If it is proved that three men who stole a piece of piping are responsible for the gas explosion that flattened a building in Plaka on September 25, the six victims will be added to the long list of the fallen in the war that those who are indifferent to the consequences of their actions have declared on society.
From Plaka to the train collision at Tempe, the forest fire at Mati and the Marfin bank branch burned by protestors, from the Express Samina shipwreck to the Violanta biscuit factory, from the national roads to our doorstep, the common denominator is the irresponsibility and inadequacy of state agencies and the indifference of individuals, a mindset of “I do my thing and damn everyone else.”
And so, we steal part of a gas pipe from a building in which people are sleeping, we don’t repair dangerous faults in our factory, we leave our shift early, we throw a molotov cocktail into a bank with people in it, we don’t carry out our duties conscientiously, we park in places that obstruct others, we don’t collect our dog’s poop from a neighbor’s door, we watch a soccer match on TV as our ship heads for the rocks, we drive dangerously, we cheat and steal and lie whenever it suits us.
The instances in which irresponsibility and indifference toward others cost lives are countless. And they do not involve solitary individuals and “accidents,” they are a structural element of a culture of self-centeredness that has taken hold: We find excuses for anything that we do – either because we feel cheated, or because we were not taught to care about others – whereas the suffering of others is not our business. Indeed, they may even deserve it, as members of a society that deprives us of what we want.
I am generalizing, of course. It is certain that most of us are not like this, otherwise society would be much worse, a jungle in which each would be a mortal danger to others. And yet, indifference to the consequences of our actions is so widespread that we have shaped a society that is very dangerous. It’s not that life, as a rule, doesn’t involve danger, it is that in our country a general indifference, a lack of foresight and a plethora of excuses, lead to unnecessary dangers, to more victims than one would expect in a country the size of Greece and with the living standards of the Greeks.
Indicative of this is that in 2024 half the deaths (48%) from road traffic accidents were recorded in urban areas, compared to the EU average of 38%. What does this say about our infrastructure, policing and driver responsibility? The role of the police is evident by their effectiveness when they do their work: In 2025, when they got serious about traffic accidents, the number of deaths declined by 22%. If the laws in all spheres were enforced adequately, then deaths by negligence would be reduced, crime would be curbed, and corruption would be uncovered before it poisoned all of society.
Now the excuse of the guilty is, “Everyone does it,” while the innocent complain that they always have to pay the price of others’ crimes. The latest revelations of large scale tax evasion, money laundering and rigged basketball games simply confirm the general feeling that corruption rules, from the nightclub bouncers enforcing the law of the night as if it were their right, to government and state officials getting rich off their position, to the opposition party politicians who invest in easy, false promises instead of speaking of the need for us all to get serious.
The worst thing, though, is not that everyone does as he likes, it is that all this contributes to our not trusting, and therefore not respecting, others. “They’re all part of the system,” we say. We are shaping a society that lacks the values which kept the Greeks going in difficult times. The pettiest of criminals claims that he is a reflection of society, as if this were an excuse. And the rest of us shake our heads in silence, as if condemned, as if unable to change our fate.