Ignoring reality doesn’t work for drunks, procrastinating students, bacon-scented hikers in bear country, or central planners who prefer can-kicking vs making the difficult decisions.
In fact, ignoring reality is generally a very poor strategy that almost never works out well over the long term.
Right now, we humans are busy creating a major eco-tastrophe for ourselves. I’d be a lot more hopeful about our ability as a species to at least notice that, and possibly even do something positive and proactive about it; but ecological destruction is slow, complex, and doesn't change much on a day-to-day basis — making it poorly visible to the key decision makers.
My lack of hope stems from our oft-demonstrated inability to rally around workable solutions for the serious predicaments that are blatantly near-term, obvious and straightforward. Take for example the current Greek debt crisis.
Greek Tragedy
A year or two back, Greece was everywhere in the news. Whether or not a restructuring of Greek debt would happen was driving markets; everyone was worried about what would happen if hundreds of billions of euros were defaulted upon.
Actually, the situation was even more severe than that. It would have been a sovereign default, and in Europe to boot. So, naturally there was a lot of concern over whether or not Greece would default.
Fast forward to today and we find that Greece is almost entirely out of the western news cycle. Even when it is included, the news no longer seems to raise eyebrows or create a disturbance of any size in the financial markets.
It’s as if Greece mattered before, but not now. And while some of the potential damage has been quietly off-loaded from bank balance sheets onto the taxpayers of Europe, the whole rescue plan rested on the proposition that Greece would soon return to rapid GDP growth.
And so the lack of financial market response might be reasonable if the situation in Greece were improved, or improving. But neither is happening. In fact, just the opposite.
Businesses are closing, austerity is destroying what’s left of the economy, and people are increasingly dis-empowered and angry.
My only question is Why aren’t they angrier? After all, being betrayed is a very emotionally charged event:
‘Everyone’s outraged’: angry Greeks foresee Grexit and drachma’s revival.
by richcabot 
