A Constructive Critical Look at the Greek Crisis

In April last year, David and I ran the half marathon of the Pacer's Race Festival in Arlington. As there was no metro to Northern Virginia that early on Sunday morning we took a cab to the start. I saw that David had brought his iPod for running. I had not brought anything. I had a goal for myself that day: running for the first time below two hours.

When we started our run, I noticed David did not have his iPod so I asked him: "Where is your iPod?" David's response: "Oh, since we are running together, I thought we could chat, so I left it". To which I incredulously yelled at him: "I CAN'T CHAT, I WANT TO RUN BELOW 2 HOURS!!! To which David says: "Oh come on, just tell me: What do you, as a Dutch person, think about the Greek crisis?" I had to laugh ... running and talking about the Greek crisis ... But then I decided I better leave him and run ahead of him. The result: we both ran for the first time below two hours ...

We are more than one year later and the Greek crisis is still here, now more than ever. The discussion in my country as in the rest of (let's say) Northern Europe has not been pleasant. Geert Wilders does not want to spend one more euro on Greece. Neither do a lot of people in the Netherlands and Germany (Finland ... etc.). The discussion about the crisis has become rather non-constructive, if that is a word.

Yesterday, I read an op-ed of Marjolijn Februari. The title of her op-ed: Dutch people do not put things into perspective. She described the manner in which we talk about "The Arts" in the Netherlands these days. Our government has decided to cut back the budget in a lot of areas (and the cuts are going to be deep), one of them being subsidies for the arts.

Her point is that in this discussion, we use corrosive criticism instead of constructive criticism. She bases her explanations of corrosive and constructive criticism on Goethe and John Stuart Mill saying that in corrosive criticism we measure the other according to our own criteria while in constructive criticism we try to put ourselves in the shoes of the other person and criticize the person from his/her perspective with the goal to build up instead of to break down. While she relates this to the arts in first instance she notes that these days the Dutch have a tendency to use corrosive criticism in almost any social debate.

Which brings me back to the Greek crisis ... Last week I read an article about a highly-educated unemployed Greek guy, Charalambos Mavrikas. He is 39 years old, has a family with two children and lost his job of 11 years as a technical manager at one of the biggest providers of mobile services in Greece. He has been looking for jobs in the past months bus has not been very successful. He thinks that it will be impossible in the coming years to find a job in his area of expertise.

He has been thinking about leaving Greece and work and live abroad but ... is not ready to leave his beloved country yet. So what does he do? He has started to work full-time on the land his father bought 5 years ago and is growing and testing organic traditional vegetables. He is still discovering and when he harvest he often gives away the vegetables as they only stay good for a few days.

His point: he does not mind being poorer but he does mind when there is no real change in sight. Since everything is about finances and new loans, there is no debate on the structural changes that need to be made to make his country healthy again. He, like two of my dear Greek female friends, are hard-working people, who aspire big things in life, want to build a career. They are not planning on giving up on that. Just like any of us.

In discussions everywhere people talk about lazy Greek people, a useless Greek government etc. I am not sure whether in that regard they are any different from other European countries .... For example, I am not sure how much more or less populist my government/country is these days as compared to other European countries. The Belgians have been without a government for a year now. Italy has Berlusconi ... No government seems to have a grand vision anymore of where we as a society need to go. And what happened to the grand vision of Europe?

To get back to Marjolijn Februari's point: As long as we don't put ourselves in the shoes of the Greek we cannot possibly help them to build up their society again. Of course, the Greek will have to do it themselves but corrosive criticism from the rest of Europe is not going to help. Although I am not sure what my role could be in solving this crisis, let's see if we can, at least on a personal basis, bring the discussion back to constructive ideas and if we don't have any, maybe we should just keep our mouth shut ...

Here is to a beautiful future Greece and a wonderful future Europe!

Have a great week!
Rose