Crazy ? Not for the Greeks
by Capricorner
Human Perception may vary but in general a vehicle is a vehicle. Ideas about its purpose and use and so on may vary, but to all people a vehicle is a vehicle because people share a common perception of vehicles. This is more or less the case everywhere. Where Greece differs is in the perceptivity of its people. For example, there is a German mentality evidenced in many ways, because there is a German perceptivity. There is no Greek mentality however because there is no Greek perceptivity. Every Greek perceives everything in his own way and so the Greeks are in constant disarray, they can never march in step to a common goal because they have no common goals and they seldom had strong and enlightened leadership capable of bringing them together to a common cause. Consequently Greece appears to others as a country where anything goes. What to others is crazy for many, or most Greeks, it is not.
Greece is a beautiful country, so think the millions who visit it every year. To most Greeks it is a place to build indiscriminately, with absolutely no regard for the laws, to the detriment of its beauty.
Athens is a lovely city but short of parking facilities so Athenians exercise their sacred right to ignore the law and park wherever convenient and to hell with the others, like pedestrians, shopkeepers, passing cars and such trivial concerns. When a New Mayor imposes the law to make city life better for all he is accused of sending out the municipal police to haunt the parking offenders for the purpose of bringing in revenues. That the parking anarchy must be checked is of no concern to his accusers. That there is no harm in bringing in revenues at the same time is a moral offence!
The city decides to proceed with the construction of a big subterranean garage. Athens sorely needs parking facilities. A group of Athenians is up in arms against this because only the company that will construct it will benefit! No such facility is needed!
Last year there were more than two hundred marches in the center of Athens. They were marches of a few hundreds to a few thousands of people, that, each time, brought traffic to moving very slow, delayed busses and trolley busses, the move of people and stopped people from going to the city center. This brought retailers to despair. Who cares !
When the Greeks are against something they do not complain the way their European cousins do. They do not inform, advise, the powers that be. They protest as if their life depended on the issue. Their rights to protest have no limits and neither do their ways.
The people in whose vicinity the Government started work for: the hygienic burial of garbage : have started a virtual war with the police to prevent the construction. The problem with the disposal, even the production of energy from garbage, is not ours so we do not allow any such project near us. This is what people claim everywhere the Government starts work on such a project. And the local people are not alone in this. Parliamentary luminaries support their rejections, but offer no proposals about the disposal of garbage.
The young pupils of a high school which was being merged with another, because there were not enough pupils to substantiate its cost, staged a sit in and started a hunger strike to protest the merger. They refused to eat anything out of pure love for their school.
In the Greek Universities there is the law of the UNIVERSITY ASYLUM. Its purpose is to permit everyone to express their views freely. It is a bizarre law given that Greece is a Democracy and everybody has this right everywhere in Greece, as this has been proven time and again. The Greek Universities are, subsequently ruled by student minorities which in the name of Democracy impose their will not only to the rest of the students, but also to the Universities Authorities who dare not oppose them, or do anything these ruling minorities do not approve. The rulers barge in University Senate meetings and state (dictate) their demands. In the University of Crete T E N, just ten students impose their will on the University, all in the name of Democracy. Totalitarianism in the guise of Democracy? In another University Hashish plants have been seen in its garden (cheaper to grow one’s own than buying it outside). In yet another, people who have absolutely nothing to do with the University have occupied a hall for more than a year. They have installed in it a radio station.
Sacred is the University Asylum and no Government has dared do anything about it.
Recently a new movement was started, that of the conscientious objectors to paying the fare, in the mass transit system. The Communist party wants a f r e e ride on the system. That the Government can not afford to provide this is only a proof of its indifference to society.
A senior Cabinet Minister was assaulted verbally and physically, with Yoghurt thrown at his face. Parliamentary Left Wingers condoned it. A method of self expression, they called it. Small wander that the Head of the Communist Party repeatedly calls for d i s o b e d i e n c e to the laws, to everything. That she is bound by her oath to the Constitution and that she is in breach of more than one laws, no matter. This is Greece.