A Eulogy – a few words concerning the tragic death of a young person, victim of an inhuman and dysfunctional society
The name of the young person is Orpheus( a pseudonym). He was 24 years old until a few weeks ago (April 2019), when his body was found on one of the beaches of Attica, near Athens. His relatives and the police were searching for him for 2 days. He had been going through another psychological crisis, the confusion of an inner desolation, the psychotic fear of personal persecution and the fragmentation of his identity as a living human being.
I know Orpheus since he was a baby, as well as his older brother. I became friends with their parents before the children were born, when I was living in London , doing my Ph.D. between 1983 and 1986.
For many years, I had predicted that Orpheus would eventually commit suicide, because he was a very sensitive and quiet person, with the physical appearance of a tall slim pale angel who from the start of his existence had been living with two ‘’immoral’’ and ‘’sinister’’ parents. They wanted him a broken and passive individual, a pretty toy to play with, who would shield them from their distorted phantasies, their sick fixation on wealth and their own childhood nightmares. They were eating the flesh of their children so that they wouldn’t consume their own, exactly like the primitive Neanderthals. This is a common social stigma in most Greek families, beginning with my own Greek family, the families of my Greek relatives, and those of my Greek friends and Greek acquaintances.