Archive note: This text comes from the old archive of Nomika Epilekta and is preserved with care for historical and informational reading.

Today, without exception, everyone has something to say about the crisis that did not arrive by chance and now torments us with unknown consequences and aftermath. Some more, some less, everyone tackles this complex, much-discussed yet difficult subject. Let us not forget that we live in Greece, a country full of specialists of every kind and every science, where everyone speaks in the first person: “You are going to tell me? ... I, ... I...”. At Nomika Epilekta, in the multicultural supermarket, or rather in the intellectual multi-space of contemporary reflection and uncompromising resistance, one can find whatever one wants. There are recipes and proposals for rare varieties of taste, cakes, boiled dishes, salads, ouzo and pasta against the background of summer holidays. Knowledge, like love, passes through the stomach. Ideas, views, judgments and opinions coexist. They are fertilized and transformed into constructive dialogue. Strictly selected and aptly commented case law informs, raises questions and tends to satisfy fully the sense of justice. The rich menu is full of interesting social, political and economic articles that enlighten and inform the fortunate visitor. The essays and satire delight the stubborn traveller of the internet. In short, the garden has everything. Let all the faithful come. The average reader sees all this prima vista, and the proverb “whoever does not praise his own house, it falls and crushes him” does not apply here. The truth is that this is an innovative, hopeful and subversive effort that will succeed, rain or snow, against the crisis. At Nomika Epilekta I have followed the prolonged, substantive and fruitful dialogue about the economic crisis, the causes that produce it, its consequences and the means of curing it. I am not an expert able to understand fully the structure and mesh of this uncontrolled situation, which now seriously threatens the future of this land. Since it is now almost certain that we will disagree about the causes of the crisis and, more importantly, that we will be late in reaching safe conclusions, it would be good to see what we do until then. Adamantios Korais used to say that we must first educate the Greeks and then liberate them. I think the proposal was correct, but unrealistic and impracticable. I would like to set out some objections, or mitigating factors, concerning the relationship between people and power, so that the apportionment of each person’s responsibility by the Judge of the future may be made easier. I begin with the thoughts of the ancient Greeks, thoughts of undeniable timeless truth and validity: “It pains me to see everything rotting in this land. Always the wicked in power. And if one honest man appears one day, in ten days he goes bad. You bring another, he turns out worse” [Aristophanes, Ecclesiazusae, lines 174-179]. “From corrupt power even honest citizens are contaminated and follow its example” [Euripides, fragment 64,2]. “The character of all citizens becomes like the character of those who govern” [Isocrates, To Nicocles, 31]. “The Greeks are pack animals; these people have the saddles ready and saddle them” [Makrygiannis, Memoirs, vol. II, p. 173]. I also disagree with the assessment that Greeks only devoured one another and did not fight for their homeland. Let us confine ourselves only to the Second World War and compare the Greeks of the No in Albania, and then behind the fort of Roupel, with the French behind the Maginot Line. And then let us go to the Resistance. The difference is plainly in favour of the Greeks, of whom our later persecutor, Sir Winston Churchill, said that “heroes fight like Greeks”. When he said it, he believed it, just as he believed that Greeks can be subdued only if they are entangled in civil strife. I also note that it is not true that we experienced socialism in Greece. The truth is that we never experienced Socialism in Greece, because the party that governed for so many years was one great bluff, a “colpo grosso”. It was the Trojan Horse of Capitalism. Despite the pre-election fanfares of the unforgettable founder of the “socialist movement”, who demagogically but with direct intent said in Syntagma Square, “On the 18th, socialism!”, today we are on the brink of bankruptcy, and the falsely labelled socialism of the great deceiver of the people was a “deceptive dream”. As the people say, as you make your bed, so you will sleep. I think we were then in the fateful year 1981. What followed had a great political, social and above all economic cost, which we pay forever. I note indicatively: PASOK received from New Democracy under K. Karamanlis, in 1981, a public debt of 26.5% of GDP. In 1989, after two four-year PASOK governments, public debt had shot up to 64.2%. The enlightened founder of the movement never felt the moral obligation to inform the Greek people, mocked as sovereign. The complaints are expressed by K. Beys in Eleftherotypia of 07.09.2011. If the honourable professor was misled or seduced, let him choose, why do we demand the balance from the populace? On the contrary, the great leader demagogued shamelessly. What did the ruthless man not say? He spoke of chaos and scorched earth. Dustbins of history, proud youth, honoured old age and many other inanities and bubbles that stupefied the land and, worse, infected the social fabric. To him is also attributed the institutionalization of patronage, the cornerstone of incompetence and lack of meritocracy. He knew the truth perfectly well. In any event, he had a duty to know it. This is direct intent. I would also like to add that the dialogue about the crisis would be more objective if it included people who have been directly hurt by it. I mean the unemployed, those who have no electricity, those who have arranged instalments with OTE and the Public Power Corporation, or owe rent and are at risk of finding themselves in the street. In general, all the new poor, whose number grows daily. Their participation might enlighten us more about the mark and scale of the crisis and might protect us from exaggerations of the type, “the people are hungry; why do they not eat brioche?” It is a common geometric place: when I am unemployed and have nothing to eat, on the one hand your own food is not certainly safe either, and on the other I will fight tooth and nail to survive. I will not now deal with the virtues or defects of my race, to which the crisis is owed up to a point. Perhaps, after becoming acquainted with those who suffer, we would also discover the real social dimension of the phenomenon. Perhaps we would encounter solidarity, a good in short supply in our country. It would also do us no harm to draw lessons from the great, tragic adventure of the miners of Chile. In any case, regardless of the result, my aim is how and by what means, from this platform, we will contribute to the understanding and development of solidarity as a breakwater against the storm that has broken over us. How we will learn to stretch out our hand to the person next to us, not only out of need. As the professor Manolis Dretakis, known for his ethos and dignity, writes with knowledgeable speech in an article in Eleftherotypia on Thursday, 25 August 2011: “The policy imposed by the troika on our country is continuously sinking the real economy”. I will quote most of his article verbatim so that it becomes absolutely clear that “the times do not wait”. In other words, we must do something, even if that is called psychological preparation or first contact, before we end up, philosophizing with cheapness, deciding whether “the shore is crooked or we are sailing crookedly”. “Coal instead of treasure”: such were the results of the much-awaited Merkel-Sarkozy meeting in Paris on 16 August. Instead of looking the European debt problem in the eye and taking brave decisions, the Franco-German directorate not only insisted on the harsh policy being followed, but decided for others, without the others, to impose on them, even demanding a corresponding revision of their constitutions, the establishment of balanced budgets. This decision is an economic absurdity, because it overlooks the cyclical fluctuations of the world economy and the impact on it of various exogenous factors and, above all, the different structures of the economies of the member states and the differences in the phases of the economic cycle through which each of them is passing. In other words, they want to add to the “straitjacket” of the euro the “straitjacket” of balanced national budgets. The columnist then sets out a detailed table that vividly demonstrates the reduction of Greece’s GDP . This reduction, according to Eurostat, in constant prices in the first quarter of 2011 compared with the corresponding quarter of 2010, is 5.5%. The Hellenic Statistical Authority reaches the same estimate. No special perception or economic knowledge is required to understand that “we are going to the devil”. This serious reduction of GDP leaves no room for complacency. A few words about Manolis Dretakis. M. Dretakis, as is known, once disagreed with the erratic policy followed by the governing party. At the time it was under the leadership of the all-powerful founder, father of the present prime minister, who deservedly won the title of the very least. Most importantly, the professor did not merely disagree but resigned his parliamentary office and refused with disgust to take parliamentary compensation. As people say, he “slammed the door” on the undisputed leader at a time when one needed real courage, while others bowed to him on their knees like Muslims. It takes virtue and daring. Today his “brothers without brothers” not only do not resign but also ask for retroactive payments [see Mikis Theodorakis: aged leader of the indignant, who will lead them to victory in a latest-model Mercedes. Truly, when is a person sated with glory?]. Since then I do not remember another such example. I have formed the impression that the so-called representatives of the people, in order to keep their seat, are capable even of wearing a Scottish kilt. The professor therefore continues: This vicious circle of recession, unemployment and debt is the consequence of savage cuts in wages, pensions and benefits, as well as in public investment, on the one hand, and of the continuous increase in direct and, even more, indirect taxes imposed under the Memoranda signed by the government. Unfortunately, the measures that have been voted, are being voted, and will start to be implemented from next month, and those that will be provided in the new Memorandum that the government will sign in order to receive the second support package, will have the same consequences for the real economy. The questions that arise, however, are these: until when will the people be able to endure the continuous degradation of their standard of living and the serious problems caused by that degradation, especially for the unemployed, low pensioners, low-wage earners and migrants? Do both the government and the troika consider what the exhaustion of this endurance will mean? Can anyone exclude social explosions similar to those occurring in many other countries? Unfortunately, these questions did not concern the Merkel-Sarkozy pair at their recent meeting [Manolis Drettakis, former vice-president of Parliament, minister and professor at ASOEE]. The professor fears that a wave of explosions will come. His fears are well-founded and real. Anger and revolt protect us from depression, as analysed below. We experience the recession in the real economy every day. I do not know whether the electricity has been cut off for any of the friends who follow Nomika Epilekta, or how many have arranged unpaid utility bills in instalments. I am not talking about credit cards. With the speed at which things are developing and incomes are shrinking, the number of the new poor will increase, and where will we end up? No one knows where. Will we arrive, perhaps, at “let whoever can save himself be saved”? One thing is fact: the psychology and morale of people are in free fall. Where will the fall end? Perhaps a text that happened to fall into my hands will help. The text that follows deals with the psychological consequences caused by the economic crisis. I do not know the author. The study of the psychological consequences of the economic crisis began several years ago, when economic difficulties became evident in countries such as the United States. In the United States, from December 2007 through September 2009, unemployment rose greatly, and during that period 6.7 million jobs were lost. The psychological consequences of the crisis are easy to foresee because science already knows the consequences: 1. Of a major loss in a person’s life, such as the death of a loved one or a divorce. The economic crisis as a phenomenon constitutes loss because it means the loss of certainty and security, since everything changes and is fluid. 2. Of chronic stress. The crisis also meets all the conditions for being characterized as chronic stress. 3. Of unemployment, which is expected to increase. The psychological consequences of loss, chronic stress and unemployment are similar and are characterized by intense feelings of anxiety, insecurity, nervousness and irritation, anger, worry, feelings of guilt and increased use of substances such as alcohol, difficulty concentrating, disorganization, increased violence and criminality and, in some cases, an increase in suicides. These negative feelings and dysfunctional behaviours are possible and expected consequences for individuals or units. But because the crisis is a social phenomenon, one may also predict consequences at the level of groups, small or large, such as consequences for the family, the workplace and wider social groups. The Greek particularity. Naturally, all these psychological effects differ from person to person and from culture to culture. The economic crisis as we experience it in Greece combines the three factors mentioned, namely the loss of certainty, the existence of chronic stress due to the dysfunction of the state and the expected increase in unemployment, but it also includes one more factor. It is the answer to the question “what contributed to this crisis, so that Greece reached the brink of bankruptcy and, unfortunately, it is still not at all certain that it has avoided it?” This additional factor, so obvious in Greece, is extensive corruption in various social strata, such as politicians, public administration and others. This, combined with measures such as wage cuts, which according to several experts are by no means certain to help the country truly and in the long term, explains the reaction of anger or even rage that is already visible and seems to be spreading rapidly. It even appears that in Greece, at least until now, feelings of anger and indignation dominate. Our ally. Obviously, the aim of this article is not to analyse the crisis itself and what contributed to it. The question we are called upon to answer, and urgently, is: “And now, what do we do?” What can the individual do to reduce the negative psychological consequences? What can we do collectively? It seems necessary to move at an individual and at a group level, since the phenomenon is above all social, but it also has important effects on the individual. “What must we do”, then? At this time there is an ally that we must use immediately. This ally is anger. Anger as an emotion is energy that above all leads to action, unlike depression or anxiety, which can also lead to paralysis. Therefore, as long as anger exists, one can use it to act at an individual and collective level. At the same time, it appears that Greeks, historically, function better under pressure and unite when they face a common enemy. Therefore they must unite against the common enemy, which first of all is the economic crisis. Our economy is the enemy, it is the problem that must be solved, and we probably have to solve it ourselves. Such an attitude would help. Of course, it is not at all implied here that at the same time justice should not be served, that what is owed should not be returned, or that there should be no claims. Certainly yes, but at the same time each person separately must undertake now, not tomorrow, his personal battle in cooperation with all the others. I think the article is quite informative and I agree with the conclusion of the anonymous columnist. When I read it, I immediately connected it with the depression that circles around me and decided to share it with others, opening a line of communication and defence. I decided to link it with the symptoms of depression in the firm conviction that I contribute to knowledge of what is happening to us and threatening us. Let us become acquainted with the symptoms of depression as psychologist Nora Kontostergiou describes them. The illness of our time. Human beings by nature like a daily life that secures stability and safety. When these are disturbed, a person may become ill and develop behaviours and emotions that he cannot manage or control. Depression certainly comes first in the ranking of mental disorders. It is the way through which people today collapse, because it is unbearable for them to cope with a multitude of demands that press and crush them. Depressive disorder has dominated and overwhelmed the person of today because he is more vulnerable than ever and more disoriented than he has been in the past. The rapid pace of evolution, development and rearrangements does not allow, especially for people in western societies, the development of appropriate defence mechanisms, with the result that they are flooded by situations that make them feel helpless, insecure, guilty, incapable and afraid. These chain reactions, the multiple shocks suffered, leave the person with a sense of futility and in a state of inertia. The individual’s sorrow at his inability to define his own development is enormous. When the individual tries to lean on solid ground, rely on his resources and use his capacities, and instead faces an absurdity and a society incomprehensible to him that cancels and annihilates him, then his shaking begins. Today’s global situation has intensified exactly this sense of collapse at the economic, political, moral, cultural and spiritual level. Human existence is annihilated, pushed aside, and what seems to be promoted is a condition in which the ordinary everyday person feels weaker and weaker, more and more insignificant. The main symptoms of depressive disorder are the feeling of helplessness, despair, insecurity, fear and inability to control. Depression is often connected with life events that for the individual signify, indirectly or directly, loss, an end, destructiveness, death. Events such as the loss of work, a divorce, the death of a loved one, or a change in one’s living conditions can lead to depressive disorder. When a person suffers from depression, he begins to face himself and the world around him through a pathological prism, through an unbearable sorrow and inner pain. It is useful to know that the main symptoms that define depressive disorder are the following: Loss of energy and appetite for life, excessive sleep or excessive insomnia, weight loss or gain, social isolation, lack of interest in personal hygiene and care, anxiety, anhedonia, reduced sexual desire, guilt, inactivity and passivity, low self-esteem, thoughts of death. The above list of symptoms is the clinical picture of a patient suffering from depression, although in many cases the person who is ill need not have all the symptoms, and the intensity of each symptom may differ from person to person. Now, approaching depression from a more psychological and psychodynamic viewpoint, we would say that the individual suffers from depression because his very personality has a depressive structure. He reacts to loss; that is, he seems to come into contact with a primary and very early dissatisfaction connected with the loss of the mother’s care, weaning and his absolute dependence on the mother. This very early frustration that the person suffered when he was a baby has, in some way, contributed to the way he has been formed internally and therefore to the way he reacts to his environment. According to psychoanalytic theory, the depressive person depends on oral functions, that is, he tends to yield to oral-type behaviours more often than non-depressive people. They drink, smoke, eat a lot, talk a lot and display an insatiable emotional thirst and hunger. A depressive person experiences his environment and relationships in a more frustrating way. He fears that he is responsible for all negative events, is deeply guilt-ridden and turns his disappointment toward his own self. Reading the above, I realize that I am becoming a first-class compiler. Nevertheless, I believe that my effort will contribute to the approach and understanding of reality as it is shaped inside and outside us. Because I see the bottle half empty, I may be exaggerating. Yet from what I see, hear and read, the situation is worsening without anyone seeing light at the end of the tunnel. The failure of the troika’s measures undoubtedly entails other measures as well. What kind of measures will these be now that we have plainly and manifestly lost control and our national sovereignty? Reasonably we worry, since in our country the self-evident and measure have been lost. Reasonably we worry now that the householder is collapsing and the deputy hides so that it will not be seen that he is being mocked. Reasonably we worry about social explosions and suppressions of unpredictable violence. Reasonably we worry because we do not know how long we will be forced to wait until the anger of the people becomes a conscious political act. Reasonably we worry about the crisis, about the economy, about the depression that, when it comes, will not ask us. Reasonably we worry because we lack elementary information, minimal forecasting and, most importantly, we have forgotten what solidarity means. Only 70 years have passed since the Nazi occupation. Even our German patrons forgot the occupation loan. Speak quietly, because I very much fear that with the momentum our “saviours” have gained, if they remember it, they may even ask us for interest, which they will surely “settle” with the blood and pain of Kalavryta and Distomo. Germania ueber alles. And next to her Sarkozy, to emphasize the difference in height. Leaders small to negligible. Reasonably we worry because we did not fail by chance or coincidence. A painful policy was implemented, failed and led the country to dissolution. Undeniably the responsibility of those who govern is extremely heavy and imprescriptible. Let it fall upon their heads as a curse. Reasonably we worry because Greek entrepreneurs do not seem to care. The saddest finding, however, is that they have no relation to the French or Italian capitalists who THEMSELVES asked to be taxed in order to help their countries. The explanation is simple: in our country we have the most criminal capitalism, grown in the meadows of unpunished entanglement and inconceivable corruption. All our worries must be discussed beautifully and simply, and we must call figs figs and the trough a trough, as Yiannis Ritsos says. A spontaneous, sincere and good-faith dialogue must begin, one that will prepare us for what threatens, that is, will unite us against the crisis. We must concern ourselves with the now visible consequences of the crisis, since I think we have sufficiently tormented its causes. We must also support our fallen morale and strengthen our poor psychology. We must know how to swim well when the boatman asks us whether we know how to swim. There is the well-known joke about the boatman and the professor whom the boatman undertook to ferry across. During the journey the professor, with a snobbish air, asked the boatman: “Do you know mathematics?” “No,” the boatman answered. “And how do you live?” “Do you know who Homer was?” “No,” the boatman answered. The professor kept the same tone: “And how do you live?” The professor continued his questions. Meanwhile a wave rose. The boatman asks the all-knowing professor: “Do you know how to swim?” “No,” he answers. “Now how will you live?” asks the boatman. The important thing is to know how we will survive, and we will achieve this if we learn to adapt. Then, swimming, we will reach land. Thus the chances increase that we will not join hands for the symbolic dance of Zalongo. On the contrary, if we join hands in time, we will win the battle of dignified survival.