A 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.
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 and should 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.
Vote off the Tidö Agreement restrictions on human rights such as visitation zones!
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.
I really agree that we need more morality and empathy in society, and the Christian moral compass could really make a difference. Imagine if more people actually lived by it, with humanity and justice as guiding stars. It feels like something we have forgotten, but which we need back.
But when it comes to politics… it feels like all the options are too far from what I want to see. I've been looking, but no party seems to really want to change. Instead, the same old interests rule, and those who are already well off get even more while the vulnerable get less. It feels like we are standing and watching as the train rolls away without anyone trying to steer it in the right direction.
I really want to vote for change, but right now it feels like no politician has the necessary vision. I hope that one day we get an alternative that dares to do what it takes to create a society where both material needs and morals have a place.
The right-wing trend depends on the disinformation about the oil crisis in the 1970s. It has led us to falsely believe that welfare, democracy and environmental friendliness are unprofitable and lead to inflation. This is wrong. The economy works best when it is socially and ecologically sustainable. We can have low tax for workers, the unemployed, those on sick leave and the middle class as well as having a high level of immigration and still being able to afford welfare and a green transition.
we think in the right direction, but it doesn´t reach out to non believers in the middle or the conservative side
The left must offer more freedom, forgiveness, empathy and tolerance for lower and middle class and much better economy for these two groups as well.
We need to remind ourselves that both capitalism and communism are material world ideologies. Ultimately, they achieve the same result. You can say that the Soviet Union became a supercapitalism where the state owned the people collectively. People became like cattle. Now we are facing a similar process in the West along the right-wing extreme path where money is the goal with people, nations and nature as the means. An extreme individualism emerges. Morality is suspended. If the human community of values is abolished, then the road leads to totalitarianism. Capitalism and communism were with their two opposites thesis and antithesis. It would lead to synthesis according to Hegel. That's how we are at that time. Through the conflict, the social order breaks down and relationships to laws and laws of life are broken. We are in an existential crisis. The world spirit is only material. Christianity as a community of justice, peace and love is a resistance. The true foundation of economics comes from the Greek oikonomia which does not mean hoarding money but the house with its laws of life. The whole earth is a house. An earth with nature as a source of supply and the water that distributes the water for new growth in nature for humanity. Yes, even society is a house. Yes, even the family as a unit. A living community. We are in an extremely important time. Our life is not only a material existence. Life on earth is a preparation for the afterlife. Truth came with Jesus' life on earth but came from Heaven. The time is alarmed. The dark age is coming to an end. Christ's return is near. A Purification for a Peaceful Era Evil will be purged. Those who believe are saved. Both Jesus and Mary speak and have warned us in apparitions during the 1900th and 2000st centuries
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