Clashes In and Out of Sanity--Greece October 2011

While I don't support violence, I can't find value in the Austerity Measures enforced on the people of Greece. And because the people don't have a voice, they want their streets protected to make their demands on how they wish to proceed in their own country. Why would it be other than what it is? Why shouldn't people head into their own streets. What other options do people have?

One thing seems to be clear, one trick pony solutions by the state often evoke one trick pony reactions in the people in an emotional battle over survival.What else does anyone expect? For people to follow one another off cliffs in a human chain to save the controversial debt suspended in mid-air?

Perhaps there's a lesson here. Perhaps this debt will prove the opportunity for us to to re-create something new that gives the 21st century its special place in history.

I present the challenge: Who will dare to try to re-create our humanity so that our current luxury is no longer a luxury for a few but for all? And in so doing, who will do so with the backing of the people?

Unfortunately, those in power seem to want to sweep humanity into a treadmill present, one that embraces the past except for the gadgetry. Compensation: a few sparks for excitement. I guess the gadgetry makes the sparks.

Afraid of its own shadows, Big Power wants to decide the changes; it wants its privileges and its addictions intact and sacred. Afraid of its own shadows, it clings to its fabricated hierarchies and wants Main Street to maintain them at whatever the cost. Afraid of its own shadows, it calls on the cops of Main Street to beat up their own family members if necessary. Afraid of its own shadows, it refuses to make the adjustments that could turn down the volume on the growing aggression. We're not in an utopia or bust condition. We are at cliff's edge. Many are already over it. The challenge: How do we fly our metaphoric planes as our next quantum leap over to the next cliff. (How do you use this plane metaphor without unwanted associations?) Once there we can turn from the edge of the cliff and walk back to our new towns where anything can happen. Rather than? Rather than get back into the same old line to join the human chain that is right now hanging off the cliff--again--to save the debt suspended in mid-air. Over and over, Main Street's Sisyphean task. What a waste of human potential.

 In the bigger picture of humanity's quest to share the planet, this debt is meaningless.  Let the banks and big powers pay the debt off. They have the money. If we don't insist they cover the debts, are we enabling or giving in to infantile and pathological intent among hoarding people? And if so, what have we all internalized that has gotten us here?

Keeping the debt Main Street's debt makes it our post-modern monster, or its manifestation. It becomes, if it isn't already, humanity's greatest and saddest distraction and threat, the big one of our era, the one to siphon off our time and our imagination. We are not around for long. Do we really want to spend most of our time prioritizing this debt issue?

Well, I plan to visit some Occupy Everywhere site next weekend. That's my next entry. It's hard to believe I still haven't paid a site a visit.

Greece: Bailout/Blackmail June 19, 2011

I won't ask the question whether Greece is being bailed out or blackmailed. I believe the answer is self-evident. I will say the stakes are high. If the people go along with the bailout/blackmail through accepting austerity measures against themselves, we all lose not win. Greece becomes the example, and its people lead the way over the bridge to a new Brave New World of acceptance. On the other side? The impenetrable economic field from which you can't escape. Settle in and get used to it.  The Woman of the Dunes will hand you a shovel to do your part. Economic obedience or else expect to end up The Idiot at best in "The Penal Colony." Expect The Trial to be very black and white.

Where are a more conscious Antigone and a smarter Marlowe when you need them?

 It appears that Greece has gotten itself so entangled in the blackmail/bailout scenario, it'll take more than an Oracle hint to decipher the code behind the austerity measures that are about to trick Greece into The Big Sleep, where it is destined to fall in love with its own reflection of Remembrances Past.

It's global now thanks to the rising Euro Currency Union, just another Godzilla and Dracula combo conjured up by the staged or not (it doesn't matter either way) economic crisis to suck the blood of the people's bank accounts, labor, retirement, chances at optimum living and higher principles--or stomp out their resistance-- in short, it's just another monster  duo to eat much of Greece alive--slowly.

It's the same in America, Russia, Japan, Australia, Canada, and so on. And where it isn't, the conjuring is being learned.  Classes are in session. Sit up straight.

 How many "slanted" lights can't we see?

How long before Alice in Wonderland tumbles out of Animal Farm, through the keyhole of false consciousness, past Reality TV and finds her own Midsummer's Night Dream before she arrives in Greece as Superchild? Will we ever see the Death of a Salesman for the last time? The final act of A Doll's House? The end of Madame Bovary? 

At what time of the day do we stand the best chance to outsmart  ourselves  out of the economic habits that have cluttered the global markets with human "perpetual motion machines": mirrored Iagos, Macbeths, Dated Kings and Red Queens, and Mephistos?

 Is Wall Street just another excuse?

Which poet is reading a line from a poem that says, Catch-22 only happens to Oedipus?

I have no answers. I can never figure out why whole nations refuse to make advances in medicine, science, education, creativity, and so on just because there isn't enough money. I don't know why the people don't just Take the Money and Run Back to the Future. Maybe in a parallel universe right now Greece is posting all debts on a magnetic thing of the universe that will Burn After Reading. Maybe a parallel universe is the answer. At least no one will have to take a chance at losing a day's work or getting their cell phone taken away.

As a member of the debilitated race, the race that prefers to hang on crosses, slit one another's throats, or shove people into cages, I wish I myself would stop Waiting for Godot.  I've learned through trial and error that "A Good Man is Hard to Find" in politics, religion or on Wall Street.

And now in the year 2011, it's clear going On the Road is heading toward The Road of the imagination.

Do we have other options? If we want them enough, I supposed we do.  We just have to write them up. But please, no sentimentalism.