Some years from now, we will be asking each other questions like “where were you on the referendum days? What were you thinking-feeling? What was your stand?"
I believe for sure we’ll remember these days as the historic ones that can bring the best or the worst out of people. Even sometimes both!
What I to ask you today is: How the messages from the mass media during the beginning of the crisis in Greece were making you feel? In a very basic, somatic level. Because if someone wants to manipulate you, and he knows what he’s doing, this is where he’s aiming. Because I know from myself and from communicating with people that all these “news” of how bad things are, those shocks of fiscal “reality” thrown to the people, those opinions of how guilty we are, all this elaborate propaganda had specific target to make us feel in a certain way, as opposed to helping us think clearly having all the aspects of the issue and the possibilities for resolving it.
I remember that in those days of 2010-12,
whenever I was watching news on tv I consciously monitored my soma (my body) to
check what kind of feelings in the level of senses was been evoked. There was a
strong sensation of blocking in my stomach, choking in my throat and images in
my mind turning to total black. Does any of this sound familiar? Have you ever
thought about under what mechanisms we, the people, were pushed to abide in
that dead end fiscal policy of the last five years?
We knew it from then and now it’s officially stated: the IMF were running seminars on Greek journalists on how to serve us with the recipe that was prepared. We’ve seen how those star journalists moved to political carriers in the mainstream parties. How one of them, backed by the media, made his own party, which stand at this moment is basically what we say in Greece “giving land and water” (everything) to the European lenders.
We’ve also seen how after Iceland decided with two referendums to save its people and not the banks, it disappeared from the world map in the offices of the Greek media.
These
photos have no apparent connection with the article (they were taken in November
2014 in downtown Athens). But one reason why I photograph the cityscapes and the
graffiti is because I find it full of messages that when deciphered, they talk
about our psyche. Our collective and individual. This has been always a thing
that is driving my work. To be very critical to what I hear and read from the
media was always driving my intellectual. And since I’ve been into meditation,
boy work and NLP the past decade I learnt to be conscious about my body in the
level of feelings and sensations, so that I can give myself the power of
dignity and free choice and not let be manipulated by hidden agendas.
I just saw a graphic depicting the
universe. From the big bang to its big ending, 22bn years from now. This is
probably the most you can step back from your problems in order to have a wider
perspective of things. Well, one don’t have to step that back from the
situation that my country is into now but if you step just far back in order to
see the situation in the geopolitical aspect, in the historical aspect, in what
older generations have endured, what have they fought for, you will see a lot
of issues that arise or return to be solved.
I remember my beloved father, having
been working and been worked like an ox all his life in order to give his children
a good chance in life. He made it in the best possible way. His shock during
the years of crisis was such that he started frequently uttering in
conversations about the matter, the word rescue, salvation. He was looking for
a salvation from outside. Thanks to my Godfather Osho, I’ve shifted from the “someone
to come and save me” to the path of living in the moment. And I don’t blame my
father for thinking that the Europeans will save us. I can understand where
this is coming from as well as I feel that the most important thing now is to
stay together as a nation.
I’ve just had enough of that
manipulation, of that degradation of dialog in the public sphere to cold
numbers and statistics at a time where humanity have reached a level where it
can include everyone in equal terms and can celebrate life. I don’t have a
problem with rich people. Nor with richness in people. But I do have, with plutocracy conspiring to manipulate
us through the mass media (MMD: media of mass destruction) presenting lies as
truth in order to become more rich and enslave us more.
There’s a small story from one of most glorious times of our history. When the Persians were running in panic out of the country after the Greeks, outnumbered but united, introduced them to the wrath of a free people in Plataies, grieving about not conquering this beautiful country, one of them said: Don’t worry, what we weren’t able to do by the sword, we’ll do by gold. Indeed in fifty years the country was destroyed by a civil war fed and stirred up by Persian gold manipulating politics in the different city states.
Our history
is consisted by all of these, the free spirit and the docile one. And we have
to deal with this, each one on himself and collectively. Our civilization is
another thing. I believe that as modern Hellines (Greeks) we don’t have the right
to talk about our civilization as a glorious one if we’re not eager to stand
for the dignity and the light of truth that it represents.
This Sunday is not the end of the
world. And these words are not the end of the article. I leave this to Osho: “Help
the world to become better. Don’t leave the world just the same as you found
it- make it a little better, make it a little more beautiful”.
And, “If
you understand, insecurity is an intrinsic part of life-and good that it is so,
because it makes life a freedom, it makes life a continuous surprise. One never
knows what is going to happen. It keeps you continuously in wonder. Don’t call
it uncertainty-call it wonder. Don’t call it insecurity-call it freedom”.
