I did not expect this book: it was written as a footnote on demand. In November 1994, my daily newspaper persistently requested a long-term Sunday full-page collaboration on topics of my own choosing. I agreed on the condition that the articles would be printed in Greek - that is, with the polytonic system - which the management accepted, so I began to write and submit texts.

The commencement of the publications was set for New Year's Day 1995. However, when the time came, the publication was postponed and continued to be delayed, while I kept submitting material, until, asking by mid-May for the situation to be clarified, I was informed, without further explanations, that the collaboration with the newspaper was canceled.

Meanwhile, the series of articles, except for the last one, was ready, and I didn't have the heart not to complete it. But now I was no longer concerned with the broad audience of the newspaper, and the article transformed into a rather demanding and extensive study: I found the opportunity to explain to some extent the character of individualization.

This "opportunity" perhaps lasted longer than I had anticipated; nonetheless, the series of articles on contemporary Greece as a spiritual issue, albeit unevenly, was completed. To these, I added three notes on painting (the first from 1983, and two subsequent ones from 1995), a lecture on education at the Athens College (1991), later published in the "Economic Post" (November 1992), and I submitted the book, with minor additions and corrections, for printing.