Mani, closed off until only a few decades ago, now finds itself subject to the many forces unleashed by its recent opening, forces that have brought wealth and new inhabitants, but also foreign customs and imported ways of life. And yet there remains one powerful element, permeating its entire historical horizon and stretching into the future, drawing strength from the deep roots laid down over the previous five centuries of struggle for independence and self-governance: the quality of generousity or magnanimity (ευψυχία) or which, starting with the pursuit of individual and family prosperity, expands naturally into a love for the region and its people.

The paths of magnanimity in the years when Mani was sealed off from the outside world were simple and unobstructed in their expression through practical works and tangible results. Now, in the open horizons of the modern era, magnanimity must contend with difficulties, if it is to manifest itself in ways demanded by the very roots that nurtured it. Along with the money, many foreign models and behaviours entered our region, and they tend to separate the shared impulse toward individual advancement from the broader prosperity of the region itself. In a geographical space long marked by limited natural and economic resources, as ours was for many centuries, the tendencies toward nouveau riche lifestyles were non-existent, and any economic differentiation among the members of the community was particularly limited. To some extent, of course, these constraints persist in the modern era owing to the extreme fragmentation of land – which today is valuable in many ways – thus preventing the accumulation of substantial wealth through the sale or economic exploitation of large areas for tourism investments.

The problem reveals itself chiefly in the inability to form strong centers capable of implementing common actions of supra-individual benefit – actions whose positive results could then diffuse across the wider region. The long-standing policy of the central state to weaken Mani’s administrative unity – by partitioning it into two Prefectures (νομοί), by truncating and later abolishing its two provincial administrations, and by cutting and tailoring the new local government units according to petty political expediencies – constitutes the starting point of the erosion of the traditional tendencies toward collective undertakings of generalised benefit.

There is, however, another traditional inclination toward pettiness (μικροψυχία) – which requires strong social counterweights if it is to be confronted when it manifests itself by certain members of the community during efforts to advance common investment programs. We will mention briefly only one such example: the story of the olive-oil processing and standardisation facility in Neochori of Western Mani, built in 1990 by the Agricultural Cooperative with European Community funding and without financial burden on its members. Later machinery and large tanks for processing and storing oil were sold off, and the building was transformed into a brewery, its debts growing year after year, while the olive oil of local producers is sold in bulk at disgracefully low prices. With the two municipalities (δήμοι) now the only remaining living social cells in the region, all hopes for generating results of broad social benefit necessarily are directed toward them. Unfortunately, during the fifteen years they have operated within these administrative boundaries, no noteworthy social outcomes have been recorded – not even from the management of the specialised European Community Program for Mani in 2010, echoing what occurred in the 1990s with the similarly specialised program for our region funded by the European Community.

The social processes by which new residents are assimilated in any region evolve dynamically. The strong assimilates the weaker and integrates them into their own way of life and transmitting their culture to them. In Mani we know this assimilative process well – both through lived experience and historical record. We know that the powerful genetic and cultural foundations of the ancient inhabitants of our land, the Eleftherolaconians, absorbed into the social body the numerous groups of other tribes who migrated here after the medieval period. For the Maniot space, in the modern era, to be once again an assimilator – this time of individuals and groups bearing stronger cultural characteristics who now settle in our region – it is essential that our ancestral magnanimity awaken and overcome our advancing pettiness. Yet the magnanimity of each person, however it manifests, cannot by itself lead to cumulative results. Only through our representatives in the two local government institutions of our region – and through close cooperation between them, purged of petty political motives and ambitions of self-perpetuation in power – can the Mani of the future emerge dynamically as the continuation of the Mani of our heroic ancestors.

THE EDITORIAL BOARD