AMBITION AND TRAINING

Archilochos (Αρχιλοχοσ) is one of those Ancient Greeks that we become aware of solely through the echoes of his existence. There are similar men and women in the History of Mankind, as background radiation from a personal big bang that we could not witness yet we perceive.

He was a poet and a warrior, praised and imitated for centuries. And it is from the fragments that others have reproduced that we apprehend his acute insight. He once wrote:

“We do not rise to the level of our expectations – we fall to the level of our training”

Here we have it all combined, the thinker and the soldier. Here we find, in a raw summary, what we must understand in formatting our attitude as scientists, in a country struggling and facing a moment of crisis.

Every person, every scientist is born to be free and entitled to uniqueness. This formatting process – which generates a training and conditioning process – is what will allow one to adequately react when circumstances demand it. This is possible both in armies and in organisations: what starts as discipline, will soon become a weapon, an instrument, a tool, an attitude, a reaction method, a response.

When facing a difficult moment, those who have been disciplined and trained by a culture of demand, work, quality, evaluation, solidarity, union, will surely contribute to a collective success. INESC TEC (as other institutions) embodies the mission to promote and to offer such culture – so that by being immersed in it one will be receiving the proper training as a scientist and as a citizen.

Nurturing the organisations, strengthening the institutions, is learning Archilochos’ distant message – and providing meaning and purpose to it.