Hello, it is me again.

After the huge success of my first post (yes, it did not go viral), I decided I would venture out into the world of blogging again.  So here it goes… finding a topic that may be of interest is not that easy – I have found that in life, the people that are generally found to be interesting are those that tend to make other people feel that they are the centre of the universe (or the conversation).  In other words, by showing an interest in someone else’s life, I would become more interesting to them.  Ok, well, I have a huge number of followers – yes, 1.  You know who you are, I have decided that, given that we have been friends for years (and, it is on that basis that you have become my UNIQUE (code for “ONLY”) follower), I have decided that we can by-pass such protocol.  I will pretend that I am already interesting.

Today’s topic was going to be about the frustrations of living in downtown Athens but then that could be a long conversation (and one-sided, as only I am writing).  Instead, I will write about a thought that I had this morning while trying to banish Greek morning television programmes from my mind (to be fair, there is one program at 10am called Live U which does not fit the mould of the mill mind-numbingly dumb programmes).

My thought was that Greek television, while seemingly harmless and sometimes jovial, is actually doing the Greek population a disservice.

To set the scene, Greece, 2 and a half years after entering into a programme of austerity measures imposed by what is referred to as the “Troika”, many people (namely, the poor and elderly) have suffered unnecessarily (from this group, let’s carve out the fraudsters who, for example, are claiming pensions for people that have already passed away or are in Zakynthos and pretending to be blind).  Much of the middle class has been eliminated and Greece is showing signs, from a socio-economic perspective, of becoming a third world country.  However, unlike third-world countries such as India that possess highly educated people, Greece has an education system ranked as the worst in Europe (and this is a ranking that Greece has maintained in the past – it is not a one off ranking) and in global terms, it is ranked alongside countries such as Mexico and Indonesia.

This is a crime against children and the future generations of Greeks, however, this is not the only crime when it comes to education and information provision. Watching the news in Greece is tantamount to having root canal therapy for most people – it is consistently bad across all television channels – there is no independent reporting by educated journalists, there are merely a lot of people (generally without an educated opinion on the topic at hand) talking over each other.  Watching the news is Greece causes one’s blood pressure to rise – not because of what is being reported but the hysteria that the manner in which the news is reported causes.

And it just keeps on getting worse – most Greek television programmes (especially the programmes between 10am  and 6pm and then again from 10pm to 1am) apart from notable exceptions such as Live U and Radio Arvila,  are aimed at the lowest common denominator – and not in the good sense. Instead of providing content that is interesting, meaningful and informative and which may inspire people to develop ideas/independent thought processes, such television programmes, when combined with high unemployment (and therefore a huge number of people idling in front of a television) are doing the exact opposite, it is spawning a society of people who will become increasingly misinformed, intellectually lazy and uneducated.

This is a great shame – Greece cannot just rest on its laurels from 2000 years ago and the people cannot continue to be brainwashed by the media which, understandably, has its own agenda. Do not get me wrong, I am not a left-wing anything, and I believe in capitalism, entrepreneurs and most non-politically correct or non-socially democratic institutions.  It is just that Greece, as a nation, has so much potential – it is time that people took some responsibility for their own lives and stopped talking about conspiracy theories, international interests, austerity measures (seriously, the only other option was for Greece to go bankrupt – Greece (through the politicians elected by the Greeks) opted to not take this route, so Greeks, please move on) etc.  It is a cycle that needs to be broken and such cycles need to be broken at the most grass root level, including things that we take for granted such as television programming.

In Greece,  it is almost as if there is a “reverse” mind police regime and the effects are exponential – as many programmes are repeated (I guess this is as a result of budgetary constraints) and also because a 10 minute segment of, dare I say, stupid content on one programme will then be replayed on other programmes turning the 10 minute effect into one of at least an hour where such stupid content is, depending on whether the programmes are in competition, on the same channel, etc, either praised, or maligned, even further.

I have ranted enough for today (and maybe tomorrow).

Signing out for now.

Ciao from SpaceCadetinAthens