State of West

An interesting post by Amit Ghate concerning western civilization. (via lgf)

I agree for the most past. West is indeed an intellectual descendant of Ancient Greeks, even Roman Empire for most part was extension of Greeks. Where Romans excelled was in modifying the institutions which were robust enough to handle the extent of Roman Empire. If I may be pardoned the geek slang, Roman architecture was scalable.
Here I will beg to differ from the writer, while influence of Greek is most visible on west, role of Judea- Christian ethos is also significant.

Christians were persecuted by Romans for their belief and practice before Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity as state religion. Therefore Church developed an early antagonism towards roman ethos. The reason because Church became so popular in the first place because Rome had descended to hedonism, (refer this post). That said early church borrowed a lots of idea from Greeks, especially Plato. That was one of the reason that Greek wisdom survived even if dormant. In addition to this Ten Commandments and Gospels helped establish an egalitarian society. Overall the relation between modern west, ancient Greek and Christianity is complicated.

As I have said before that when Indians think of west, we fail to appreciate the history behind west. West was not built in a day. Further it is my belief that Indic civilization holds as much promise as, if not more than Greek civilization.
Also Indian ethos and Greek ethos complement and compete at the same time.

Lastly more than radical Islam west should be more concerned about itself.
West is again sinking into a state of morass arising out of absolute individualism and hedonism. West might again go the way of Romans.