Humanity in the age of neo-cynicism

What keeps societies from falling apart is their members' spontaneous and unforced compliance with unwritten laws, with principles that they do not even have to be reminded of in order to adhere to.

Values such as solidarity, altruism and hospitality may be set out in charters or schoolbooks. But that is of little consequence if it is not in a person to empathize with a stranger's suffering. And when we say empathize, we mean standing by another person with actions, and not with vacuous, cost-free words.

Greece's social fabric could have been ripped apart a long time ago under the pressure of the (still lingering) financial crisis. It would not have been surprising if egotism and antisocial self-interest had emerged as the sole "natural" reaction to the long chain of disappointments. After all, we live in an age of a neo-cynicism that propagates the "natural" and ...