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.
Showing posts with label economic meltdown. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economic meltdown. Show all posts
Monday, June 20, 2011
Friday, December 12, 2008
The Psychology of the Global Economic Crisis in Greece
In refusing to resign in the midst of the riots against brutality, corruption and greed, the Prime Minister Karamanlis in Greece says that Greece needs to focus instead on the global financial crisis.
Why is that? What's in it for Karamanlis if Greek citizens spend the next fifty years trying to make the financial markets work well for corporations and wealthy investors? What's in it for those power holders if Greek citizens join hands to secure and expand the power and wealth of the few at the expense of the many? What's in it for Karamanlis's government if he convinces Greek citizens to think globally instead of nationally? And what's in it for the citizens if he convinces them of all of the above?
The most crucial question people have to ask themselves about Karamanlis's statement: Why, in the midst of the riots, is he asking citizens to address the global financial crisis and not Greece's financial crisis? In examining Karamanlis's statement, we can learn a great deal about the alleged global economic crisis and its proposed solutions.
Even if we don't have access to the details, we can look at the psychological haze and the organized "webbing" effects such a statement generates.
The Psychological Haze
Karamanlis's extraordinary manipulative statement weaves together diversion, falsehoods and truth as it manipulates to help shape the growing cultural myth that we are one global economic system and all countries must join hands to maintain this system. The phrase creates a psychological haze around Greece's national economy, as if it's no longer relevant beyond its statistics.
Make no mistake, Greece is not alone. The "global economic crisis" is the new cosmopolitan buzz concept made up of underlying sinister webs. Across continents citizens in its grips are being quickly hurdled into psychological camps and force fed on the new perceptions that go along with this fashionable buzz word. Guided by fear and uncertainty, ordinary people are being asked to passively, willingly, and quickly put aside desires for justice, equity and freedom to help the power holders restructure national economies into a new global economy and make it strong. Ethics is put on hold.
For what purpose?
In Greece, is the concept hurled at the people just to divert from the horror of a single incident of police brutality by a weak government? In America, is the statement used by its elite rulers just to get the citizens to go along with the massive bailouts to banks and insurance companies? In Japan and England, is it used to make the stock exchange the binding quantifier between countries? To know we have to consider the psychological effects.
The list is long. Many reasons will get discovered as we slip deeper into this crisis. Tami Luhby at CNNmoney paraphrases George W. Bush as saying, "it is vital that countries work together so that their actions don't undermine others." But under the surface, the loaded statement seems designed to delude ordinary citizens into a web of global consumerism in which they are asked to spend money and take out loans. To accept finanacial hardship. We can't rule out an attempt to garnish obedience by shaping perceptions so that citizens believe the functionality of the world is dependent on ordinary citizens holding up the ship, with the very wealthy deciders inside eating ten-course meals, getting the best health care and education, and creating and maintaining self-created privileges.
To clear up the psychological haze, we have to understand we have many options to fix the crisis. We don't have to go along with the current system the wealthy group are trying to force on middle and working class people. We are smart and educated now. Not peasants who swear by superstitions and cower in the face of a demented hierarchy of power and privilege. The streets of Greece are showing a lot of people there understand government officials are managers and not rulers. They can be hired and fired for corruption and incompetence. The streets are showing many Greeks are not fooled by Karamanlis and what he represents. It doesn't take an anarchist to fight back.
What about the rest of the world caught up in this psychological web of staged hysteria on the part of world officials and wealthy corporate hounds? What will it take to root out the imbalances? Will consumers globally have to stop making their credit card payments to lower interest rates to 2 or 3%? Will unions have to call a general strike to demand higher wages, a lower work week, better working conditions and benefits? Who sane really believes today that one person's time is of more value than another's? That's a cultural myth that finds its roots in feudalism, which found its roots in slavery. Speaking of global togetherness, we could use a global think tank made up of extraordinary ordinary people who want to really balance the global economy.
Why is that? What's in it for Karamanlis if Greek citizens spend the next fifty years trying to make the financial markets work well for corporations and wealthy investors? What's in it for those power holders if Greek citizens join hands to secure and expand the power and wealth of the few at the expense of the many? What's in it for Karamanlis's government if he convinces Greek citizens to think globally instead of nationally? And what's in it for the citizens if he convinces them of all of the above?
The most crucial question people have to ask themselves about Karamanlis's statement: Why, in the midst of the riots, is he asking citizens to address the global financial crisis and not Greece's financial crisis? In examining Karamanlis's statement, we can learn a great deal about the alleged global economic crisis and its proposed solutions.
Even if we don't have access to the details, we can look at the psychological haze and the organized "webbing" effects such a statement generates.
The Psychological Haze
Karamanlis's extraordinary manipulative statement weaves together diversion, falsehoods and truth as it manipulates to help shape the growing cultural myth that we are one global economic system and all countries must join hands to maintain this system. The phrase creates a psychological haze around Greece's national economy, as if it's no longer relevant beyond its statistics.
Make no mistake, Greece is not alone. The "global economic crisis" is the new cosmopolitan buzz concept made up of underlying sinister webs. Across continents citizens in its grips are being quickly hurdled into psychological camps and force fed on the new perceptions that go along with this fashionable buzz word. Guided by fear and uncertainty, ordinary people are being asked to passively, willingly, and quickly put aside desires for justice, equity and freedom to help the power holders restructure national economies into a new global economy and make it strong. Ethics is put on hold.
For what purpose?
In Greece, is the concept hurled at the people just to divert from the horror of a single incident of police brutality by a weak government? In America, is the statement used by its elite rulers just to get the citizens to go along with the massive bailouts to banks and insurance companies? In Japan and England, is it used to make the stock exchange the binding quantifier between countries? To know we have to consider the psychological effects.
The list is long. Many reasons will get discovered as we slip deeper into this crisis. Tami Luhby at CNNmoney paraphrases George W. Bush as saying, "it is vital that countries work together so that their actions don't undermine others." But under the surface, the loaded statement seems designed to delude ordinary citizens into a web of global consumerism in which they are asked to spend money and take out loans. To accept finanacial hardship. We can't rule out an attempt to garnish obedience by shaping perceptions so that citizens believe the functionality of the world is dependent on ordinary citizens holding up the ship, with the very wealthy deciders inside eating ten-course meals, getting the best health care and education, and creating and maintaining self-created privileges.
To clear up the psychological haze, we have to understand we have many options to fix the crisis. We don't have to go along with the current system the wealthy group are trying to force on middle and working class people. We are smart and educated now. Not peasants who swear by superstitions and cower in the face of a demented hierarchy of power and privilege. The streets of Greece are showing a lot of people there understand government officials are managers and not rulers. They can be hired and fired for corruption and incompetence. The streets are showing many Greeks are not fooled by Karamanlis and what he represents. It doesn't take an anarchist to fight back.
What about the rest of the world caught up in this psychological web of staged hysteria on the part of world officials and wealthy corporate hounds? What will it take to root out the imbalances? Will consumers globally have to stop making their credit card payments to lower interest rates to 2 or 3%? Will unions have to call a general strike to demand higher wages, a lower work week, better working conditions and benefits? Who sane really believes today that one person's time is of more value than another's? That's a cultural myth that finds its roots in feudalism, which found its roots in slavery. Speaking of global togetherness, we could use a global think tank made up of extraordinary ordinary people who want to really balance the global economy.
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