FROM MATHEMATICAL INTEGRALS TO ELLIPTICAL 1 APPROACHES OF SITUATIONS. THE CASE OF MANI & DEVELOPMENTAL DELAY

Our era is characterised by fragmentation. Fragmentation in the perception of events, fragmentation in their interpretation and fragmentation in the decisions. This fragmention is caused, even information overload, which to a certain point is misinformation. Under these conditions, politicians, as well as the average citizen, give up on in-depth penetration of information and on examining the purposes that led to its production. They also give up on the usefulness or harm that it causes and to whom, and its con nection to theenhancement or impairment of broader social aspirations. We can say that in most cases the fragmentation is “swallowed whole”. In other cases, however, fragmentation in situation management is produced by narrow political considerations of the data due to limited possibilities or utilitarian pursuits.

Mathematics, the science of cold logic, has established one of its most important terms, the Integrals. Through this term the all-round view of the elements under consideration is determined. It was on the basis of the Integrals that the concept of an integral approach to each situation arose and was transferred to other sciences, as well as to everyday social life. As in mathematics, where, through the Integral Approach, solid and safe results are obtained for the numerical expressions under consideration, so in the generalised application of the integral approaches to other fields, secure conclusions are reached in which only minor deviations can be accepted.

Insight is one of the key qualities that those who wish to serve in the field of politics must have. This is defined as the ability of people to foresee the developments of events at least in the medium term. Only in this way can they transform the immediate approach to the situation into an integral approach to the social causes that give rise to it. Without this comprehensive approach, events run faster than political actions and precipitate them.

The information sector is a typical case of the generalised application of practices that systematically lead to “elliptic” results, with the aim of influencing the recipients of information that is broadcast by newspapers, radio, television and the internet. Because these effects are directly linked to politics, that is, to the way in which power is exercised, it is safe to conclude that, this is how effects are created, to the greatest extent possible, on the global economy, on business activities and even on cultural activities. Ultimately, the elliptical effects in general information, through these sectors, come back to the citizens in the form of compulsory and externally directed

final choices.

The results obtained, through the processes described above, damage the foundations of democratic states, whose sound foundations rest on the universal suffrage of fully informed citizens-voters. The electors-voters, mainly through their intuition, perceive the manipulative enterprise through the elipsis in the projection of events and are pushed into unwanted choices. They are, however, attracted by proposed simplistic proposals with characteristics of immediate utility and are ultimately driven to socially ineffective choices. This is the starting and ending point of the prevalence of populist political proposals, that are based on the non-integrated practices that are applied in many parliamentary democracies.

A characteristic deviation from the integrated approach is how the issues concerning the geographical area and the population potential of Mani as a whole are treated. Although everyone accepts the single character of the region, which is summarised in the two words “United Mani”, when the time comes to draw up development and cultural programs, fragmentary proposals arise, often with no connecting features to create the notion of an integrated approach. This way of dealing with development and cultural issues in the unified Mani area is not a phenomenon of the modern period, but is a long-standing situation. It was thought, in vain, that the concentration of many dozens of self-governing communities in just two municipalities (δήμοι) would lead to a self-evident possibility of agreement on a common unified basis. It seems that the same reasons that led to the1 in this article, the term Oλοκληρώματα rerefs to a situation that is “whole, complete non-obcure”, while the term

Eλλειπτικός to a “fragmented, incomplete, obscure” situation brief dissolution, 20 years ago, of the region’s only unified development expression, the MANI DEVELOPMENT COMPANY (ANAΠΤΥΞΙΑΚΗ ΕΤΑΙΡΕΙΑ ΜΑΝΗΣ), which was founded in 1995 as a multi-stakeholder organization of all Mani & self-governing organizations and operated effectively in the first two years since its establishment, still exist in the same or modified form. The influences of the central political system, for guided choices of projects and persons by funding development programs with decentralised local management, on the basis of voter service, combined with closed local management on the basis of personal choices, continued unabated in the following years, resulting in the reduction of the strong development dynamics of our region.

The new generations have an obligation to contribute to the preservation and expansion of the development dynamics created by the unique natural and cultural space of Mani, reaching their personal goals through the prism of an integrated vision.

THE EDITORIAL BOARD