Greeks, the Ancient ones, has been the first people which had allowed its culture to waste its civilization.

By considering their neighbors as being ‘barbaric’, the Ancient Greeks have isolated themselves from the rest of the world. From the rest of the reality.
Shutting themselves out from the exterior, they turned their attention towards their own interior. Towards themselves.
Found differences among themselves.
Ranked themselves.
And ended up fighting among themselves.

Allowed themselves to be conquered.

First by home grown tyrants. Pericles, Alexander the Great…
And then by foreign emperors. Persian, Roman, Ottoman…

Establishing a pattern.
And constituting a warning.

Every time when people become complacent, somebody will seize the opportunity.

Every time people will stop – for whatever reasons and under whatever pretexts – respecting each other in earnest, scheming con-artists will step in. Identify the situation and taking the opportunity to deepen the differences between the people into chasms. Into unbridgeable chasms which make it impossible for people to reconnect.
Unbridgeable chasms which destroy the community.
Rendering it to the mercy of tyrants.
To the mercy of tyrants who constantly lurk in what we call reality and which, under ‘normal circumstances’ – a.k.a. ‘democracy’, are kept in check. In a normal, functional, social setting. By a functional community.

The fact that all tyrannies end up badly, for all those involved, is no consolation.

And all these – social settings, democracies, tyrannies, etc, – are as real as it gets.
Only this level of reality is being created by us. By us, people.
By ‘the people’ who not only creates the reality but also has to make do with the consequences derived from the reality it has created for themselves. Knowingly or ignorantly.