city, and I was asked to deliver the messages. This I was able to do from the knowledge of the city I had picked up on our earlier jaunts, and from a map I had seen in one of the books. Soon I was taking messages several times each day, and sometimes travelling down to the port and back in one of the wagons carrying goods. I picked up a lot of what was going on. There seemed to be a big increase in trade with a foreign country, which, I learnt, was called Germania and which was situated on a large island twenty days sailing to the north.
I carried on in this way for two years or so, and was soon able to tell Ido things that I had heard on my errands.
This was suddenly interrupted when an epidemic hit the port of Cornith, and I was infected with the disease. When I got back to our house I was put into a separate room where food and water was left outside the door, and which I had to collect when the other people were out of the way. For what seemed like ages I hardly wanted to move from the bed, let alone eat anything. I can remember my mother and the others calling out to me through the closed door.
My best encouragement came from Gino who used to tell me each evening what he had learnt in school, which interested me. One day I remember him saying “Chris, don’t die – we love you too much”. This was better than my mother, who always seemed very fearful and despairing. In the end I did start to recover, and I asked for some books to read. I probably overdid the reading, because one night I woke up with sudden revelation about life. I wanted to write it down before I forgot it.
Before long I had exhausted the family’s library and had scribbled a lot of comments, in very small handwriting, because the only paper to write on was the back of old contract notes.
When I was fully recovered, Ido decided I could start being trained as an apprentice trader. I accompanied Ido on many visits to other traders. I learnt how to record deals, and how the traders arrived at deals, even when they did not speak the same language.
Over time I met certain of the same traders on many occasions and became able to prepare things for Ido to set up the deals. I realized that it would help to be able to understand, and perhaps speak, some of the foreigners’ languages. There were translators in the markets and at the port, but not enough to interpret all the conversations; in any case they asked for high fees.
Some of the foreign traders had assistants who were young like myself, and in time I struck up friendships with them. When there was time to spare, we would teach each other some of our languages. In this way I became able to do some interpreting myself in the Germanians’ language, and in a few others as well, but they were more difficult.
One day one of the Germanian lads asked me if I was partly Germanian myself. He said that I had features that were quite common in their country. I said I did not think so, but as I did not know my father, it might be true.
I had settled into what I thought would be my life’s work as an assistant trader when there was a political upheaval in the city. One of the philosophical schools, who admired the way that a neighbouring city was governed, said that there should be a stricter system of class segregation, in order to forestall a possible takeover of the government by the lower classes, which outnumbered the upper class citizens by a long way.>
However from what I learnt about this other city, they used to have every year a ‘cull of helots’, the purpose of which was to remove any potential leaders from the lower classes who might lead a revolt. By that time it became clear to me that my mother and I would be classed as helots, as this included most people who had migrated to the city from the surrounding countryside and become servants and workers.
Anyhow, I was not destined to spend much time worrying. Ido decided that I should go on a ship to Germania, where one of his main trading partners lived. What I did not realize that this would mean a long absence and I would not see my mother and my own country again for 32 years.
When my ship reached Germania I was met by a man called Herman, who I had met in Cornith once or twice in my work as a trader. I was to stay with Herman’s family in a village not far from the port. The name of the port was Torshaven and the village Hermansburg – I later understood that it was a village belonging to Herman’s family, and that he was the chief, or head man. He had a wife and a large number of sons and daughters. Most people in the village seemed to be related to his family.
My role was to be tutor to Herman’s two oldest sons, Baldrich and Eberhart. They were only slightly younger than myself. Herman wanted them to have the knowledge needed to gradually take over his business, which was shipping grain and other agricultural produce to Cornith.
It was clear that this business was successful, as Herman’s house, although built in a combination of wooden beams and packed mud mixed with straw, and roofed only by reeds, was large and well-appointed. In fact all of Hermansburg was smarter than any of the neighbouring villages.
My tutoring duties were confined to the late afternoon and evenings, as my pupils were required to work, preparing cargoes for shipping, during the daylight hours. I was sometimes asked to help in the daytime work, but only when there was extra work at the time of harvests, or when some of the other workers were sick or unavailable.
It was very awkward to start with, as my language skills had to be improved quickly, and the boys thought I was a very strange person. To begin with, I only had Greek clothes, and had to get used to wearing Germanian ones. But things went better when I was invited to join in with some of the games they played with other boys in the village.
Just as in Cornith, many people assumed that I was some sort of Germanian because of my facial features and colouring; in time I was hardly ever recognised as foreign. But to me, Germanian customs seemed very different to those in Cornith. Everybody seemed to be very jolly and hearty most of the time, though they often got into fist fights. In the evenings they would drink beer, in much greater quantities than the Greeks drank wine. There did not seem to be any councils or government – the head man of each village had total power. There were certainly no elections. When one head man died, there seemed to always be a successor lined up.
The subjects I tried to teach were primarily to do with the trading business; simple mathematics, economics and geography. However the boys picked these up quite quickly, and I started to add in a bit of general philosophy, science and even some simple Greek phrases – as they would need these to do business in Cornith and other Greek ports.
One thing I needed for my teaching was surfaces to write on. Herman’s family did not have books like Ido and Pipi. People wrote messages on pieces of slate, which would often be wiped clean. Not many people could read or write at all. I found an old man in the port who showed me a book; the symbols were not the same as the Greek letters, but they corresponded fairly well. The paper was not made out of flattened rushes as in Cornith, but of a very thin woven cloth that was dipped in a chalky liquid and then dried. I decided that this was something I needed more of.
When I was sent away from Cornith, I had managed to take with me some of the notes I had scribbled in small writing when I was studying Ido’s books. I thought that it would be good business if I could write my ideas out in the Germanian language, in much more readable writing, and on larger sheets of paper. This would enable me to find more work once Eberhart and Baldrich had learnt just about everything I knew. I could possibly make some copies, and maybe even a version in my own language.
With Herman’s permission, the boys and I set out for an inland town called Guetersdorf where the paper was made, and we bought some new paper. Having this paper meant I could also send letters to my mother when a ship was due to sail to Cornith. However it was many months before I received any reply or news from Cornith.
The new regime was not doing very well. Its class policies had upset the previous spirit of collaboration between the classes. The rulers were sending police into many homes to enforce their new rules. The regime’s reaction to the downturn was to try and apply their policies even more strictly. The first letter I received was written by Ido, with small contributions from Pipi and Gino. Pipi said that my mother had asked her to send her love. However it seemed fairly clear that I should not plan to hurry home, and life in Germania was not bad at all.
When Eberhart and Baldrich finished, I was asked to stay on and teach three of the younger children, two more boys and a girl. Later I tutored some of their cousins from the village, and also travelled to the port one day each week to tutor some young men there. While on those visits, I was asked a lot of questions as to how trading operated in Cornith, and about some of the other nations that Cornith traded with besides Germania.
I started to spend more days at the port, discussing with the traders there how their exporting and importing could be improved. Overall, I spent 12 years in Hermansburg and Torshaven, and they were happy years. However not only was I getting older, but I was becoming an important person in my adopted home. But I was becoming less than popular among some of the traders, who thought that I knew too much, was usurping some of their influence, and might even be a Greek spy.
Two young men I had been helping in the port told me that they were from a different part of Germania, on the far east coast, and they were working in Torshaven to promote the produce of their area. One, Uwe, was a Saxonian, and the other, Mort, an Anglian. They told me that I would be welcome in their towns; although they were poor compared with most of Germania, they felt that they could learn to develop with my help.
So after two months or so, I saved up to buy Herman’s family a big gift, thanked him and his family, and made the journey eastwards with Uwe and Mort. To my surprise, Herman had a present for me too – a large amount of paper, which he had started exporting!
I got something of a shock when I arrived in the chief town of Segeburg, which lies in the Saxonians’ territory but near to the border with Anglia. Not only were the houses very mean, but there were many beggars in the streets. Uwe’s family had a slightly better house on the edge of the town, and this became my home to begin with.
Uwe’s father was a councillor for the town, but there were deep divisions between groups on the council. He was happy to have someone he felt he could talk to about his difficulties. I made one or two suggestions, which were luckily helpful. Things seemed to improve slowly.
The main problem seemed to be storage of grain and other products, particularly salt, for which there was a mine adjoining the town. I related how the store houses in Cornith were built out of stone and guarded day and night. We managed to work out a way by which stones could be lifted out of the mine, and together with some good beams of wood, erected into safe buildings.
This episode earned me much respect in the town, and I managed to earn some money for my efforts. With this money I decided to start a school; up until then there had only been small groups of children taught by old men. One of my first students was Mort’s sister, who was sent to Segeburg on Mort’s recommendation. Her name was Ingrid; she was extremely lively and not quiet and modest like most of the girls in both Segeburg and Torshaven.
It was not so surprising, then, that we became a couple. Before our marriage though, I had to make many visits to her home in the Anglian capital of Undelsheim, to meet her family. I became very fond of the people I met there, and resolved to spend some time each year teaching there as well as in Segeburg.
In both towns I tried hard to avoid upsetting the leading families and rulers. In time we learnt to trust each other, and, because of my background, I was able to help both the towns and the villages lift their productivity and living standards.
A further problem was the influence of religion in these places. There was a traditional religion with many gods, but each village or part of a town seemed to concentrate on a different set of the same gods; they would sometimes overlap, but the priorities differed. I made attempts to get the leaders to meet each other and try to write down some truths that all could accept. They were interested to hear about the different schools of philosophers in Cornith. I started to write down some of the points on which we agreed. This led to much greater collaboration between the villages and the towns, and also between Saxonia and Anglia.
As well as leading this busy life, Ingrid and I started a family. We had two boys and two girls. As I became older, I spent more of my time at home, writing up my ideas whenever I could obtain more paper. Some of my former students were keen to help me make copies of my books. I had written most in the local Anglian dialect, but we had made some copies in Greek as well as in the Germanian of Torshaven. We sent some Greek copies back to Ido in Cornith, and Germanian ones to Hermansburg and Torshaven.
One day I received a letter from Gino. He told me that many troubles had befallen Cornith. A neighbouring city had sent an army which had sacked Cornith and stolen most of its wealth. Ido was sick, possibly dying. Pipi was well, but much distressed. My mother was also well, but no longer the live wire she used to be. Gino had received some of my books. After the defeat, he had been elected to a new council charged with the recovery of the city’s fortunes, but there were many opposing factions on the council. He had heard reports of my successes in parts of Germania, and wondered if he could persuade me to return to Cornith and help him.
Although I was stirred to return, I realised that this would be problematical. Ingrid did not initially want to leave her own country, and the three elder children were totally against moving. It took nearly a year before we eventually decided to go, taking only our youngest daughter Lottie.
I was treated to several heart-warming farewells. The Anglians and Saxonians seemed genuinely sorry to see me go, although they realised that I would eventually die anyhow and they would have to learn to carry on without me sooner or later.
Altogether I spent 20 years in Segeburg and Undelsheim. Lottie was then 8, although the older children were 16, 14 and 12. I had confidence that my elder children would be well looked after by wider family members, and they would in time also contribute to the welfare of their people.
We arrived back at the port of Cornith on a misty morning in spring. To our delight there were quite a few citizens there to meet us, led by Gino and Pipi. Several of the other councillors spoke kind words of welcome. They had repaired a house, not far from Ido’s, where we could live. But the sad news was that Ido had died, but had in his last days recommended that I be welcomed back.
My mother was overjoyed to see me and meet the family. But she did not want to move in with us. She wanted to stay put and help Pipi and Gino.
My first tasks were to try and get over the poisonous atmosphere in the council. To do this, I started by getting agreement on the protocols to be followed in discussions and arguments. I had picked up some good ideas from the town council in Segeburg, where a staff was handed round and only the person with the staff was allowed to speak.
I also arranged that in every argument there should be at least one person who would take each of a set of roles. One person would propose the idea, but instead of having a single opposition we would examine and criticize the idea from each of five aspects: reason and logic; resources; manageability; individual motivation; and aesthetic value – the five sides of the Pentagon, an idea which I had developed from discussions with some elders I had met in Germania.
One key principle was to separate the personal biases of the councillors from the serious questions that needed to be asked. Taking on a role that was not their natural viewpoint was strange at first, but in time they learnt how to do it very well.
We also organised retreats and functions away from the council chamber, and I invited the councillors and their helpers to many social events at our house. We always invited Pipi, and one time she brought my mother along to help with the arrangements. This seemed to revive her interest in life, and she started to visit us more often and would look after Lottie.
I always tried to remain in the background in the council’s work. I often attended as an observer, but I always resolved to remain silent. Later on, the council decided to give me a role, as ‘president’. This meant that I didn’t have to be an active contributor, but I could - when asked - offer wise words, and if necessary, give a casting vote if opinion was equally split. When I did this, I always gave my reasons.
Now, however, I am retired. My mother and Pipi are both very old, and may not live much longer. Gino is passing on his trading interests to his own sons, and has left the council. Cornith is nearly back to its old self, but without the hubris that it formerly displayed in relation to its neighbours and other nations. However while Germania is now almost as powerful as Graecaria, the situation in my birthplace has hardly changed at all.
This interview was held a few years before Christian’s death. The council asked for it to be held because Christian had been reluctant to speak much about his personal view of things, and the autobiography had only really covered matters to do with his life history. The council also asked for it to be recorded, and so a team of scribes was present.
The interviewer was Theogenes, a young demagogue and recent top student at the school of rhetoric.
Theogenes: I am honoured to talk with you today, Christian, as you are the citizen who has, without doubt in the minds of almost all people in this city, made the biggest contribution to our recovery from our recent disasters. Without at any time playing the role of autocratic leader, you have managed to persuade people with many different agendas to work together. Some have in fact said that you have led us brilliantly from behind. Is that how you see your influence?
Christian: Thank you for those kind words. The way I see it is that I am like a shepherd. The nimblest sheep will always go ahead, finding their best way forward, and the others will follow. I have not aimed to set a direction in which the leaders do not want to go. I can suggest, and perhaps whistle if things seem to be going badly. But I have neither the carriage of a great military leader, nor the fluency of a great orator.
What experience I have of guiding cities towards a better future has always been as an outsider. In Germania I was regarded as a rather strange foreigner, until perhaps my last few years there. That may have been an advantage, as no-one thought I was out for my own personal gain. My most useful personal asset has been my ability to build up and retain a one-to-one personal relationship with many people of very different character and disposition.
Theogenes: Many people say that you have a magic gift, which leads some to imagine that you are not an ordinary mortal. There are many stories about your birth, of which I suspect very few are accurate. Can you put the record straight?
Christian: Now that my dear mother has passed on, I can perhaps now be a bit more open. As you know, my mother was from a village far away near the tip of the peninsula. The village was not only primitive; it was ruled by a feudal family and it was subject to attacks by pirates and passing sailors. As a bright young girl, she was subject to much misuse. If the rulers had felt that her baby’s father was one of them, she might not have had to leave. My mother said that she was genuinely unsure who the father was, but as you see from my lighter colouring, a passing sailor seems the most likely.
So any talk of a miraculous birth is nonsense; in fact the circumstances of my birth put me at the very bottom grade of any ranking by birth. What accounts for my ability to learn quickly, I am not sure. Many children in the countryside seem backward, and in-breeding has been suggested as the cause. Perhaps my advantage was in having had the opposite ─ of extreme out-breeding.
What might amuse you, though, is the nickname people gave me in my first few years in Germania. I was known as the ‘Wunderkind’, or ‘prodigy’. It’s clear that this is how I must have seemed to them. But as I look back on my early days, I think that the success that I had was due to my having had to face frequent challenges. Becoming a tutor in a foreign country at the age of 17 was certainly one of them.
Theogenes: That is a good story; let’s hope some of the young leaders here who have found their way through the city’s struggles can do half as well, and keep your legacy alive in future years. But to move on, we would all like to know where you got so many ideas from. There seems to have hardly ever been a situation where you could not offer some thought that in turn set the leaders off in finding a way to go forward.
Christian: I read a vast amount in my early days. I was lucky because both Idomenes and Xanthippe, with whom we lived, had been members of the Kepoics. Idomenes had made many notes, which he allowed me to read. He also had a few copies of books from the classical philosophers. Reading these was a struggle, but I persisted. Idomenes and Xanthippe had also started to look outside the Kepoics, and had been in discussions with the Peristylians, who as you may know walked round and round the temples underneath the columns while holding intense discussions. Perhaps what pushed me into thinking my own thoughts was Idomenes’s confusion over the differences between the two sects. As you know, I spent a lot of time helping Idomenes with his business, so I was often his sounding board when we were waiting for something to happen. Had there not been some difficulty in determining which sect made more sense, I would not have had that mental challenge.
When I got to Germania, I found that I had a lot more ideas than most people there. But they were not all good ideas, especially to start with. I learnt more from the failure of the bad ideas than I did from the successes. I also realized that having too many ready-made ideas was dangerous, as there were always particular circumstances which hadn’t applied in previous situations. So the art was more in adaptation than in having a bank of ideas to start with. The same applied when I came back to Cornith.
Theogenes: But what about the Pentagon? You have said that you originally picked up that idea from someone in Germania.
Christian: That’s right, and what I did was an example of the adaptation I just mentioned. I had been wondering for some time why some people in the Saxonian and Anglian areas, both men and women, wore five-sided or five-pointed ornaments. Eventually I found an old man called Ruegener who told me that it was a mix of two things: one was the five-sided pattern of many flower petals; the other was the five main gods they worshipped, which also gave their names to the five days of their week. Some of the more elaborate jewelled pentagons I saw had symbols on each of the five points, one each for knowledge and wisdom, beauty and pleasure, difficulty and struggle, ritual and duty, and society and family.
I realized with all the big changes to their society that the growth of trade was bringing about, they needed to expand their views of life to cover their new pragmatic situation. But I wanted to keep symbols that already had significance. I based my version of the Pentagon on the sides rather than the points, and emphasized the difference between what was inside and near the Good Spirit, and what was outside and to be avoided.
Of course the number five is also special in that we humans have five fingers on each hand. And it is involved in the golden ratio of architectural proportions which we Greeks call ‘phi’.
Theogenes: This all brings me nicely onto my next question. What are the main differences between Cornith and the other Greek cities, and Germania?
Christian: It’s tempting for Greeks to label the Germanians as barbarians, whether noble or otherwise. Sure, they don’t have our background in philosophy and science. But they have their ancient histories, myths and heroes much as we have. Although the language does not vary that much between the parts I visited, there are a lot of separate tribes, each with its own assembly – they call it a ‘thing’ – which includes all men who carry arms. Some tribes are organized into confederations which have the same gods and general principles; these confederations meet once each year to settle any unresolved disputes and to discuss how to face any common problems or enemies.
Other than in the port cities that have foreign trade, there is very little ability to read and write. Their writing is quite different to ours, and most examples that I saw were on memorial stones. Almost all the houses are built of wood and clay mixed with straw; their roofs are also mainly of straw. However they have plenty of iron tools and weapons, and their horses are well shod. In many villages, the local smith is a person of great influence. In the port cities they have very good ships, as they are good workers in both wood and metal. They have good paper made from cloth. Their pottery and glass, though, is primitive, and only a few places near the ports have potters wheels.
From what people told me, the Germanians have not occupied their island for very many generations. It did seem to me that the population was quite sparse, with long distances from one village to the next, and many forests in between. For that reason they have not had many wars. Many young men hunt animals in the forests, and for some this is a great sport as well as a source of food. But in spite of all this, the people are very hard working and extremely keen to learn new ways of doing things more economically. It may be that in a few generations, their leading cities could rival our own. We would be wise to have good alliances with them.
Theogenes: You mentioned that they had heroes and ancient myths. It seems that you became something of a hero to them, without leading them to success in war – or slaying dragons!
Christian: I tried hard not to play the hero of old, and instead work through others rather than lead the way myself. I wonder what those heroes of old ever achieved in the longer-term, except a place in fables and myths. A city or nation may achieve temporary glory through individual heroism, but the golden years are often followed by bleak years when a hero from a rival nation, with newer war technology and tactics, reduces a city to rubble. I do have great respect for heroes who defend a city or nation, though.
Theogenes: But are not wars an inevitable part of history? Do they not provide the challenge that the heroes can rise to meet?
Christian: I think there are always threats of war, but the smart policy is to avoid war for as long as possible. It is in peace, and with trade, that nations progress. Wars destroy and cost; some cities never really recover. Cynically, I can see just two arguments for war. One is that they can reduce surplus population – soldiers die in battle, civilians from the resulting famine or plague. The other is that they supply incentives for technical innovation; but so, I would claim, does trading.
My recommendations for avoiding war are first, not to strive too hard for – and show off – great wealth or luxury, such as many cities do with temples and public buildings. Envy, and seeing a city as wasteful, dissolute and irresolute in defence, is what encourages opportunistic enemies to risk an attack. Secondly, a successful city needs to work hard at making and maintaining alliances, helping where necessary the economy of weaker cities without presuming to rule them or expecting them to pay homage. It is sometimes better if tribute flows in the opposite direction to normal!
Theogenes: Some people have noted your great ability to have good one-to-one relations and understanding with many people of different opinions. Can you say something about how you acquired this skill?
Christian: I did not start out with this skill. My first influence was my friendship with Eugenes, with whom I was brought up. When we explored the city as boys, he had a habit of bothering, with many questions, men we came across who were working at their trade, in spite of the fact that they were usually trying to get on with their work. They did not seem to mind, as he had a way of extracting a joke about almost anything. I think it was his ability to see things from their perspective. Where he picked it up I have no idea; it just seemed natural to him. I just went along with it all and watched what happened. When I started to help his father in the trading business, I just said the same sort of things that Eugenes would have said, kept a happy face, and tried to put myself in the other person’s position.
Germanians like this approach just as much. They are an easygoing people most of the time. The men drink a lot of beer in the evenings, sing a lot of songs, and enjoy getting merry. They would not like to do business with someone who was very serious about everything. It was harder to know how to talk to the women, who were often very quiet. I had to learn from my female students. They were different from women here; much more athletic, and often as strong as the men.
I would say that humour is one of the best antidotes to fear and uncertainty about the future. We are wrong if we expect things to go as we plan them; we are better accepting fate cheerfully.
Theogenes: I hesitate to break up the happy memories, but now I have a more serious question. I know there are a few people in this city who think that you are what they call ‘forcing the pace’, and are trying too hard to drag everyone, willingly or unwillingly, into the next century. They are afraid that the city is losing its ‘old certainties’. What would you say to them?
Christian: I have recognized this, and am aware that I am sometimes treading a fine line. In Germania, the complaint was the other way round; some said I was a drag on progress, but in my view I was just making sure that they did not trip over themselves in the rush.
If you ask the ordinary man or woman in the street here in Cornith, you might get the same sort of opinion. The ordinary people here do not have so much to lose; they suffered in the sack of the city, and many felt downtrodden by the aristocrats. I would say that saving the ‘old certainties’ is a lost cause; the great majority have moved on, realizing that we cannot return to the previous golden age – which was not so golden for that many.
I am adopting the view that if the brakes need to come on, they will be applied from below, rather than above. A mass popular protest against too much change will be the feedback that I take notice of.
Theogenes: Are you optimistic about the future? What are your hopes and fears?
Christian: I do have many fears, which I will come to shortly. But my hopes are for steady and sustainable progress towards a fair society, both here and in Germania, and over a number of generations rather than overnight. I hope that my sons and other pupils overseas will prove up to the task of leading their people to better things in the Spirit of Good. I also hope that we can, over time, reach out to other nations on the planet, pass on our message about the Spirit, and show that they too can enjoy the benefits that we have.
My hopes are dependent on building up of a large enough – and widespread enough - movement of enthusiasts for the Spirit so that reverses in one city or nation do not mean the loss of the whole movement, but that the movement can fight back and rebuild its strength.
Most of my fears are for the immediate future, and perhaps the next one hundred or two hundred years. We still have, even in the Greek-speaking nations, several would-be military conquerors who want to become heroes and get into the history books. Some cities also have impatient leaders and demagogues who work up mass hysteria. It only takes one such leader to gain power and this city and many others could be reduced to a status of vassals, and our culture slip back into the dark ages I am always warning everyone about.
As I have already said, wars can be disastrous for cities; in my opinion Cornith escaped very lightly from the recent raids.
Another threat, more serious in some nations than others, is over-population. Over history, there have been many wandering tribes moving across the continent to escape overcrowding in their homelands. These wanderings often result in the eradication of the existing civilizations. There is always the temptation, if a nation does not have enough land to house and feed its people, for breakaway groups from within that nation to try to steal someone else’s land. Not many peoples have taken the risk of sailing into the unknown; this may have been the defining factor in the rise of the Germanians.
It is a bad situation for people who occupy a narrowing peninsula, like the one west of Cornith. A wandering tribe that invades by land has nowhere further to go.
My remaining hope is that we can ride all these tempestuous waves of migration and still thrive; not necessarily as the pure race of former days, but of a well-mixed community which includes whoever comes to our nation and helps it to progress.
Theogenes: This leads to my last question. What do you think will be your legacy? Can your ideas last for generations, or might they over time become regarded as just another philosophy from the home of so many philosophies?
Christian: I think that it is the Good Spirit, and not my own reputation, that should be my legacy. I hope I have helped people see the Spirit, and have encouraged some, both leaders and ordinary people, to put the Spirit into practice. I did not invent it. I am just a ‘contributing author’.
As I have said, adaptation to circumstances, traditions, places, and times is essential. Whatever I write should never be regarded as the last word. Revelation of the Spirit has come to many people in the past and it will appear again to many more in future.
I recommend that any of my writings that survive should be reviewed, by a symposium of representatives from as many nations as are interested, for relevance to their time. New writings may need to be added, and some existing parts – because of our very partial understanding of how the planet and the universe work – may need to be removed. This should happen at least every five generations, or every hundred years if it happens that the writings survive for that long.