Merry Christmas 2012!

The problem with fantasia (Deus ex machina)

In Disney’s masterpiece Fantasia, Mickey Mouse, the Sorcerer's Apprentice is tired of fetching water by pail. When the sorcerer departs from his workshop, he seizes the opportunity and enchants a broom to do the work for him using magic in which he is not yet fully trained. He gets mesmerized by his newfound powers but soon the floor is awash with water. The apprentice realizes that he cannot stop the broom because he does not know how.

Not knowing how to control the enchanted broom, the apprentice cuts it in pieces with an axe. However, instead of stopping it, each of the pieces becomes a new broom and takes up a pail and continues fetching water, now at twice the speed. When all seems lost, the sorcerer returns and in a “biblical” fashion he quickly breaks the spell and saves the day.

The story is based on Goethe’s poem “Der Zauberlehrling”, written in 1797. It is a very graphical representation of a situation where someone overwhelmed by his problems summons the help of others –allies in politics- that he cannot control. Soon he realizes that he ends up with a far worse mess than the one he was trying to resolve in the beginning. Sounds familiar? Probably yes!

But there is another lesson to be learned. That is “don’t mess with things you don’t fully understand”. For example; it is very self assuring to think that a magical solution exists for Greece’s troubles.

“We first curtail the remaining public debt; then we erase all the conditions (MOU’s) and relevant legislation and because we are young and innocent we will renegotiate our magic with the universe from scratch. And if that was not enough, because we want it the universe will conspire to make it happen.”

But this doesn’t happen, even in fairytales and poems; why will it happen in real life?

And now a real life question: assuming you are wrong and the universe doesn’t conspire to make it happen. What happens next? Is there an old sorcerer to save the day? Is there a “Deus ex machina” to save us all? Not really unless you are Euripides or Goethe or a Mickey Mouse apprentice.

Thanks Giving

In contrast to our Continues Daily Complaining … I suggest we adopt the Thanks Giving custom and be thankful, for once, for what we have, instead of nagging for what we don’t or for what we should (not even could) have. Even more when we are being deprived some of what we used to have (like these days).

But I guess we feel like the Native Americans (those we call “Indians”) that stage a protest on the occasion of the “American Indian Heritage Day”. Like them that lost their world when the ex. European pilgrims and settlers took over their lands, we probably feel the same.

Since 1821, those same “pilgrims” from the East and the West (Great Powers) come to our land and took it over from the natives, the indigenous peoples of “Ynanistan”. And if that was not enough, they gave it to the Greeks, the descendants of Aristotle, Plato, Pericles and Archimedes, those that gave to the world all of what it makes it today. (The western world that is) Science, Philosophy, Democracy, Fine Arts and Architecture, Poetry, Literature, Drama and Theater; and I must be forgetting some other contributions of ancient Greece to the western Civilization.

So let’s be thankful, for once, not to the “Great Powers” that hunt us but to our Greek Heritage. That is why we stand today as a nation. That is why today there are National States. That is why there is a Europe and a Union to fight for. That is why we are not still an “Ottoman Province” or not called “Former Turkish Province Of Yunanistan”. 

(www.thefreedictionary.com/Former+Turkish+Province+Of+Yunanistan)

Let's be thankful for what we have!

Thanks Giving Day in the US: http://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/us/thanksgiving-day

Indebtedness, the name of the Beast

I think we should keep an eye on the big picture; the forest not the tree! Greece has a problem but it is not The Problem. The Problem is indebtedness and the fact that we, the western world as a greater society, have build prosperity on shaky grounds without proper foundations.

Staring into The Abyss



Felix Baumgartner staring the Abyss,
momments before his record
stagging jump, Oct. 14th, 2012.



Staring into the abyss, it’s a long way down. So we have learned. Like Felix Baumgartner, we have leaped into the Abyss some three years now but the surface or the bottom if you like is nowhere to be seen. Unlike him, we have been totally unprepared and unwilling to do so. None the less we leaped.  But staring into the abyss long enough the abyss looks back at you!

We are all, by choice or definition, free to care about whatever we want. Exercising this freedom of choice is what harnesses the subjective moral meaning in life. However, sometimes our choices have unintended natural consequences: so there are limits on freedom. So we have learned, or haven’t we?

This means that former partners in the Union have become too punitive, we have become too dismissive and the world has become too unstable. The situation may be described as unsustainable. What started as a markets’ test of Euro’s strength has been evolving into a whirlpool that threatens to take down the Eurozone, Europe and the World at large.

Homer, the ancient lyric poet, knew about those dilemmas and when he wrote Odyssey he tried to warn us. He tried to teach us that when faced with a dilemma of such repercussions, caught between Scylla and Charybdis, there is one thing to do. Accept to sacrifice a few by navigating close to Scylla so that the ship can move on instead of playing it all or nothing by choosing to pass through the Charybdis whirlpool. That had been the ethical dilemma facing the Greek authorities so far. But staring into the Abyss for too long they have become part of the problem. Now the choice lies with the EU/Troika. It’s their dilemma now. Now they are caught between a rock and a hard place. Sacrifice Greece and save the Eurozone or play their own version of all or nothing dice. So far it’s not looking well.

There must be an abort lever somewhere, an emergency parachute to open.

Greece Expiring on the Ruins
of Missolonghi (Delacroix 1827,
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux)

Or maybe, we the Greeks should engage in another heroic act of sacrifice, like the infamous Souliotisses (Suliot women) with their Zalongo Dance (1803) or like the Free Besieged of Missolonghi and their desperate Exodus (1826). Do as Rhigas Pheraeos wrote in his “Thurios” war song: "It's better for an hour we live our life free, than living forty years in bondage and in jail … and everyone should hear that, brave we will be".  A heroic Exodus from the Euro area is what we cognitively know we can do best.

All these glorious moments will go down in history as yet another heroic act of self destruction. Because we, the modern Greeks cannot crack down on tax evasion cannot curtail the public sector and must always rely on foreign assistance! Because unlike Rhigas, we never aspired “the equality of the citizens against the law, the private and national freedom, freedom of the press, the security of citizens, the right of ownership, the opposition to violence and inequity, e. t. c.” all the basic principles of the Greek Constitution that originate from the French Constitution of 1793. Greece, being the first of the modern European States to be established with a modern Constitution based on the values of humanism of the French Revolution, is yet the last to become one. A modern European State.

So, let us do what our Eastern/Orthodox culture dictates: suffer the Crucifixion in light of a Resurrection.    

Αντί να σπάμε μάρμαρα

Αντί να σπάμε μάρμαρα και να χάνουμε χιλιάδες ώρες σε πορείες και καταλήψεις (έλεος) δεν θα ‘ταν καλύτερα να έχουμε σκεφτεί αυτό;  (E - reader κόστους 9,90 ευρώ από γερμανική εταιρεία)

Φαντάσου να αφιέρωναν οι μαθητές, οι φοιτητές, οι εργαζόμενοι, οι καθηγητές, οι πολιτικοί μας κλπ, αυτές τις ώρες σε σκέψη για νέες ιδέες και σε δουλειά ώστε η ιδέα τους να κοστίζει 8,90€ και όχι 890€! (τόσο θα κόστιζε –υπερβολή για έμφαση- αν το φτιάχναμε εδώ).

Και βέβαια αν συνέβαινε αυτό, δεν θα φτάναμε ποτέ στην σημερινή μας κατάσταση γιατί πρώτα απ’ όλα θα σεβόμασταν τον κόπο και την εργασία μας.

Αντί όμως να κάνουμε αυτό, διώχνουμε και τις λίγες εταιρείες που υπάρχουν και δημιουργούν στην Ελλάδα (πχ. Coca Cola Hellenic, ΦΑΓΕ). Αλλά βέβαια, αφού φεύγουν τα μυαλά, οι άνθρωποι (το ανθρώπινο κεφάλαιο) γιατί να έρθουν τα λεφτά (επενδύσεις);

INVEST IN GREECE Agency

«μην απολύεις τον δούλο σου δέσποτα»

Λοιπόν: 11,5+2 δισ. λείπουν. Είμαστε 5-6 εκατομμύρια φορολογούμενοι, οι μισοί δεν πληρώνουν ή δεν έχουν εισοδήματα. Άρα 13,5 δισ. προς 3 εκατομμύρια φορολογούμενους, ίσον 4,5 χιλιαρικάκια στον καθένα, δηλαδή 9.000€ ανά νοικοκυριό (2 φορολογούμενοι). Άντε να ξεμπερδεύουμε….

Η Τρόικα: Δεν ξέρω, δεν είδα, δεν άκουσα!

ΥΓ. Καταλαβαίνει κανείς το μέγεθος του προβλήματος: με 9.000€ έξτρα φόρο ανά οικογένεια, ίσα ίσα που επαναφέρουμε το πρόγραμμα στον ίσιο δρόμο (στόχος 120.5% Χρέος προς ΑΕΠ το 2020). Και αυτό μόνο για τις αστοχίες του 2011-2012. 

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