I love words. It's true. No great surprise then that one of my favorite sayings is "the pen is mightier than the sword". Most people take words for granted. While they may say that they feel sad, I instead will say that I feel sorrow or a deep somberness because those words may describe precisely how I feel other than just "sad". Today I feel deep sorrow and a sense of disillusionment and despair. These feelings are not new but ones that have increasingly felt over the last two years as my awareness and learning grew of our dire circumstances that we all face. I felt the rumblings of discord and, as time progressed, I watched as words became misappropriated by the global elite. Austere once met plain and simple, without luxurious adornment. It's a word I know well. Austere would be the desert in which I lived for 7 years that I still describe as having an austere beauty. Austere is how I dress each day with no jewelry on at all despite my mother constantly piling it upon me. I simply prefer the simplicity of austerity. Austerity isn't the doing without of necessity. It never has meant such a thing. Someone who is austere will forego luxury but not food. They will forego a large house for a simple house but austerity does not mean going without a home entirely. Austerity is the basics of necessity not the eschewing of necessity.
Austerity, however, has wholly changed its meaning through our politicians (and when I say politicians, I mean all of our politicians, globally, for they are all using the same rhetoric). Austerity to them means a cutting back of social services in a time where, due to the high costs of living and recession, they are of a necessity. Almost a year ago, I did several vlogs on the economy but brought it down to a very personal level where people could understand some of the underlying issues that are occurring. One of the things that I mentioned was that most households were relying on credit to simply get by month to month. Doing so adds more to the cost of everything purchased. It assures that certain amounts of income are going to be relegated to credit card payment and interest. It's an unhealthy relationship that so many here in the US have become dependent on. Is it recklessness or is it necessity? I lean towards it being the latter as people have struggled to pay for the gasoline in their cars, the food on their table, the clothes on their back, and the medical insurance (and post-insurance high bills) for their health. I pointed out that the growth of our cost of living has rapidly outpaced the growth of the average worker's income by grotesque measure. Even with saying all that, I find it hard to describe the average American as being austere. I, for one, don't have an iPhone but I know many that do and probably shouldn't.
Despite the issues with Americans as being described as austere, we can, however, use the "rules" that we all learned from elementary school. The food pyramid and what constitutes the necessity for a healthy diet is an example. The understanding that people need some form of shelter over their heads. Even Homo Erectus knew that basic necessity hundreds of thousands of years ago when he built little lean-tos of sticks to protect himself from the elements. Likewise, modern humans long knew the necessity of clothing, crafting needles of bone to sew together skins for winter wear or garments of woven grass in the warmer months. Add in the most obvious water and one can form the basics of what is necessity. Food, shelter, clothing and water--these are the basics and what is meant by austerity. Austerity does not mean eating a poor diet, living on the streets, or finding oneself being forced to give up one's children because they cannot be fed like in Greece. If anything, the people of Greece are probably one of the most austere groups of people in Europe at this time. It's an easy assumption to make because one just can't see that a parent would think to themselves, "well, I really want this iPhone so I'm sending my children to an orphanage to get food just so I can get it."
If there is anywhere on this planet that creates the most cognitive dissonance within me, it is Greece. "More austerity cuts!!" with a thump on a mahogany desk as the people by the thousands freeze laying on the streets. "More austerity!!" from the luxurious offices of the Greek Parliament as a parent takes their child to the orphanage in tears. More austerity for whom, I want to very indignantly ask. For when I regard the pictures of the normal lives of the citizenry of Greece, I see something far lower than austerity. I see impoverishment but this new "austerity" isn't enough and it certainly doesn't seem to apply to the politicians currently making decisions for the people of Greece without popular support. The Greek Parliament, itself, is the very antonym of "austerity" with its gold framed pictures lining the walls from floor to the ceiling, the flat screen television, and the obviously newer, modern chairs and sofas stuffing the room and the men also stuffing it in their suits and ties (though one wore jeans and a polo under his suit jacket). "Austerity for whom?" I want to even more loudly cry when I contrast this with an image on NPR of food being left out on a table for the hungry--simple loaves of bread and cartons of milk. And then more quietly and with tears in my eyes, I ask for whom do these so-called austerity cuts truly benefit for I look at the people of Greece, already seemingly very austere or to the very definition of abject poverty, and see the debt for those sofas and chairs, the flat screen tv, and new carpet in the Parliament all being borne on the backs of the ones most suffering.
Picture of the interior of the Greek Parliament in Athens
Austerity in Greece
It benefits the EU. It benefits the European banks. It benefits the private creditors who, in another time would have been left to suffer their losses for foolishly acquiring the Greek debt. Instead of letting things fall as perhaps they rightly should, we bail it out instead. Greece is breathtaking. A lover of history, Greece is one of our older civilizations--the so-called cradle of democracy. For millenia, Greece existed--strong and self sufficient. How did it fall so far? At what point did it lose its self sufficiency? More so, if this has occurred to a country as old as Greece, then in all likelihood, it is happening elsewhere, too. While the mainstream news lauds the passage of the austerity cuts as Athens burns and muffles the expulsion of the 40+ dissenting votes from the Greek parliament, I question how plunging the people of Greece into more poverty so that private creditors--mostly banks-- can have more assurance of getting their mistakenly invested funds is actually going to help the people of Greece as a whole. The most terrifying thing about this is that this isn't just a Greek tragedy but a tragedy that is similarly falling in other countries as well.
Even here in the US, counties and cities are on the brink of financial disaster due to the near exact causes as what occurred in Greece. In Jefferson County, Alabama, corrupt politicians profited heavily off of building a new sewage treatment plant and investing in faulty derivatives that plunged the county into economic chaos and forced ungodly bills for water and sewer upon the people living there. While the citizens of Jefferson County installed porta-potties in their yards to avoid the $400-500 bills, the court appointed overseer was paid over $1 million by the bankrupt county and was heavily praised by the county commissioner. Jefferson County Sewer Receiver no longer on payroll
The irrationality of it all, the seemingly massive level of corruption and greed is so immense that I sometimes question whether this is all but a dream. How is starving a people to death, a slow sort of population control, going to save a country? How can a county in the throes of bankruptcy whose citizens can no longer afford water rationalize paying someone over $1 million? If this is not a dream, then madness is what rules our world. With my love of words, madness is the perfect description of what is happening across the globe and the awareness of it fills me with the deepest of sorrows.
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