For centuries ordinary people were told that the power rests with the people or something like that. Actually, this notion is the basis of constitutions, declarations, etc. which declare that “we the people” have the right to do something or other.

Also, “we the people” know that this is a charade, but we go along to essentially manage to feed ourselves and our families.

Today, the Greeks are forced to do something about that charade and about their very survival.

During the last sixty years the Greeks, as with most people in “developed” and “civilized” countries were “bulldozed” to live in apartments in multi-story buildings of six to seven stories on average.

Such a building with one apartment per floor houses seven families or 28 persons. For two apartments per floor, the most predominant size of such a 7-story building, we have 56 persons living in that building. There are about six apartment buildings in each city-block of Athens or in the other cities and towns of Greece. Therefore, there are about 336 persons living in the average city-block.

Let us call a “neighborhood” a group of ten city-blocks. On the basis of the above, there are about 3,360 persons living in a neighborhood. Of these about 473 [i4.1 %] are children younger than 14 years old. Also, the number of those above 65 years old is about 679 [20.2 %].  Therefore, the number of “active” persons, 17 to 65 years old, is 2,203 persons.

At this point we have to take into account a rather accurate observation, based on the electoral results all over the world. It seems that 33 % of the voters are ‘conservative’ [Christian Democrats, Republicans, New Democrats, Nazis, crypto-Nazis, etc.], while the rest 67 % are normal humans that strive for a happy and honest life.

This 33 % of ‘conservatives’ that is of right-wingers, are problematic humans whose main characteristics are selfishness, arrogance, and hate that reaches psychopathology.

A few days ago Wolfgang Schaeuble, a German collaborating proxy of the ruling elites of the US Emperor, “decreed” that the above 67 % of the Greeks should be “decimated”. The reason for that is not readily obvious.

[Note: In my last article, “Misanthropy, Conservatism, and the Referendum in Greece”, of July 6, 2015, I included Schaueble in the list of misanthropes in our recent history. With the present Note I try to “enrich” this view. Karl Steinmetz was born in 1865 in the German city of Breslau. From birth he was afflicted with a physical deformity; he was a hunchback. In 1888, as a Leftist, he managed to evade arrest by the security police and flee Germany and end up in New York. Steinmetz solved all the problems in relation with the alternating current and finally established the supremacy of the electric motor in the world, one of the most important contributions in the history of technology and of humanity. If Steinmetz had not solved these problems, perhaps life would have been different today. Steinmetz died at the age of 58, as a human that loved people and was loved by them. He, definitely, was not a misanthrope.]

Today, in any neighborhood of the Greek cities and of the Greek towns, in each of these apartment buildings there are families that live in silence and dignity an unbelievable drama.

Of the 56 persons living in each of these apartment buildings, taking into account the above data and subtracting children, women, and the conservative males, there are about 15 males, who are head of families and who are ready to kill the persons that are suffocating the life of their families. Actually, one of them told me he will not kill them but he will skin them alive.

So, what are the Greeks supposed to do?

What follows is based on the ideas of Noam Chomsky, of Murray Bookchin, and of the vision for a participatory society of Robin Hahnel and Michael Albert. The core of these ideas and visions are summarized in one sentence: “Talk to your neighbor”.

In most places in the world people are alienated and stressed. Thus in these Greek apartment buildings people are mostly indifferent if not hostile to one another. Yet there is a moment in their life which might be of great importance. Every so often there is convening of a council of the people in the building to discuss the economic matters of the building; payment of bills for maintenance, use of the elevator, etc.

This could be the beginning of Resistance of the ordinary Greeks against the barbarity of Schaeuble’s vulgar attack. The adults in each building, around 48 men and women, can convene a council, but this time the discussion should not be about the bills for maintenance of the building but about their dignity, their life, and their Resistance against the economic war of the Emperor and its minions.

An estimate of what could happen is this:

The ‘conservatives’ in the building, even if they participate initially, will be excluded from the Council either voluntarily or forced out by the rest of normal people. So, the Council of the normal people should start discussing the Greek problem; their problem.

No need to suggest any agenda for the discussion or to offer any opinion for the solution of the problem. These people in the Council are the ones that live the pain of the problem. However, the ideas and visions of Chomsky, Bookchin, Hahnel, and Albert will, inevitably, guide these discussions among these normal people toward a participatory society. They will find the sources and all the literature about a participatory society by themselves. Especially, Bookchin’s ideas which promote the Direct Democracy of Athens to a society based on social ecology will be appealing to the Greeks, given that Chomsky himself considers Bookchin as one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century.

The conclusions, with which the people in each building will come up, will be added to those of the other Councils in the other buildings of the neighborhood. Thus there is going to be a conclusion representing the people of the neighborhood.

The steps which will follow will expand the corresponding conclusions of the community or mayoralty, of the city or town, of the province, and finally of the entire country.

The details of this procedure whether it will be by electronic or physical means, by envoys or representatives, etc is to be decided by the participating people themselves.

At this point a clarifying remark is necessary. After the Second World War the Greek middle class to survive had to become multilingual and acquire University degrees. So, today, most Greeks, especially the younger generations, can speak in three or four languages and are culturally much more advanced from the rest of the Europeans. The Greek labor class, as expected, has no official “education” but is politically so mature that it is equal if not more advanced than the middle class, thanks to the Nazi occupation of 1941- 1944 and the tradition handed down to the ensuing generations, by worker class members of the Resistance, the dominant section of the population that resisted. Compared to the worker classes, even the middle classes, of Britain, of Germany, and of France the Greeks as more advanced deserve respect not animosity.

Especially for the ordinary Germans of the 20th century one wonders how come the descendents of Johann Sebastian Bach and of Georg Friedrich Haendel had very little to do with them and so much with the noisy arrogance of Hitler’s Wagner.

It is no exaggeration to say that of all the European peoples the Greek people is the one most likely to adopt and carry out the above proposed beginning for the creation of a participatory society through the “elemental society” of the apartment building. A kind of “proof” of this is the 61.3 % of the referendum of a few days ago. Notice that this is close to the 67 % of “normal” people in any given population.

Finally, given that the Greeks as most peoples of the world are trapped in what is known as a representative (parliamentary) democracy, a rather vulgar and immoral invention of the Romans, the reasonable and obligatory thing to do is to offer the conclusion of the millions of Greeks to Alexis Tsipras and his young comrades as an ultimate support and a “weapon” against the Schaeubles of the world.

Finally, at a later stage, if the SYRIZA effort is killed by the benevolence of the Emperor and his European thugs, the Greeks after having mastered the participatory way of decision making through the procedure of the Apartment building they can move to create a real participatory society.