Panic in Late Modernity

Life, for some time now, feels like an endless doomscroll. No matter how much grass I touch, the horrors remain unrelenting. Today, my feed brings two things: yet another presidential executive order that undermines the Constitution, and, in Greece, the vandalism of a statue of Pan. Oddly, I find them connected. Just as Pan’s image is defaced, so too is our Constitution. In both cases, what belongs to “all” is being vandalized. This is life in Late Modernity.

A post on Facebook announced the incident - Photos used in this post come from this Facebook post. English translation is my own.

Vandalism of the statue of Pan in Stemnitsa

Dear all,

On July 19, 2025, a statue of Pan seated, made from a single piece of poplar wood, was placed on my private estate in Mainalon, near the central square of Stemnitsa, Arcadia.

On July 27, 2025, a joint interview was given with the wood sculptor, Mr. Angelos Patsiatzis, on Tripolis Municipal Radio. The interview, widely reported in social media, clarified that “the statue is not an object of worship but a symbolic one, and we are not aiming at a return to Dodecatheism—after all, Pan was not counted among the Twelve Gods.”

Between August 23 and 25, 2025, the statue was vandalized by unknown persons, who threw leaflets of Christian content and pinned icons of Saint Marina to the trees near the statue, while similar leaflets were scattered around it. We learned that such leaflets were also thrown in Dimitsana on the same day.

On the afternoon of August 25, 2025, a lawsuit was filed against persons unknown.

Anyone who has any information that could help identify the perpetrator(s) is asked to inform the police department of Dimitsana, which is investigating the case.

Finally, we expect the competent bodies of the Church of Greece to take a position on this incident of vandalism against a work of art which symbolizes Arcadia and the Arcadian ideal of protecting wild nature.

Ioannis Lagos

One such leaflet which was found on the ground had Psalm 95.5 written on it

The vandals, whom I assume are Orthodox fundamentalists, placed icons of Marina (remembered as a dragon-slayer) by Pan as a way of declaring Christianity's victory over the Greek Gods. Many of her icons feature a horned demon or dragon.

Shifting to the USA, fundamentalist Christianity, fueled by the cult of Donald Trump, is vandalizing our nation by undermining the Constitution. Fascism is taking deeper root every day. The right seeks to dismantle the civil rights fought for over the past 60 years and transform the USA into a ChristoFascist state.

We are living in Late Antiquity, just with WiFi, as I have been saying for some time now. My last piece focused on parallels between Emperor Julian and Donald Trump, and this post picks up on that theme and feeling. It mainly highlights the clash of opposing ideologies. In Greece, the worship of the Gods is gradually coming back—sometimes met with resistance—in the case of Pan, even vandalized. In the USA, the Constitution is being vandalized.

In both cases, what is sacred at the heart of something is being attacked, and both are identified as “all” or “everything” (Pan). I am aware that Orthodox fundamentalist vandals would claim that what they consider sacred is being attacked by the revival of polytheism, and I am sure that the right wing in the USA believes that what they hold sacred is also being threatened by the opposing side. However, the violence clearly comes from one side in each case, so we can put aside the question of “what about the other side.”

I am unsure of my main point here; I mainly write to record what is happening—writing about things I care about. Making connections, reflections, and observations. I believe the takeaway for me, and maybe for others, will be this: fight for what is sacred to you and don’t let people vandalize it. Be stoic if you can— they can vandalize a statue or erase rainbow crosswalks, but they cannot erase what is inside you—that is beyond their reach. What we carry inside us can and will regrow the sacred again.