The Lost Confidence of a Nation

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1950s, financial crisis, Greece, history, war

Greece. Cradle of Western Civilisation. My home. Currently, the country is going through its most dire phase since the end of a devastating Civil War that followed the end of the 4-year Nazi Occupation at the end of the 1940s. The land, economy, society and institutions have been in steady decline for a number of years now, but the downfall has been accelerated since the start of the financial crisis in early 2008. The name and reputation of the country and its inhabitants have been seriously damaged by the developments of the last two years. ‘Greece’ and ‘Greek’ have become words almost synonymous to laziness, corruption, nepotism, cheating and much more. To the consciousness of the majority of the world, the country has managed to transform in a short number of years from a modern, European state which builds state-of-the-art infrastructure and organises and executes world class events (the 2004 Summer Olympics is the best example) to a backwater of Europe and a problem child of the Balkans; some claim almost a ‘failed state’. The story of the country’s management of its finances over the last 30 years has now become a case study of ‘the best way to bring a country to bankruptcy’.

In Memoriam – Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

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atheism, Christopher Hitchens, debate, faith, obituary, religion

On December 15^th 2011, the world bid farewell to one of the last true radicals of the 20^th Century. Christopher Hitchens; author, essayist, literary critic, the enfant terrible of international journalism, Oxford graduate, atheist, political observer, polemicist, self-defined radical, former Marxist, alcoholic, smoker and debater extraordinaire. He finally succumbed to the esophageal cancer that he had been fighting against since 2010. He left behind an invaluable legacy of numerous books, countless essays and articles on a variety of subjects and late in his life a series of recorded debates mainly with religious leaders where he examined the lethal consequences of faith and religious belief to human progress and well-being.

By way of introduction…

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Age of Reason, Blaise Pascal, Enlightenment, internet, mathematics, philosophy, physics, revolution

‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ – John 1:1

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Pensées literally means ‘thoughts’ in French. Today, the word is more well known to the non-French speaking world as the title of the ‘magnum opus’ of one of the greatest scientists, philosophers and intellectuals of the Enlightenment, Blaise Pascal. Pascal perfectly represents the kind of intellectual figure that characterised the scientific and philosophical revolution which occurred in Western Europe during the 1600s and 1700s. The products of this prolific period of human activity (scientific discoveries, inventions, political and moral ideas, philosophical models, etc.) have greatly influenced every subsequent generation of scientists, artists, philosophers and writers. The achievements of that era established the foundations for the development of the Modern World.