An explanation is due to those who have visited these pages, read some texts, came back, read some

more, then came back again and found nothing! The texts in these pages started off as an experiment; first they were written in Greek, then translated in English and subsequently presented in the form of a blog. Then they grew too much for a blog and they were transferred to what people in the know call persistent pages; some remarks were put in as notes, but then the notes were incorporated into the text because they grew too much also. When the pages grew even more, they were taken off the internet, re-worked, and put up again here (some of them). Through all of these transformations, a feeling persisted that something was amiss. So, I stopped and asked myself, again, what it is I wanted to do. The answer to this question reflects the various transformation-stages of what I wrote and how I presented it. I wanted to write some ideas. This is what blogs are about, is it not? But I did not (and I do not) want a blog of ideas, for a number of reasons. Most importantly, I wanted to avoid the mistake I see in other peoples blogs, that is the airing of ideas without any substance: everybody has, at times, ideas worth airing but they are so rudely insignificant to the rest of the world! What actually makes someones ideas so insignificant for other people is that they lack depth and breadth, such that one could construct a kind of ideological model on which one could build further. (About the criterion of the universality of ideas, I could quote from Ezra Pounds The ABC of Reading, but I do not have the book handy; I trust you will consult it if you are interested in this matter.) This very weakness creates a certain advantage to the spreading of insignificant ideas: based on such a thin model, that one could actually stretch here and there and make it fit most situations, one could reach the hearts of so many people this is the reason little catching phrases are so popular with people. However, an honest creator does not want this to happen to his work or his ideas, because all the stretching and re-fitting rarely agrees with what he initially had in mind. Most people are not honest creators; they are pleased when their scattered ideas resonate with the needs of many people (as many as possible) and they care very little about the distortion that ensues in peoples effort to fit such ideas to their own emotional or mental needs. I do not agree with this attitude. Ideas should be presented in such a form that people can see whether they agree or disagree, without stretching, adapting, interpreting or in any other way raping them. This, in turn, means that ideas should be presented in a more substantial form, which is the presenters responsibility, and that they should be thought about and deeply felt, which is the receptors responsibility. On both sides of this coin, some things portend failure: not many people can present their ideas coherently enough in order for them to constitute a more or less model of something, even less are talented to do so in an elegant manner, and, on the side of the receptors, even less can absorb ideas coherently presented and understand the model behind them; some people are stupid and some other people are lazy; some are both! The champions of misrepresenting and misunderstanding, to bring an example, are the Americans. Their education is very thin on the ground and their analytical ability is well below that of the average European. It is for this reason that scattered ideas, snippets of wisdom, are very successful in the United States: they cannot produce anything else. Those that think they can, some representatives of academic institutions, for example,

usually take the analysis so far that they miss the point. (I have in mind concrete examples of learned academic papers on various disciplines of the humanities; the situation with science is slightly different.) Sartre once said, if you have something to say, write a book. I am sure he had a similar situation in mind. What, then, remains to be done? It seems, writing a book is indeed the only course open to someone who wants to be honest, who does not want to be misunderstood or mis-represented and who also wants his ideas not to end up stretched beyond recognition in order to fit every corner of someone elses soul! I am sure one can find some weak points with this position as I presented it, but I am also quite confident that none is strong enough by itself to render my initial thesis invalid. We must exclude poems, because they seem to be one of the most notable exceptions to this thesis, but they only seem to be, since by definition they do not imply any general thesis about anything, except the creators general sentiment, which may or may not agree with the readers or which may or may not be noteworthy. Most other kinds of writing should obey these simple rules, which I have set above (and which may not be so clear to you but are very clear to me). However, a little more needs to be said in order to clear up the foundation on which this thesis rests. Why should a piece of writing, an airing of ideas, imply any kind of thesis about anything? In other words, what is wrong with little snippets of wisdom here and there, and the rest filled in by everyday chatter? This is an important question, but, thankfully, the answer is very simple: Because anything but a thesis about something and its declaration fails to fulfil my criteria for what I consider the main human activity, that is communication. Noise, chatter, unimportant babble, every-day talk is exactly that, but not communication. What is wrong with communication being non-communicative? Another important question, especially in view of the (undeniable) fact that it is quite acceptable among friends, for example; but in situations like that it serves a purpose: it promotes the bonds of friendship, it re-generates relationships, it does all kinds of things. But never does it create such bonds. Behind the (proper) communicative activity of people we see something which we do not see in many other kinds of interaction: we see their soul. This, I consider necessary, not merely sufficient, for human relations of any depth, any persistency and any importance. Is this not a very strict assumption about communication? Yes, it is and a correct one also. Surely, you can recall some friend or other who complained that in his family there was no communication; how is it possible, in a family, such a closely knit group of people, who see each other every day, who spend hours talking to each other, that there is no communication? It is possible, if nobody ever said anything which implied a thesis about something, if everyone only chattered. I am sure there are many writers who tried to remind us of such situations, but I can only recall Samuel Beckett now. Surely, not all communication is verbal or written; but this is the internet, and it is some texts we are talking about. That settles that, I presume! So, how does one write a book? Academic workers write their books in pieces: each chapter is presented as a paper to some audience, they consider the feedback, they

change or not some things in it, and when enough chapters have been presented and accepted by the (relevant receptors) community, they take a sabbatical and saw it all together with special academic thread. Not a bad way, if the subject lends itself to such treatment. Is my subject such? In some ways yes, in other ways no: it is, being a commentary about certain theses of people who have been adequately presented in the relevant literature. It is not, because I do not want to include extensive notes, that make the text, at the end of the day, ridiculous! Why do I have to support my thesis every 2 lines and mention who said what? I could not care less, actually. The only person I know who pulled this off successfully is Michael Dummett, writing about Frege. He wrote a 500 pages book without one reference; but, he knew what he was talking about and what he wrote had been the result of many years of toiling with the original texts, discussing, presenting, etc. A few other professors may have done it, some may even have done it as well as Dummett, but, in my mind, his writings are the paradigm of productive writing about someone elses theses! What does all this mean for the texts of Maiandros? It means you will not see them for some time, lest they become snippets to your heart and get stretched beyond the limits I have in mind when creating them. The river flows and awaits for no-one; but, despite the wise , it does not really matter if we quench our thirst today or tomorrow; the water is the same! (I am well aware that the above lines may seem to contain generalisations that do not meet with your approval, and that you may be itching to argue how wrong I am. Since I am convinced I am not wrong, and since the theses which you may disagree are so general that I might adapt them into something else before you can write I disagree, and since I am not writing about writing or, even, communication per se, but just expressed the views behind my endeavour, do not bother to disagree. Just go to the next piece of writing you want to read.)