Capitalism & Christianity - Part 13

CAPITALISM TODAY - "NEOLIBERALISM"

This installment is cribbed substantially from a lecture I gave at Penn State in 2012.  If it looks familiar to a few, that is why.  While it doesn't make much mention of Christianity, by now readers should be habituated to trying to see this series on the history, mechanics, and psychology of capitalism with one eye on the Gospels.  -SG

In the early 80s, macro-economic forces were shaping a new form of international economy and corresponding changes in US foreign policy.  The story could begin as far back as World War I, but for the sake of brevity, we will begin the story during just a few years prior, in 1973.

In 1973, as a protest against the US rescue of Israel from an impending defeat by the Egyptians in the Yom Kippur War, Arab nations implemented an oil embargo against the US, creating day-long gas lines that broke up only when filling stations pumped out their last drop of gasoline.

Capitalism & Christianity - Part 12

HIGHLIGHTED COMMODITY - SUGAR

In Part 11, we was how sugar was one commodity that took off on the wings of respectability.  Sometimes, studying one particular commodity is a way of gaining a fuller perspective on capitalism in all its complexity.  In this installment, we will look at sugar.

The first sweetened cup of hot tea to be drunk by an English worker was a significant historical event, because it prefigured the transformation of an entire society, a total remaking of its economic and social basis. We must struggle to understand fully the consequences of that and kindred events for upon them was erected an entirely different conception of the relationship between producers and consumers, of the meaning of work, of the definition of self, of the nature of things.

   -Sydney Mintz, “Sweetness and Power”

In Grecia, Costa Rica, where once I resided, the mountains are checkered with vast coffee and sugarcane fields. The cane has long leaves like corn. It rattles in the wind, and the fields go dark then light again as clouds pass over.

Capitalism & Christianity - Part 11

RESPECTABILITY, THE IDOL OF PROGRESS, AND EDUCATION

One should not assume that economic effects always derive from economic causes.

-Woodruff Smith

Without any forethought, imagine very quickly the following:

You are near someone who is not wearing a deodorant.  Someone comes to your house, and you have nothing to offer them to drink or snack on.  You encounter a woman who you notice does not shave her legs.  You encounter a man who natters on about new age mysticism.  You find yourself in public before noon on a weekday, drunk.  You walk into someone else's house, and it has not been cleaned recently.  An old woman is sitting on a public bench in ratty clothes; she is smoking.  A woman who is checking you out at a store is wearing heavy makeup, an extravagent coif, and a bout five pounds of bangly jewelry.  A child on the bus with you farts loudly and laughs.  An urban neighbor is keeping chickens in his yard, and he doesn't cut grass very often.

Capitalism & Christianity - Part 10

PHILOSOPHY & CAPITALISM

We have looked at the genealogy of capitalism.  We have looked at its material bases, its mechanics-in-development, at money as sign and species of power, at thermodynamics as a way of studying social systems in a potentially empirical way, and at the peculiar role of the machine in all this.  Now we need to understand some of the philosophical questions, assertions, and debates surrounding this whole historical period.

Earlier in the series, we identified two people, John Rawls and Robert Nozick, as key 20th Century philosophers of liberalism, the philosophical tradition that is identified with capitalism.  We can begin by showing what they disagreed upon, then show where they are in agreement, as a way of identifying some fundamental liberal premises within which we find liberal liberalism and conservative liberalism as polar tensions.

Baboon Culture

In 2004, PLOS Biology, a peer-reviewed journal, published “Emergence of  Peaceful Culture in Baboons,” documenting the field work of neurologist Robert Sapolsky and neuropsychologist Lisa Share.

Sapolsky remarked, as a young researcher in Kenya, that while he studied baboons – in his case, using baboons to study the effects of stress – he found the animals to be highly disagreeable.

Church & Witches

Witch Hunt History

Rome & Women (yet again)

(written Feb 8, 2013 in response to the cited article)

On January 31, 2013, the Catholic News Service published an article entitled “Why not women priests?  The papal theologian explains.”  In that article Francis X. Rocca wrote:

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that only men can receive holy orders because Jesus chose men as his apostles and the "apostles did the same when they chose collaborators to succeed them in their ministry."  Blessed John Paul II wrote in 1994 that this teaching is definitive and not open to debate among Catholics.

So that settles it!  I believe the same thing was said about crusading and the practice of burning heretics.