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I am Greek, but have never lived in Greece. My understanding of the situation is exactly this in terms of what happens, but very different in terms of what the
by afthonos 7y ago
I am Greek, but have never lived in Greece. My understanding of the situation is exactly this in terms of what happens, but very different in terms of what the causes are.
Basically, Greek society is not a Western bureaucratic society; for lack of a better word, let's call it a relationship society. Some differences as I see them are:
(1) Relationship societies rely on you knowing someone who can help you. Bureaucracies rely on everyone knowing the rules, and civil servants complying with them.
(2) Relationship societies have an understood element of favor trading: someone you know in the office of agriculture helped you, so you help their nephew back with your position at the department of motor vehicles. Bureaucratic societies depend on this not happening in a measurable way, beyond someone being able to quickly tell you which rules you need to apply.
Point (2) in particular is indistinguishable from corruption from a Western bureaucratic standpoint. But it's important to note that it's a stable way to run a society. It may not result in certain things that Western bureaucracies value, but it doesn't mean the society is rotten.
My take on the issue with Greece is that it tried to enter a highly bureaucratic regime, the EU, without a viable plan to modify its culture. And so now we have an impedance mismatch. Everyone still works the old ways, because good luck changing a millenary culture. On the other hand, everyone expects things to change, and gets upset with they don't. Not least of all more bureaucratic EU countries.
I don't know how accurate this model is. But it has the advantage that it doesn't separate Greeks into a weirdly incapable people that cannot coordinate or plan ahead. Prisoners of our own culture, yes, but so is everyone. Unable to operate on the plane set by Western European bureaucracy, undoubtedly (irrespective of whether we want to consider the plane a higher or a lower plane). But ultimately, it's a complicated thing to fix, because both cultures are stable, but going from one to the other requires remarkable activation energy (to further mix metaphors).
- spapas82 7y agoYour explanation has some basis. Actually this "relationship society" you mention is common in the middle east (Turkey, Egypt, Syria etc). The fact that Greece was under Turkish occupation for ~ 400 years (until 1830) probably has something to do with our culture not being close to Western bureocratic .
- afthonos 7y agoIt didn’t help as the rest of Europe moved to the bureaucratic model, but the relationship model was an essential part of Roman rule (the advances of Roman law notwithstanding, patronage was explicit), so the roots I think are deeper.
- craftoman 7y agoWhat are you talking about? That's even worst excuse than blaming Romans for conquering Greece 2000 years ago. Greece had some great opportunities since the 60s but they never settled down some things up. Half of Greeks were spending fortunes at night clubs and bars. If you said anything about saving money back then they would probably laugh at you. Have you ever met a real Greek?
- afthonos 7y agoFirst, the Roman thing was simply an illustration that relationship societies are not a Turkish thing; the roots of them are ancient. That far back, I suspect most societies were relationship-based, very much including Greek society before invasion. Second, let me get this straight. Your point of reference is that the Greek social medium since at least the 60s discouraged saving, and you’re using this as an argument against this being a cultural impedance problem?
- spapas82 7y agoWell I consider my self a "real" Greek (being Greek and having lived here all my 37 years of life). I'm not giving excuses to why Greece has come to this state; this is a very long discussion but I don't think that the Greeks are the only one to blame. Yes some of the things you mention are true but what's the cause of this? I mean why would an average Greek buy a Mercedes to show-off instead of invest these money to his business as western EU people would do? That's what I tried to (I guess very naively explain): This is a culture thing; it seems that the Greeks have a different mentality than the western Europeans, a mentality that is closer to the Middle Easterns.
- craftoman 7y ago