Greece knows it. The EU knows it. Hell, we all know it wouldn’t work. This extend-and-pretend strategy of unending bailouts. No matter what emerges over the weekend or at Monday’s emergency summit in Brussels, Greece and Europe have reached the end of a very long and very bitter journey that has sacrificed long-term vision for short-term gains. Deeper pathologies that for decades have plagued the body politic of Greece remain in tact, while European leadership still believes in punishing austerity. The European Dream has been replaced by a toxic alchemy that has converged to create a spectacular Rorschach of disturbing contradictions. Eleventh hour negotiations display Europe’s central problem: the failure of austerity to contain Greece’s chronic inability to control its own fate. From the outset, the EU’s handling of the crisis only exacerbated Greece’s tortured handling of its own affairs. As the growing chorus of governing institutions grows more fatalistic about reaching an amicable solution, I am reminded of Brooks Law. Fred Brooks, the father of the IBM supercomputer and author of the seminal The Mythical Man-Month, expressed the cornerstone of software project management in brilliantly simple terms: “nine pregnant women do not give birth in one month.” It is a deft and fitting theorem as everyone scrambles to avoid the unavoidable. More bodies, more paper, more speeches and more proposals can no longer veil the failures of an entire nation or the bureaucratic ennui of the EU apparatus. Anglo-Saxon and Nordic cultures – who Prime Minister Tsipras accused of wanting to “humiliate” Greece – will never fully understand how Greek sensibilities so often contradict doing the sensible thing. It is unsettling for non-Greeks to see such a well functioning failed state. Streets are choked in traffic, markets are bustling and taverns are full. This weird sort of Spirit of Dunkirk has enveloped Greece, as people live each day to the fullest before the failed state that functions remarkably well is reduced to just a failed state. It’s a coping mechanism to be sure, but another in a long array of inconsistencies that frustrate European technocrats precisely because certain emotions defy algorithmic explanation. As wonderfully peaceful as pro-Euro solidarity in Syntagma has been, when Prime Minister Tsipras’ partner Betty Baziana threatened to leave him should he sign a “bad deal” in order to stave off official bankruptcy, she expressed how Greeks deal with threats in general. Yet another contradiction. SYRIZA has upset the European establishment precisely because they speak to that dichotomous Greek DNA. Irrespective of who I asked while in Greece this month, everyone continues excusing how they’ve been selfish in practice though not in principle because that is what the system demands. Not one person I spoke with felt any meaningful resolution plausible or any morality shift possible. One went so far as to say tax evasion could only be stemmed if punitive regulatory policy was imposed. Until then, people will continue misreporting real incomes. Greeks may lament the lack of discipline and regiment while in the same breath cursing all forms of authority or adopting new models of individual accountability that could turn the collective tide. They continue to believe the lie that things will work out rather than accept the hard truth that Greece’s future is more than merely bad. It is doomed. Just how doomed remains a mystery because there is no precedent. Greeks do not easily engage with self-discipline. We are tempestuous, opinionated, dramatic, visceral and bombastic. So when one sees the physical realities of life in Athens through the prism of Occidental consciousness, when you measure it against history’s antecedents, more important than trying to contain the inevitable admission of economic and moral culpability by Greece or the failure of austerity by Europe, the time has come for Greeks to accept collective responsibility for their nation’s tattered state. The time has come to embrace the principles of playing on a global stage where trust, tolerance, patience and paying one’s dues does, in the end, pay off. If Greeks can adopt such a collective awakening, realistic about their own history of maleficence and its natural consequence, perhaps then its children will rise to meet the challenges they have inherited. Whether Greece remains in the Eurozone or not, the future will be tempestuous. It is Greeks under age 30 that openly admit new approaches are needed to build a more tolerant, honest and productive society. It appears they’ll have ample opportunity to design a new Greece if the old drachma returns.
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