RECENTLY ADDED the newsletter from SubRosa discussing the brutalization in our brutal age, I want to highlight that in my view that supports Karl Marx in this dilemma.
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Matter before morality
Marx emphasizes matter before morality, while Hegel says that history develops out of a struggle between ideas (often of a moral nature) that ends in the modern state with freedom for the individual to act and freedom from the state encroaching on the freedom of the individual. So Hegel emphasizes the primacy of morality over matter.
The laws of social development
Marx, with his materialistic view, points out that economic and social conditions are fundamental to the moral structures of society. For Marx, it is material conditions that shape and govern morality, and therefore it is important to change the structures of society in order to achieve real change.
Balance
The conflict between these ideas is about how we should understand and address the problems that characterize our time. For my part, I think that for most people, material needs come before morals, but at the same time, I think that most people strive to do the best they can within the framework they find themselves in.
Difficult to be Jesus in a right-wing society
As Marx points out, it is more difficult to live like Jesus in a more right-wing society, where market forces can be in conflict with Christian values of solidarity and humanity. Therefore, it is important that we reflect on how society's structures affect our moral actions and strive to create a society that promotes both material and moral welfare.
A kind clown the optimal
At the same time, man will never be perfect and he feels and acts best when he is not expected to be more than good enough. We all have a clown inside of us that we have to let come out in order for us and others to feel good. But this clown should strive to be good enough. For that, it needs to do the best it can, but with the help of society, both for its own part and for the part of all vulnerable people.
A single individual who puts all his energy into helping others can perhaps help 1-4 other people a bit half-heartedly with the risk of burning himself out and those around him.
Community efforts the realistic
But an empathetic and solidary welfare society organizes the individual's activities via the tax and the money the state creates in the budget in creating a good, caring society also and especially for the vulnerable.
Vote with your heart
If we see outliers on the train, we can't change much there and then. But we find out which political parties that best creates a social, economic and ecological society, we can with small contributions here and now maximize our contribution to help all vulnerable people.
If you want to change Sweden between elections, you can vote for the campaigns on The shift.
If you'd rather change the world, vote for the campaigns from Avaaz.
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More reading
Why are Americans so dissatisfied and Trump-positive despite a good labor market
Well, if you want to change Sweden between the elections, you have to do a lot more. You should participate in some political activity where you meet and can decide collectively what you want to do. And you should try to get something that exists all over the country, if it doesn't already.
Slacktivism can be ignored by those in power, it does not interfere with any plans for them. And to the extent that it eats away at the legitimacy of those in power, it goes so slowly that we are all dead the day it has any effect.
What changes society is 1. obstruct the government's actions, 2. create your own alternatives and 3. tie all this together with a popular movement culture.