A Conversation on our "Nihilistic Age" (tags)
As religious authority wanes, fundamental values—including the very value of truth—don’t die, but rather lose their absolute status and go a little haywire as a result... When the value of values declines, values don’t vanish but become trivial, fungible, instrumentalizable.
Mking the Kingdom of God Present (tags)
Freedom does not come from the market. Rather, in socialist terms, we need a market to which we are free. What we have, on the other hand, is a market that dictates everything. Our Mrs. Merkel says that democracy must conform to the market. What we have developed in our work in Costa Rica runs exactly the opposite way: the market must conform to democracy.
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."
Turn of the times and Negotiations instead of truce (tags)
"Public opinion continues to cling to pragmatism and pacifism. Skepticism toward military means has even increased since the beginning of the war." "The most important thing is to end the war as soon as possible, even if that means Ukraine ceding control of territory to Russia."
Astonishment. The Beginning and End of Theology (tags)
Happy are those who can still cry in this world. Happy are those who dare to be defenseless. Happy are those who know and recognize their poverty. Only they are capable of truth, peace and common interests. These words refute everything served up to us as true.
Critique of religion and market religion and Post-colonialism (tags)
Critique of religion as critique of fetishism is a critique of earthly gods, which are false gods. "Man is the highest being for man." Marx develops it further in other words and formulates his idea of the liberation of man in the Communist Manifesto.
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.
Unemployment and New Ways (tags)
The rise of unemployment worldwide has reached unparalleled dimensions. In 1999, 700 million were affected. The neoliberal economic theory promotes the prosperity of the rich, not society as a whole. Profit maximization is often the only goal. Reducing working hours is vital.
Survival instead of Profit (tags)
Capital is a powerful machine of commodification. Since the capitalist market economy became autonomous and "separated" from society, capital has only functioned according to its own laws, the impersonal laws of profit and accumulation.
Libya
The Abiding Economics of John Kenneth Galbraith (tags)
From The Great Crash, we have of course the conviction that financial panics affect real activity. No one in the 19th century or with experience of agriculture ever seriously doubted that the economy runs on credit or that real activity depends on banks. Only in the higher reaches of academic life could such a thing be denied.
The State as a Human Cage (tags)
"Personal performance" always depends on the work of past generations and state interventions. The 1% stylize inequality as a motor to innovation, growth and development. Exploding inequality is the end to public spirit and interdependence.
Capitalism as a Secularized Religion (tags)
It is never too early or too late to challenge the dominant narrative. Capitalism is a fetish social formation, a demolishing of being not a reform of being. Capitalism may be the first case of an indebted cult, not an atoning cult, possibly the most bloodthirsty cult of humanity's history.
This economy kills!: Pope Francis (tags)
The Cold War in internal church policy may be coming to an end. A religion without mysticism is merely a philosophy. Mysticism is a specifically modern form of faith. God's presence is no longer self-evident or plausible to the entire world. Francis' church is a hospital under the open air.
"Occupy may have already accomplished more than the 68ers" (tags)
"In bad times, politics hearkens back to the simple, heavy-handed neoliberal thought model. Neoliberalism simply says what the rich and powerful like to hear. The trust and faith of the younger generations in the established system is broken.."
It’s Secularists That Are Poisoning Discourse, USD Professor Says (tags)
According to University of San Diego professor Steven D. Smith, the coarsening of our public discourse shouldn't be blamed on religious people arguing issues on the basis of moral values. Instead, it's secular people who consider themselves "rational" and "scientific" who have intimidated religious people from expressing their views openly and forced them to "smuggle" in their perspectives in ostensibly secular terms.
Erich Fromm and His Proposal for a Basic Income (tags)
Philosopher and psychoanalyst Erich Fromm never abandoned his vision of a humanist non-estranged society where persons were not commodified or mere goods producers. His book "Having or Being" was written at age 76.
How You Can Save Pacifica (tags)
Further Reflections on the Crisis and How to Solve It How You Can Save Pacifica
History, Sublime, Terror: Notes on the Politics of Fear (tags)
"The new powers of violence that are out of the box after 1945 belong to the state. They are properties and prerogatives of the modern nation-state."
From the Market of Religions to the Religion of the Market (tags)
The democratic order became concrete as a form of the market. While a secular state forms around the market, the market ceases being merely profane. The market as a fate religion accepts and rejects like a Calvinist God,
Basic Income Creates Trust (tags)
No life of luxury would be possible with the basic income. People in paid work would always be financially privileged by the promotion prospects..The protestant work ethic does not aim at persons only motivated by material reward.
Governing against the People (tags)
The dream of 1989 that democracy and capitalism can be reconciled fades.. Elected governments orient their decisions in trans-national groups and global finance markets.
Venezuela 2006: Continued repression of popular protest (tags)
* El Libertario, the voice of the Comision de Relaciones Anarquistas of Venezuela, analyzes the how and the why of the increasing state repression against the growing social discontent that belies the pseudo-revolutionary discourse of the Chavez regime.
Christian Morality and Economic Reason (tags)
Finance capital circling anonymously around the globe seeking only short-term profit must expect the resistance of the affected and of the church that turns to the affected. The question is who profits from globalization.
Self-Redemption Through Work (tags)
"A strange mania rules the working class of all lands where capitalist civilization prevails - the love of work, the work mania. Instead of fighting this spiritual confusion, priests, eco-nomists and moralists canonize work."
The Iron Cage that has Descended upon Modern Humanity (tags)
We are not becoming emancipated; we are becoming automated.
The Way of the Hero and the Loss of the Center (tags)
The demystification of the world through science is both a gain in enlightenment and a loss..Natural phenomena have lost their symbolic content..We no longer experience ourselves as part of a world to which every-thing is significant.
Humane Freedom and the Free Market (tags)
"MOre free market is a social-political program involving a redistribution of power and money - in favor of a few special interests of the already rich and powerful.."
Basic Income as a Democratic Civil Right (tags)
The ecnomic conditions in which the utopia of Aristotle or John M Keynes could become a real utopia objectively exist. We live under our real economic possibilities.The end of the work society is not the end of work but the transition to a really free society of citizens.
Economic Growth Alone Cannot Solve Social Problems (tags)
One of the central questions of this century is: How will we deal with the losers of this economic dynamic so we don't ignore their status as free citizens?.. No country has ever solved social problems by means of economic growth alone.
Can King Midas Be Healed of his Sickness? (tags)
Healings from the sicknesses that injure us is rare because our longing for wholeness is so weak, easily diverted and quickly satisfied with many little gods.. We expect wholeness and healing from king Midas.. Unrestricted growth is the king Midas principle..