While China is cracking down on the imprisoned democracy advocate Liu Xiaobo who is this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, one of his sources of inspiration, the former Czech President Vaclav Havel is hosting a conference in Prague entitled “The world we want to live in”. The Forum 2000 conference covers different spheres from politics, economics, sociology and political philosophy to aesthetics and religion.
At the opening of the conference. Mr Havel, an acclaimed playwright and essayist, gave a speech in which he deplored the global society, describing it as the “first atheistic civilisation”. This society, he said, preferred short term profit over long term profit, but its most dangerous aspect was its pride.
