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Greek translation Greek dictionaries No Sex Please, We're Brutish!  
  [ The exploits of a Greek student in Britain]   by Spiros Doikas ©
   3. De-Emotionalisation Institutes
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Do you know what ‘le vice anglaise’ - the English vice- really is? Not flagellation, not pederasty - whatever the French believe to be: it’s our refusal to admit our emotions. We think they demean us I suppose. Terence Rattigan In Praise of Love, (1973) Act II,
The English have no soul, they have the understatement instead.

George Mikes, How to be an Alien, p.24


This soul’s prison we call England.

George Bernard Shaw, Heartbreak House, Hector in Act III

However, (much to the chagrin of the people who believed in an ideal state) there still remained a considerable minority of the population who who maintained some sort of an emotional, inner world, and despite its painstaking dissimulation, it emerged at the most inopportune times obstructing the normal state of affairs in Brutland. Bad rumours had it that these individuals had been in possession of a soul - one of the most abhorrent miasmata for a native.

It was obvious that these people were a disruption and a disgrace to the equal opportunities regime as they made heavy demands on the national resources and kept complaining too much of an inner void and thus becoming useless to society.

It was decided that some sort of measure should be taken, so the state built specialized institutes in which cultural misfits would gather in large groups in order to undergo a de-emotionalization treatment. Those who would successfully complete the programme would return to society, cured of their disease, in full working order. Those who failed were doomed to spend the rest of their life in de-emotionalization institutes under the best of health care. Extreme cases that still maintained a soul would undergo a soul lobotomy or a soul castration/clitoridectomization (according to the severity of each case and depending on the sex of the patient) if symptoms persisted.

It was reputed that in Brutland something like 20% of the National Health Service (NHS) funds were injected into de-emotionalization institutes. Even if this is true, it is clearly insufficient, as streets (at least in urban areas) seemed to abound in emotionally challenged individuals.

                                                *

A common disease which afflicted the natives and at times lead to their admittance in a de-emotionalization institute was the co-called Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). This was due to one of the fundamental characteristics of Brutland: clouds. Some people, who undoubtedly belonged to the emotionally challenged, had the audacity to demand the presence of that morally repugnant substance called unobfuscated solar radiation. There were talks amongst the political circles of legalising it but still it was a matter of principle for the Brutish democracy to avoid a potentially disastrous reform of good old obfuscation.

However, I cannot obviate the necessity of expressing certain doubts about the so-called seasonal nature of the disease in question. I have strong reasons to believe that it is probably an epidemic of unimaginable proportions and I would suggest to the health committee a renaming of this disorder into Lifelong Affective Disorder (LAD).

© Copyright by Spiros Doikas

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