Crisis and Democracy

Yesterday we were having a very interesting conversation with Maria about different aspects of Greek culture and politics, and I thought I’d recap some of those for you.

First off, Greek people never talk about the weather. She was saying how weather words were the most important thing she had to learn when she moved to America because that’s all we Americans talk about. Every day, her neighbor says hello and then makes some comment on the weather. If you start talking about the weather in Greece, people will look at you strangely and think you’re stupid. “Wow, it’s really sunny today!” or “It’s a hot one, huh?” Of course it is! It always is! One those rare days with rain you can comment, but why would your small talk consist of pointing out something consistent and unchanging about your environment? It’d be like pointing to an old oak tree in your front yard and noting, “Yep, still there.”

Greek small talk, then, is all about politics. If we want to chat up some Greeks, we need to know a lot of political words and be prepared to spend a while talking about it. Maria talked about how she was glad New Democracy won and had never heard of Syrizia until a year ago. Greeks want to stay in the Eurozone but need more time to pay Germany back. When pressed for more details about how that was to happen or what they would do with more time, she was pretty vague and unclear. A lot of her reasoning seemed to be that, as ancient Greece was the foundation of western civilization, the rest of Europe should love Greeks and want to help them. Tensions are really high—she was talking about how after the Greece v. Germany EuroCup game newspapers in Germany printed all kinds of nasty things about Greeks and Greeks about Germany as well, including one photoshopped photo of Merkel as a soccer goalie. From my discussion with her, I pretty much got the same ideas about the crisis I had before; there are huge, fundamental problems with the way the Greek government works, and Greeks feel entitled to help from their neighbors but are not prepared to take the cuts and make the changes necessary to fix the problem. They ask for more time, but more time to do what? Continue in the same vein and kick the can further down the road?

One thing Maria did talk about was volunteerism and the need for a changed mindset in Greece. I’d actually heard similar reports before about volunteering. It’s similar to paying your taxes; in Greece, if you don’t pay your taxes, you aren’t corrupt but if you can manage it you’re clever, having managed to keep what’s yours from the government. In the same self-serving attitude, volunteering seems nonsensical. While in the US people boost resumes by volunteering and showing community involvement, Greeks wonder why you would do something for free when the government should pay someone to do such menial jobs? Why would you as parents get together to clean up a park when the government should pay someone to do it, even if your kids play there everyday? Tanya told me that she has a Greek friend who volunteers with Roma children, and she doesn’t even tell her family what she does because a) they would want to bathe her and b) they wouldn’t understand why she would let herself be taken advantage of by teaching one night a week for free. Maria said that this attitude has been evolving since the 2004 Olympics in Athens when there were tons of volunteers, especially among younger people. In Rhodes, there is a group of about 50 volunteers that work their way around the beaches cleaning them up. But in general, volunteering is not a part of society. This attitude would certainly contribute to the crisis, if people feel the government should pay for everything and take care of everything and take no responsibility on themselves as citizens.

Spiros is actually writing a book that sounds fascinating called The Myth of Democracy in which he talks about how democracy today is actually really misunderstood and therefore leads to a lack of civil responsibility. People think that ancient Athens was a perfect democracy with perfect freedom but this was not the case. Democracy, he says, was less about freedom and more about obligation. Citizens (white, Athenian-born males, usually aristocrats) were called on to serve and contribute to the successful running of the state. You were called to this council or that council, or to serve on this jury or go to that meeting; on average, each citizen was called to serve 280 days of the year (which is why they were mostly wealthy, a peasant farmer couldn’t spare the time). There was an obligation on behalf of the citizen to make democracy work and you actually gave up some freedoms—my freedom ends where your freedom begins. People today think that democracy means freedom of speech to say whatever you want or do whatever you please, when in reality, the freedom of the Westboro Baptist Church to say whatever garbage they please infringes on someone else’s freedom to bury their child in peace. People think they can just sit back and let the government take care of everything, but  it should be your responsibility to serve your own community and contribute to running society. It’s interesting to hear his perspective as a Greek where things are seriously bad, but to an extent we have the same types of problems in the US.

Also, side-note, we found out Despina had some problem with her gallbladder. Maybe stones? We’re not sure exactly, but if it was stones and sudden pain that would explain why it was so unexpected. But hopefully this means she’ll be ok!