Translator: Translate TED Reviewer: Chryssa Rapessi
Firstly, let me start with a disclaimer; this used to be me, I'm not him anymore.
I don't know if you have noticed it too, but lately,
there are no exciting ideas,
something new where you say, "This is it, this is the way for the country to go."
You are watching the news, for example, and see that -
first of all, there's nagging about taxes,
too high taxes, which stifle private initiative.
Secondly, nagging
because the income of civil servants and public utilities is being reduced,
and thirdly, nagging as civil servants and public utilities employees will get fired.
Which means that on one hand we nag
because there are too many taxes that finance the public sector,
and on the other hand we nag
because there are public sector cuts which is funded by our tax money.
The question is, what happened? Have we all gone collectively mad?
Can't we understand that we can either have one or the other?
We will either have high taxes and a big public sector
or lower taxes and a smaller public sector?
To explain this contradiction,
I will use the work of a great and hopefully known
philosopher of science named Thomas Kuhn.
On 1961, he wrote an important book that has been translated in Greek,
called "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions".
Its central idea was that there is a dominant theory in every science.
Something he called "paradigm"
and he named it for our sake with the Greek word "paradigm".
You know, when we were building the Parthenon, they were... and so on.
(Laughter)
So, this "paradigm" is the dominant theory of how we see the world.
What glasses we use to see the world,
the theory is nothing else but a way of reading the world.
And he said that in every Science there is a dominant theory,
a "paradigm" which dominates for a period of time
and through this "paradigm"
all scientists operate and interpret phenomena.
I have the impression that the basic dominant theory in Greece
has been the big and centralized State.
It was, and in a degree still is, what we use to view the world with
and I don't mean what we constantly watch in the channels or newspapers,
like "Where is the State?"
It was snowing in Athens and the first thing they asked,
no one was using any shovels to clear the street, they were asking,
"But where is the State?" "Why is there no State?"
And I mean, even parallel institutions, I don't want to be misunderstood,
the State is useful, and serves on various things,
but various parallel stuff that should exist in a society
and could contribute to society's well-being and development,
are considered second class.
They are not only considered second class, they are considered bad too.
For example, the Market
which is a democratic way of settling financial transactions
is something avoidable.
And it's not just the Market.
If we look at the Non Government Organisations,
institutions that are decentralized from the State
but do work for society,
Non Government Organisations are considered something like Satan's tool,
besides being part of the New World Order, but in general, in our understanding,
anything that's not part of the centralized State is bad.
The Local Government is considered a breeding ground of corruption.
I'm not saying that everything is good there, I'm just saying that by definition
the only thing we trust,
as the previour speaker said, is the State, nothing else.
Consequently...
So this is our dominant theory.
But eventually we see that,
- and mainly using experience from abroad where there is less State -
we see that this model of viewing the world ceases to exist.
What Kuhn says is that at some point in Science,
the phenomena that scientists observe
don't fit the "paradigm" anymore.
The same thing happens with Greece.
At some point, I believe in the early '90s,
a sensation is created to some, few at first,
that the existing "paradigm" is no longer in a position to work satisfactorily.
And what happens then?
Kuhn says that our first reaction
to this grand theory we have, to this "paradigm",
this overview of the world,
is to do some alterations in our theory
so that we can follow the paradigm but also correct it at the same time.
And he uses and amazing example.
He says that the old worldview was the Geocentric Theory
Earth was in the middle
and all the planets were moving in perfectly circular orbits,
since the circle is perfect,
God apparently created the world perfect,
so they would have to be perfectly circular orbits around the Earth
But at some point they started observing
that some of the planets were not moving so perfectly circular.
I mean, they were a bit off.
They didn't think, they did not enter the logical thinking to reverse the paradigm,
that maybe the trajectories are not circular,
and secondly, Earth may not be the centre of the universe.
So, what did they do? They discovered the sub-orbits.
They said that while the planets do move circularly around the Earth
but from time to time, they do some small sub-orbits which also are circular
because God's vision was circular.
I think, our first reaction to that,
when we started to see that the State does not function effectively any more
it doesn't work the way we thought it does,
is to create our own sub-trajectories.
The first sub-trajectory we created was the absolutely moral politician,
the perfectly ethical public servant.
We were saying that it's not the current State's model to be blamed,
we just didn't find 10,000 politicians who don't think about the political cost
and a million public servants, that's how many we have,
despite what was rumored to be seven hundred fifty
that are moral and don't steal.
We couldn't imagine that maybe it's the model's fault
that some politicians think of the political cost
and some public servants are willing to be bribed,
take money under the table and the like.
We were just trying to adjust it.
With this way of thinking the governments got elected both 2004 and 2009,
that they are more ethical than the others.
So, from the moment that the issue of the morality
we were expecting from the politicians was dealt with,
we dismissed the whole political system.
Kuhn, at some point, I will show later too, says that
at some point, many of the scientists when they find where they can't stand
in this chaos created by the abolishment of the old paradigm,
they give up Science and move to other fields.
That was the outcome of Ethics.
So...
Once the first sub-trajectory is dismissed,
we are entering a phase that Kuhn calls "Extraordinary Science".
"Extraordinary" is the Science in which nothing seems to be stable,
everyone proposes different ideas and those ideas don't seem to work.
And here we see a typical example
of what I talked about, "Extraordinary Science".
In the masthead, the newspaper is nagging about the taxpayers
whose incomes will be slaughtered from 500€ to 2.650€
and underneath about the slaughtering of Public Sector and Utilities salaries.
This is like, you don't know where to stand,
you are neither a liberal nor a statist,
you are something in-between or both of them.
It's not shown but on top it says "Ether".
Ether was another trick that scientist did when
a second paradigm changed,
from Newtonian Physics to the Theory of Relativity.
Because they couldn't explain how light could travel in vacuum,
they made up an invisible, odorless, tasteless thing called "Ether"
which was needed only to run the old paradigm,
so that Newtonian Physics would work.
And underneath, in letters you can't see, it says "Development".
Development is like Ether now.
Everybody evokes it but no one knows how it will come...
(Laughter)
But we base...
(Applause)
But we base our whole model on it,
that the current model can function,
as long as this Development exists,
the way Newtonian Physics could work as long as Ether exists.
I don't want to be misunderstood again, Development is good and must exist,
but Development can come in the old way
where the State makes money, funds the Market,
those money make a circle on the Economy
and then leave out in order for us to by cereal, meat and others.
Development can come only through the reconstructing of this model.
Releasing Economy from its shackles, that the first speaker spoke about
why we don't have new businesses in Greece.
And acquiring new institutions.
And especially, by reducing the State so that there is money for the Economy.
So, now, we are at the point
that Kuhn calls "paradigm shift".
See, the old is not dead yet, right?
In the back of our heads,
and if you watch the News and the newspapers and the columnists,
in the back of our heads, there is the State
and there is the need to change that model.
And we are at a point right now that whatever is suggested,
if it's suggested based on the old model
for example, expansion of the State, seems outdated.
If something else is proposed based on the the paradigm shift,
like reduction of the State, firing public servants,
we think it's too bold, we don't like it either.
So we are now at what I told you earlier, at the point,
like Albert Einstein said, "there is no ground to stand"
at the point where there is no theory, where this whole thing is going,
the question of where we go as a society, to see where we are heading as a society
we need a theory about where we want this society to go.
At this point, I simply think
we are with two feet on two boats and we don't know where to go
So in this phase, Kuhn writes that,
there have been lots of scientists that quit Science
because they couldn't endure the crisis, to live in a world without consistency.
And I think the Greek society lives at that moment.
It doesn't have the theoretical coherence to understand where to go.
Not where the world is headed,
we make a mistake here when we say "where is this thing going?".
What's important is where we want it to go.
And in order for us to know where this thing is going,
we must have a theoretical model of where this whole thing is going.
And here I want to focus mainly on young kids,
who, exactly because they live in this situation,
in an incoherent world, they are getting ready to leave.
They will do very well.
I just want to point out that,
in this country, because the old ideology collapses
the old hierarchies are being demolished, new opportunities are created
At this point,
this country will be rebuilt at all levels from the beginning.
Both on a political level, financial and business level.
I hope some of the young people in here
will seize the opportunity.
Thank you
(Applause)