Guardian
February 20, 2012
Contrary to what outsiders may think, most Greeks do not spend their time throwing Molotov cocktails, or even protesting. In fact, though the austerity measures demanded by our international lenders have affected millions of lives, some hundreds of thousands of them dramatically, the great majority of Greeks face the crisis by doing what most people do during hard times: they try to make ends meet as best they can.
Yet this does not make good television, while militants in hoods and gas masks firebombing policemen does. So, many non-Greeks believe Greeks are not just lazy but also ungrateful and, probably, mad. None of these generalisations is true: most Greeks are hard-working people, the extremists who provide such great TV to the world number no more than a thousand, and the great majority of the demonstrations that daily disrupt Athenian life are only attended by a few hundred cadres of the parties or public-sector employees' unions organising them.
This is not say Greeks are happy with their situation. They are not. But though the hardships of many, especially the jobless, are undeniable, I believe our despair is more due to ignorance than anything else. In fact, though I generally subscribe to less optimistic explanations of human motivation, the present Greek crisis reminds me of Socrates's most-often quoted piece of wisdom: that all evil is due to a lack of knowledge. I can't help thinking that if only someone (old and bearded, ideally) could reveal the essence of our problem convincingly, then Greeks and non-Greeks alike would see the truth, and implement the actions necessary to solve our problems. For you cannot have good therapy without good diagnosis.
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