Climate catastrophe and `freedom of consumption' (tags)
It is not five to twelve, but five past twelve, as philosopher Slavoj Žižek writes. The fact that climate change is a fact (the details may well be debated) and poses a serious threat to humanity is something that the last fool should have realized by now.1 It is also clear that the emission of CO2 and other greenhouse gases must be radically and rapidly reduced.
Religious Fundamentalism. An ambivalent phenomenon of the modern age (tags)
The conclusion that Thomas Meyer repeatedly puts forward is obvious: "Fundamentalism proves to be an indeterminate negation of the foundations of Enlightenment and modernization."
Trump and the Post-Factual (tags)
Trump's politics is naive and skeptical, gullible and cynical. Trump's relation with truth is like a generalization of conspiracy theory assumptions that see manipulative-conspiratorial activities at work behind observable reality. Beware pathological narcissists & path paranoids!
Capitalist conditions are characterized by the fact that there is no rationality in society as a whole that coordinates the interests of the many and the overall direction of social development.
Right-wing Populism: A Wave of Nostalgia (tags)
For decades, western societies were marked by pluralization, individualization, and liberalization. Why are attitudes and pressures of society against these trends becoming dominant? Right-wing populism is anti-liberal.
Republicans against the Poor and the Sick (tags)
The US is experiencing a dramatic deterioration of its public health. President Trump is now trying to make the ACA "implode" through decrees. The insured are reacting to their higher premiums. A series of states have filed actions against the decrees.
Neoliberalism has brought out the worst inus (tags)
Bullying used to be confined to schools; now it is a common feature of the workplace. This is a typical symptom of the impotent venting their frustration on the weak – in psychology it’s known as displaced aggression. There is a buried sense of fear, ranging from performance anxiety to a broader social fear of the threatening other.
In polls many people massively criticize this system of market-conforming democracy and then vote for it with large marge majorities. This cognitive dissonance is the result of a reeducation of society. The values and norms are success and efficiency...
Does the Richness of the Few Benefit Us All? (tags)
Zygmunt Bauman, born in 1925, is a Polish sociologist. Since 1971, he has resided in England after being driven out of Poland by an anti-semitic campaign, engineered by the Communist government he had supported.
Politics in the Crisis Trap (tags)
A discontinuance of debt-financed economic programs leads to an economic slack period resulting in stagnation and recession. Crisis policy finds itself in a philosophical paradox. The political class can only choose between more indebtedness up to state bankruptcy (with hyper-inflation) or harsh austerity programs.
The Flexible Person: Critical Psychology and Fitness Training (tags)
With athletic and medical metaphors, persons even in nursery school are urged to fitness training. Under globalization, societies find themsevles in positional competition. National chances are set against the global threat. Trans.from German