Greece

Greece has always been a fascinating country to me. The Greeks display great respect for tradition, know how to have a good time and in certain areas live a long, happy life. The countryside, in most areas is beautiful and the history goes back to almost the beginning of recorded time. What a place to visit it would be. Not on my bucket list but could be if I didn't have so many other goals. Now I find it fascinating for a much different reason.

Greece has provided very well for it's people. There is not much they want for and have so many holidays as to boggle the mind. I'm sure that is some of the reason for their longevity: No worries! The difficulty is that those provisions are unsustainable as they are now. The country is going bankrupt or more accurately, is already. The European Union has found a financial solution in the way of huge loans to bail it out before there is complete and utter economic collapse. From what I read the Greek people are all about receiving the loans but aren't going to give up their costly, unsustainable benefits to do it. From what I can tell, if they receive the loans and they continue to receive all the benefits they do, at the rate they receive them, they'll still go broke and bring all that extra loan money with them. Then, not only will Greece have lost everything but also all the countries of the European Union and in all likelihood, China too. Yet they still protest losing the benefits.

How can they be so arrogant? I wonder. Or is it arrogance or just plain ignorance. I really don't know. Why in the world would any other country or group of countries offer money that they are sure to lose. That would be stupidity wouldn't it? It's one thing for a country to spend all it's resources on it's own people, but to expect others to support their exorbitant lifestyles is ridiculous. No matter how beautiful and historical the country is. It reminds me of the time I lent some money to a guy because he lost his job and needed groceries to feed his family. The next day I happened across him while he was buying a new $80 phone. What I did was a good thing. What he did was a bad thing. I admire the Greek people. I wouldn't lend them a dime unless they agreed not to buy a new phone.

Kindergarten and the blame game

Who did it? Who's responsible? I'm totally innocent! They made me do it! Sound familiar? Right out of the kindergarten hand book: When caught red handed, find someone else to blame. There is a lot of that going around lately.

I just finished reading, for the second or third time "All I really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten, by author Robert Fulghum. It was published about 20 years ago, and may not be in print anymore. Kind of boring reading actually but still has some informative stuff in it along with a chuckle or two. It's spattered with little bits of wisdom from the ages: Play fair, don't hit people, flush, wash your hands, share, put things back and more, all good rules to live by. But there are other, less acceptable things we learned back then too, When you do something wrong forget it immediately and blame someone else, Cry and whine when you think someone doesn't share with you, Take what you can get. Most of us lose the unacceptable rules as we get older, some of us don't.

The news is filled with such things as denial, blame, whining and crying lately. From politics to business and literally all of life people are hanging onto those silly childish, kindergarten corruptions. Big oil says it's not their fault, government officials say it's not their fault, people that drive gasoline powered vehicles say it's not their fault and right on down the line. A bill was defeated concerning the extension of unemployment benefits, one party says it was the other party's fault, the other party says it was not, people unemployed for two or more years were going to lose their benefits because no one could agree on where the money was going to come from. Another blame game. "Not me!" "Not me!"

We live in an exciting time. Not a particularly fun or easy time but exciting never-the-less. It won't be any less exciting if some of us start taking responsibility for our own actions will it? I think it will become a bit more fun and possibly easier because we won't be so busy pointing fingers. My finger is getting a little sore anyway.............Joe