WASHINGTON, June 29 (Digital Press International) – Amid the crisis over Greece and its massive indebtedness, several commentators and historians have grappled with the “unique cultural relationship” between the country and the rest of the western world. One conclusion? Many Greeks, on account of their Socrates-slept-here history, believe the country deserves special treatment from today’s global financial markets.

“Greece has long held emotional sway over Europe,” Roger Cohen opined in The New York Times last week. “All the cradle-of-Western-civilization talk earned it leniency, even indulgence.”

Even as the Greek parliament narrowly passed austerity measures June 29, protests keep burning the streets of Athens, raising the specter that official agreements may mean little beyond entitling the country to more bailout funds.  Longstanding deficiencies — a national aversion to paying taxes, a contempt for what’s seen as a corrupt government and bureaucracy (which, ironically, employs a quarter of the working population), and a non-existent entrepreneurial class — are major impediments to long-term growth.

“Behind the state of affairs of the Greek crisis lie causes rooted deeper in Greek culture than the immediate problems of government and economic structure,” writes commentators at kcc-europe.com, whose posts focus on continental economic developments. “The traces of these historic roots carve an individual psychology and shape social norms that are difficult to change with measures of policy …

“Europe has always been blinded by its love for Greece … It has always admired Greece as the ideological and cultural foundation of European values … But this impression of Greece is overly romantic … and one must hope that it is soon replaced by a more northern sense for Real-Politics.”

Further, kcc-europe.com adds that “The Greeks do not identify with the politics of central government, despite the fact that one out of every four Greeks is a public servant and is directly dependent on the government for their income. The central government is considered wasteful and corrupt, from which it is justified to extort money. While the citizen rejects subjection to the rule of the central state, the central state is a corrupt body that accommodates a game of lies in order to accumulate monetary gain.”

Even current commentators can’t seem to resist referring to the unique historical role Greece plays in western life:  “…Economic measures are surely not enough; in drama, as ancient Greeks knew, you need catharsis,” wrote a University of Athens professor in The New York Times.

http://www.kcc-europe.com/the-greek-brigands-the-culture-of-financial-crisis.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/21/opinion/21iht-edcohen21.html?hp

NYTimes.com reader comments reflect a broad awareness  of Greece’s deficiencies. Wrote one: “Greece remains transfixed between East and West. Its history and pride draws Greece to the West, but its culture and ethic sits firmly in the East. The Greeks need to come to terms with their psyche …  The Greek people don’t want to be German or American, slaving away at work to fulfill some materialistic need. They are a people content with some riding BMW’s and some riding donkeys, and both live well. Greece needs to leave the Eurozone so Greece and become Greece once again.”

And of course many chide the EU for allowing Greece entry into the economic union in the first place: “Admitting a corrupt and Byzantine economy like Greece to the European Union was a mistake, but the expansion of the EU was always pushed to the point of recklessness. The Eurocrats recently welcomed Bulgaria and Romania, and Serbia may soon follow. But that has been the goal: to cobble together a European superpower as huge and formidable as the United States. Decades after the end of World War II, many Europeans still envy America’s political, cultural and linguistic influence around the world. Europeans believe they are more cultivated and more enlightened, and they resent US dominance. The EU (and the Euro-zone) has thus been growing at breakneck speed — and now it is breaking its neck.”