The Troika has been cruel on Greece, and in spite of the resounding NO, OXI, NEIN, of the people, the controlled implosion of the country, planned every now and then to allow Big Capital to grab more assets, including human capital (doctors, nurses, highly qualified professionals that will be harvested by more “developed” countries), has already happened.

The good news is that as long as the people remain united by a common project solidarity and compassion can be born to heal the practical and psychological wounds inflicted by economic terrorism.

In Argentina the networks of solidarity that arose in the 2001 IMF-induced implosion and the workers’ take over of closed industries to form cooperatives went a long way to induce a climate of creativity and compassion that kept people’s sanity. It is not a matter of idealising the process, not everything was successful, many people became criminalised by poverty and it is not easy to come back from that, but the general process moved forward and managed to emerge back to some kind of stability.

Local currencies, created to move the economy and to allow people to produce and consume worked in a very positive way. Comparisons are difficult to make but here the Greeks have some examples to look at. Perhaps the desire to stay in the Euro works like the monkey trap (there are several versions of this, e.g., a container with a peanut inside, the monkey grabs the peanut but then the fist does not allow it to withdraw, so the only way to be released is to let go of the peanut), perhaps China, that was instrumental in helping Argentina through investing in soy crops is not feeling like getting involved with a country still in the Eurozone.

But the most important message from those of us committed to the end of cruelty [1] is that our dehumanised and dehumanising and cruel economic system has to change, that the politics of compassion should grow and develop galvanised by these small successes, expressions of the human spirit struggling to emerge out of its prison in the vaults of the Banking system.

Shows of international solidarity are starting to surface, like the Crowdfunding project reported by the BBC, started by Londoner Thom Feeney. Greece has announced shortages of food and medicines, we can help with that, and we can help Europe not to get into the TTIP because corporations with contracts in Greece may well start to sue it for “loss of earnings”. The vultures are coming and we can help create defences against them.

And a final message for the Troika: it is not too late, compassion and solidarity can also free your spirits.

 

  1. “How can people decide about the direction of their lives when they are very far from being in control of their daily situations? How can people decide freely about the meaning of their lives if they are subject to needs imposed by their own bodies? How can they freely choose, enchained as they are to a system of economic urgencies — a system of family relationships, of work, and friendship that at times becomes a system of unemployment, despair, loneliness, helplessness and failed hopes? How can people freely decide on the basis of manipulated information and the mass-media induced exaltation of antivalues that hold up as the ultimate model of behavior the powerful, who shamelessly exhibit their violence, threats, abuse, arbitrariness, and lack of reason? How can they decide freely when the moral leaders of the great religions either offer justifications, or remain silent in the face of, genocide, holy wars, defensive wars and pre-emptive war? The social atmosphere is so poisoned by cruelty that day by day our personal relations become crueler, and day by day we treat ourselves with greater cruelty.” Silo, May 2005