ATHENS GREECE OUR CONNECTION

WE HAVE ALL HEARD “BEWARE OF GREEKS BEARING GIFTS,” AND “WHEN IN ROME DO AS ROMANS DO.”
Here we are at the end of year 2010, winding down and about to enter second decade of this twenty-first century. Are you looking back or looking forward? The smart thing to do is both. Stop and ask yourself, where did you come from, why are you here and where are you going?
We are entering this decade with a lot of questions. For example, are we about to enter a period of inflation or de-flation? All kinds of mixed messages are expressed in the managed main news media. In the morning we hear doom and gloom and in the afternoon we hear recovery and happy days are here again. Take a look at the positive side to all this ambiguity – a great opportunity for us to stop and think for ourselves and use our capacity to figure out where the lies end and truth begins.
We are living in a period blessed with the Internet. You as an individual, can sit home and read, study, and learn, on your own schedule, to be informed, without hearing the jack-hammer of managed news. If ever there was a time of importance, relative to being informed, it is now.
We can think more rationally about our future and where we are headed if we understand a bit about our past. Therefore to help you get started figuring out which way to go in 2011, a few reminders of the past. I could start in a dozen or so places in our history, but seems to me Greece is a good place to start, because of past history and current events unfolding in that country.
Recent news stories relate happenings about the collapse of the economy in Greece, bail-outs by the European Union, and all the upheaval of the populace. Bloody rioting in the streets, which appears to be a breakdown of law and order, resulting from a collapse of the economy.
But let’s go back aways, and remind ourselves of the many contributions the country of Greece has made to all of us in this country. We have been influenced by their architecture, the science, art and profession of constructing buildings. The Greeks so creative in the beauty and functionality of their architecture.
This beauty of simplicity of design, also reflected in their design of clothing. I personally have always admired and enjoyed the beauty of their fashion design and culture.
The Stoics, known as “front porch philosophers,” in ancient Greece, handed down to us an understanding of politics and the difference in individualism and political control. They taught political voting is nothing more than an assumption that might makes Right. A premise wellworth going back into and reading their history. Because history repeatedly shows us the irrationality of majorities. A misconception Right or wrong comes in numbers, rather than a Principle.
Greece was known as “the cradle of civilization” at one time and gave us such great teachers as Socrates and his students, Plato and Aristotle. Today when I think of Socrates, I think of his socratic method of inquiry, that is, questioning any and everything.
The same questioning, encouraged by Greek teachers and philosophers during the life of Socrates, is the same questions we face today here in the United States. The notion we must ask the questions to find the Right answers, is as valid today as it was back then. And we can learn from their history the right questions to ask, for solutions to the crisis we face in this country today.
Obviously we have problems to solve, and need solutions. And quite discernable, the popular notion, by those addicted to popular voting, that is the answer. When this process removes individual responsibility, by an attempt to transfer responsibility to a centralized political government. A concept accepted as if it’s Divine intervention, which removes individual responsibility. And if repeated enough, it carries the weight of Divine Decree. When in actuality voting is “disguised coercion.”
If Freedom is self-responsibility and self-control, and majority rule is coercion, which impedes individual decisions, if we expect to change the direction things are headed in this country, we must stop and consider this, as a possible cause. We must consider corruptive political methods as a contrived cause of our current plight as we enter year 2011. And realize the solutions do not lie in the very thing which caused it.
Apparently we have not faced this reality in this country, and obviously those in Greece, have ignored the teachings of their great philosophers, and are living in an era of collapse of their system.
There are a few awakening to this reality, as evidenced by an hour long program last week on the Glenn Beck program, pointing out the analogy of the collapse in Greece and the domino effect in other European countries, and the possibility of extending to this country. The common denominator is the economy, and the manipulation of the economics by political regimens.
The Greatness of this nation was built on Freedom of the individual, being able to create, and living in conditions of voluntary exchange of goods and services, known as the Capitalistic, free-enterprise system under the umbrella of a document of laws – the Constitution, which guaranteed individual Rights to Life, Liberty and happiness. Specifying these Rights came from our Creator and not from Government, in the Declaration of Independence.
The question is When and How did it all change? Quite simply, the change was voted into being. That’s obvious and easy to understand. What is not so obvious and seemingly difficult to comprehend, is this: We cannot vote ourselves out of the dilemma we voted ourselves into. Therein lies the crux of the matter.
Because self-responsibility is non-transferrable, once it is arbitrarily attempted, i.e., turning over to a centralized government, the failure results in turmoil and rioting in the streets ultimately.
This has been repeated over and over throughout history. Always with the same results. While we listen to news reports of current happenings in Greece and other European countries, we medicate ourselves by telling ourselves, it can’t happen here.
And why can’t it happen here? When we are a nation, which evolved from a country of individual Freedom and productivity, to a country of little productivity, dependent upon the productivity of other countries, to furnish the food to sustain us? While farm-lands lay idle, and the thousands of factories, which once dotted this land, have shut down, we can’t survive on computors and portable phones.
It’s elementary, dear Watson, food, clothing and shelter are essentials to sustaining life, and we no longer produce these essentials, but depend upon other countries to produce and furnish. Therefore what is happening in other countries, does have a domino effect on life in these United States.
Here in this great country, we have the resources to be self-sustaining, the land, the brain-power, the work ethic, and the know how, to be independent and not reliant on other countries. So what happened in our Spirit and Willpower, which caused us to abandon those things we once cherished, and so proudly lived our lives according to?
More importantly, why are we not asking these questions, seriously, and why are we not seriously seeking answers to these questions? The Solution is so simple we overlook the obvious.
Everyone knows when you are in a hole, stop digging. Instead we just apathetically look to political government for answers and solutions. While the lust for power of a few over the many, keeps eroding away, and we look the other way.
The answers and solutions to our current plight and crisis lies within each individual in this country. And we can begin to change this Transformation of America back to a way of life we once had and held so dearly, by looking within first and to what is happening in other countries second, if the desire is there.
From the “Death of Common Sense” by Phillip Howard, comes this quote: “Coercion by Government, the main fear of our founding fathers, is now its most common attribute.