bigideas

The next Big Ideas event will be on Tuesday 29 July 2008. As usual, we’ll meet in the upstairs room of the Wheatsheaf pub in central London (nearest tube Tottenham Court Road). Doors open at 7:30 and we’ll aim to kick off at 8.

Does “modern” just mean “contemporary” or “recent”, or is it more like a state of mind, a way of life or even a set of ideas? Is it about being a consumer in a liberal democracy? Is the modern world slowly progressing towards a steady state of relative peace, liberty and tolerance?

Can we expect the modern world in a century’s time to be very much like it is today, only a bit better? Or are authoritarian regimes and environmental change characteristic of the modern world too? Is being modern, in Ezra Pound’s words, to “make it new”?

Big Ideas co-organiser and sometime historian Nathan Charlton will be considering Modernism, industrialisation and technology, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and, erm, ancient Egyptian sculpture.

Come along, obtain a beer and talk about what makes us modern, what gives us our identity as modern people, and maybe even who’s not modern, and why.