Aristotle Onassis – an ideal type of a modern “Neanderthal” – Epilogue (a)
We left “Olympic Airlines” for our “epilogue”,because I believe that it represents the business venture of Aristotle Onassis which mostly reflects the “one-dimensional” and “ruthless” personality of this greek shipping magnate(Neanderthal), but also the “fixation” of modern greeks to mythologize that which is “mediocre” and “false” in society.Examining various facts concerning “Olympic Airlines”,we become aware of the great “chasm” which exists between “modern greek myth-making” and “modern greek realities”(at all levels),as well as of the enormous “hypocricy” and “amorality”* which Onassis exercised in his life,since he always pretended to be a “down to earth” greek,who adored the greek culture(ancient and modern),who valued highly his “greek ethnicity” and was deeply in love with the natural beauties of Greece.I believe that all modern Greeks today have the “habit” of expressing this type of worship for anything which is greek;how authentic and real this feeling is,only “they” themselves know!!!
In essence,Onassis initiates his shipping activities in the beginning of the 1930s in Argentina,when he buys with his first money 2 old steamboats,which he names them “Socrates” and “Pinnelope” in honour of his parents.We Greeks,are always “first” in these acts of “superficial family sentimentality”!!But Aristotle Onassis soon realises,that the “big money” in the future ,will come from transporting “oil” by the various ocean lanes.As a consequence ,almost all his next moves in the shipping sector would be acquiring oil ship-carriers and transporting oil,especially from the oil producing countries of the Middle East.During this same period(1930s),he bought 10 merchant vessels from a Canadian company for 120,000 american dollars.At the same time,he registers all his ships in Panama(not in Greece),where the tarrifs and taxes are much lower than those of Argentina.In 1938,he builds his own oil carrier at the shipyards of Sweden,the “Ariston”,with a volume capacity of 15,000 tons (p.2.
There are two basic reasons why I have chosen Aristotle Onassis as an ideal type of a modern “Neanderthal”;one is personal and the other is more general. The first reason has to do with the older son of the woman friend to whom I have dedicated all those personal letters in my site. The son had been my student since he was 12 years old until the time he went abroad for his university studies. His father, who is a truly successful businessman, had only once given him a book as a present(from what I know), and that was when he was 17 years old. This particular book was the biography of Aristotle Onassis, and his son revealed to me that his father wanted him by reading this book to acquire the “proper guidelines” in becoming “socially successful” and of course “financially powerful”. “At that time”, the son considered his father΄s gesture as strange, while I don΄t think he ever read the book.