It is absolutely clear to anyone with even the slightest ability to comprehend and understand the world that certain facts about the environment speak for themselves.
1. The uncontrollable and ever-increasing global consumption of natural resources leading to the exhaustion of the ecosystem by the financial system has already had disastrous consequences for mankind and other species. This will become even more disastrous in the near future.
2. In the name of monetary goals and grand scale ‘development’, the governments of the ‘civilised’ Western world are implementing extreme policies which are accelerating the aforementioned consequences. Even other hitherto ‘underdeveloped’ countries, in their adherence to this definition of systemic development, are heading in the same direction creating consumers – that are fast depleting the planet’s resources – to the tune of 70% of the world’s population.
3.A large and ever-increasing amount of people – on a global scale – have already come to the realisation that consumerism is eating away at the branch they are seated on and this will, on the one hand, have an immediate and catastrophic bearing on their life and health and on the other, on the lives of their children and the planet’s species.
Thus these people – in the midst of a global financial crisis – have already changed or are changing their view on life and their lifestyles in the search for moderation, non-intrusiveness, and clarity. They are engaging in spiritual and physical exercises, a philosophical quest, natural cultivation, healthy nutrition and, in general, anything that emanates from their natural selves and their natural environment without human intervention and processing.
The millions of inhabitants of Western societies, which reached the pinnacle of hubris and brushed with death, are already beginning to represent a change in attitudes, regarding the environment in their daily lives.
Shifting the focus to Greece, all of the above demonstrate the political nature of the problem and the deadend the country will be faced with, if there is no change in its political direction.
All the political parties in our country, without any exception, function exclusively within the domain of this financial system.
Not only do they not dispute it, but they do not even exhibit the slightest ability to think up and pursue policies beyond the confines of this system.
Right wing and far right parties -in an out of the government – as always, have clearly pursued shortsighted and disastrous privatisation policies, with the sole purpose of serving this system (selling off natural wealth and the people of this country to the Market) whereas the ‘leftist’ parties of the opposition- even at the level of rhetoric and thought – are unable to avoid the track of global consumerism and, they too, function within its domain and requirements – contenting themselves with groundless and vague promises to change the face of the global financial regime to a more humane and natural one!
As a country of the Western ‘civilised’ world which has been experiencing a financial / monetary crisis over the past- very harsh- years, Greece should have already developed and presented, domestically – but also on the world political stage of the global community – the trends that characterise people that have come to realise the structural problem of consumerism, which is none other than the inability of the ecosystem to replenish natural resources that consumers expend.
The Greek political scene should have already spawned individuals and parties that have, like hostages, escaped from the clutches of money and the markets to represent the defense of the ecosystem and no longer the financial / economic system.
These individuals and movements would express a contemporary ecumenic rhetoric whose aim is to change the course of humanity and steer it clear from attacking and consuming the entire planet.
Instead of exhausting the earth, they would collaborate with it and not intrude upon it, replenish its resources, and move away from large scale to small scale, from catastrophic ‘growth’ to 'de-growth', from futile materialism to the philosophy of life, from consumerism without replenishment towards the virtues of simplicity and from the consumer ‘human’ – a number and a dispensable cogg -to mankind- natural being – a link in the chain of life.
Greece should have already seen the emergence of a political force representing young and old people who have experienced their own personal revolution – who have changed themselves and their surrounding environment and who actively submit their own proposals for the future of the country and mankind in general.
The fact that this political force has not yet emerged is due, on the one hand, to the traditional selfishness of right wingers but mainly because of the Left that is trapped within the system.
However, conditions are ripening rapidly and it won’t be long before the ecumenical view will find political expression in the world and in Greece as well – as can be ascertained from the vast amount of former consumers the world over, who have already altered their perspectives and their lives.