It could be argued that most people do not care about history. Many are only focused on materialistic concerns and do not think much about tomorrow. They only show interest in their 
individual lives and their professional careers, if they have careers, easily neglect the past and the welfare of the community in which they live. They do not seem to care about the past history of their families, their nations and countries. Loosing the link to one’s own roots and one’s own real identity, where one belongs, does not seem an important issue these days. However, if some specific events in human history had not occurred, our present attitudes to life would be very different. Therefore it is beneficial to consider the impact of key historical events on ordinary people’s awareness of their current political responsibilities.
The first event which should be considered, in terms of importance, is the downfall of Constantinople (1453). It demonstrated the serious technological backwardness of the Christian troops compared to the Islamic military. Turkish engineers and generals introduced to the Christian world their advantage and superiority in the development of thought, creativity and military logistics. Greek scholars, afraid of regulations imposed by the Ottoman Empire, escaped in massive numbers to Western Europe. They brought with them ancient philosophical ideas never known before by western intellectuals or aristocrats. The collapse of Byzantium was the first step of the Roman Catholic Church’s progressive obscurity and loss of authority, a process which is still continuing today.
The second event is a direct consequence of the first one. Western writers of 16th and 17th centuries, shocked into consciousness by the forbidden free thought of ancient Greek thinkers, decided to turn away from the despotic and dogmatic Catholic Church and studied new books and ideas in secret. This led to a widespread intellectual revolt against the established feudal order and started the massive movement of the Enlightenment. Centuries of Catholic absolute power in the Middle Ages, overwhelming terror, political and personal control, created a drastic new opposite extremism, in which the cult of God was replaced by the cult of reason. Mysticism began to lose its appeal. The human faculty of reasoning became the new object of man’s veneration and was arrogantly considered to be superior to any other force in the universe. Secret societies rose enormously in numbers.
individual lives and their professional careers, if they have careers, easily neglect the past and the welfare of the community in which they live. They do not seem to care about the past history of their families, their nations and countries. Loosing the link to one’s own roots and one’s own real identity, where one belongs, does not seem an important issue these days. However, if some specific events in human history had not occurred, our present attitudes to life would be very different. Therefore it is beneficial to consider the impact of key historical events on ordinary people’s awareness of their current political responsibilities.The first event which should be considered, in terms of importance, is the downfall of Constantinople (1453). It demonstrated the serious technological backwardness of the Christian troops compared to the Islamic military. Turkish engineers and generals introduced to the Christian world their advantage and superiority in the development of thought, creativity and military logistics. Greek scholars, afraid of regulations imposed by the Ottoman Empire, escaped in massive numbers to Western Europe. They brought with them ancient philosophical ideas never known before by western intellectuals or aristocrats. The collapse of Byzantium was the first step of the Roman Catholic Church’s progressive obscurity and loss of authority, a process which is still continuing today.
The second event is a direct consequence of the first one. Western writers of 16th and 17th centuries, shocked into consciousness by the forbidden free thought of ancient Greek thinkers, decided to turn away from the despotic and dogmatic Catholic Church and studied new books and ideas in secret. This led to a widespread intellectual revolt against the established feudal order and started the massive movement of the Enlightenment. Centuries of Catholic absolute power in the Middle Ages, overwhelming terror, political and personal control, created a drastic new opposite extremism, in which the cult of God was replaced by the cult of reason. Mysticism began to lose its appeal. The human faculty of reasoning became the new object of man’s veneration and was arrogantly considered to be superior to any other force in the universe. Secret societies rose enormously in numbers.
