Diese Seite verwendet Cookies für unsere Dienste, zur Verbesserung unserer Leistungen, für Analytik und (falls Sie nicht eingeloggt sind) für Werbung. Indem Sie LibraryThing nutzen, erklären Sie dass Sie unsere Nutzungsbedingungen und Datenschutzrichtlinie gelesen und verstanden haben. Die Nutzung unserer Webseite und Dienste unterliegt diesen Richtlinien und Geschäftsbedingungen.
Ergebnisse von Google Books
Auf ein Miniaturbild klicken, um zu Google Books zu gelangen.
Ich habe vor kurzem das Buch von Karl Rabeder, Wer nichts hat, kann alles geben: Wie ich meine Reichtümer gegen den Sinn des Lebens eintauschte, gelesen und erkannte darin eine konsequente Umsetzung dieses Klassikers, der mich schon in den 80ern faszinierte. Erich Fromm hat 1976 die theoretischen Grundlagen dafür gelegt, den Gang vom Haben zum Sein, zur eigentlichen Menschwerdung zu erklären.
Heute sind in vielen Teilen der Erde hungrige Menschen vom Nichtverhungern auf dem Weg zum wenigstens etwas Haben, sie wollen es unbedingt, jene Kleinigkeiten des Konsums, die unsere Eltern und wir in den 60ern etc. so dringend brauchten. Alles wollten wir damals haben, um alle Sicherheit der Welt zu besitzen, ja, wir wollten sogar den Tod vergessen. Heute erkennen wir die Grenzen des Wachstums, um gleichzeitig jene Lebensweisen überdeutlich zu sehen, deren Reichtum langsam des Wahnsinns fette Beute wird.
Griechenland ist ein besonders deutliches Beispiel für eine Rückkehr des Feudalismus ebenso wie Russland oder andere extrem-kapitalistischen Staaten, die von einer Geldfettschicht ohnegleichen umstülpt sind, die dem Staat jene Grundlagen entziehen, die für ein gesundes Wachstum notwendig sind. Die Gier legt sich sauer auf alles und wird im (reichen, besitzenwollenden) Individuum bei Todesnähe zu einem schmelzend zähen Brei, der kaum aushaltbar scheint. Das Sein, die Kooperation, die Menschwerdung, Hilfe, Liebe und MItgefühl sind Auswege, die Fromm weise schon längst vorausgesehen hat.
Unsere Verkaufs- und Marketinggesellschaft wird dort immer lächerlicher, wo sie im Überschwang das Paradies errichten und sogar die Todsünden dafür nutzen möchte. Eine Religion, die denkende Menschen mit dem Irrsinn des täglichen Medienkonsum einfach nur noch ersticken will. Karl Rabeder und viele anderen gehen einen Weg, der für unsere westlichen Gesellschaften der einzig mögliche ist. Weil wir morgen den aufstrebenden Haben-Staaten Wege aus dem Dilemma des Konsums hin zum natürlichen Kreislauf, zum menschlichen Tun und gegenseitiger Hilfe weisen müssen.
Diese Abkehr von der Marketinggesellschaft hat bei uns schon längst begonnen und überall wachsen die Zeichen für Menschen, die einfach das sein wollen, was in natürlichen Kreisläufen für uns vorgesehen ist: vergängliche, soziale, mitfühlende, kooperierende Wesen.
Ich schätze mal, ich habe es inzwischen zum dritten Mal gelesen und finde es kein Mal weniger wichtig, gut oder visionär und mich zugleich weniger gereift (wer mit dem Werk vertraut ist, kann das sofort daran erkennen, dass ich erwähnen musste, dass ich es mindestens drei Mal gelesen habe). ( )
Die Informationen stammen von der englischen "Wissenswertes"-Seite.Ändern, um den Eintrag der eigenen Sprache anzupassen.
The Way to do is to be. [Lao-tse]
People should not consider so much what they are to do, as what they are. [Meister Eckhart]
The less you are and the less you express of your life - the more you have and the greater is your alientated life. [Karl Marx]
Widmung
Erste Worte
Die Informationen stammen von der englischen "Wissenswertes"-Seite.Ändern, um den Eintrag der eigenen Sprache anzupassen.
The Great Promise of Unlimited Progress - the promise of domination of nature, of material abundance, of the greatest happiness for the greatest number, and of unimpeded personal freedom - has sustained the hopes and faith of the generations since the beginning of the industrial age.
The grandeur of the Great Promise, the marvelous material and intellectual achievements of the industrial age, must be visualized in order to understand the trauma that realization of its failure is producing today. For the industrial age has indeed failed to fulfill its Great Promise, and ever growing numbers of people are becoming aware that:
Unrestricted satisfaction of all desires is not conducive to well-being, nor is it the way to happiness or even to maximum pleasure.
The dream of being independent masters of our lives ended when we began awakening to the fact that we have all become cogs in the bureaucratic machine, with our thoughts, feelings, and tastes manipulated by government and industry and the mass communications that they control.
Economic progress has remained restricted to the rich nations, and the gap between rich and poor nations has ever widened.
Technical progress itself has created ecological dangers and the dangers of nuclear war, either or both of which may put an end to all civilization and possibly to all life.
None of the other great Masters taught that the factual existence of a desire constituted an ethical norm. They were concerned with humankind’s optimal well-being (vivere bene). The essential element in their thinking is the distinction between those needs (desires) that are only subjectively felt and whose satisfaction leads to momentary pleasure, and those needs that are rooted in human nature and whose realization is conducive to human growth and produces eudaimonia, i.e., “well-being.” In other words, they were concerned with the distinction between purely subjectively felt needs and objectively valid needs—part of the former being harmful to human growth and the latter being in accordance with the requirements of human nature.
The second psychological premise of the industrial age, that the pursuit of individual egoism leads to harmony and peace, growth in everyone’s welfare, is equally erroneous on theoretical grounds, and again its fallacy is proven by the observable data. Why should this principle, which only one of the great classical economists, David Ricardo, rejected, be true? To be an egoist refers not only to my behavior but to my character. It means: that I want everything for myself; that possessing, not sharing, gives me pleasure; that I must become greedy because if my aim is having, I am more the more I have; that I must feel antagonistic toward all others: my customers whom I want to deceive, my competitors whom I want to destroy, my workers whom I want to exploit. I can never be satisfied, because there is no end to my wishes; I must be envious of those who have more and afraid of those who have less. But I have to repress all these feelings in order to represent myself (to others as well as to myself) as the smiling, rational, sincere, kind human being everybody pretends to be.
The development of this economic system was no longer determined by the question: What is good for Man? but by the question: What is good for the growth of the system? One tried to hide the sharpness of this conflict by making the assumption that what was good for the growth of the system (or even for a single big corporation) was also good for the people. This construction was bolstered by an auxiliary construction: that the very qualities that the system required of human beings —egotism, selfishness, and greed—were innate in human nature; hence, not only the system but human nature itself fostered them. Societies in which egotism, selfishness, and greed did not exist were supposed to be “primitive,” their inhabitants “childlike.” People refused to recognize that these traits were not natural drives that caused industrial society to exist, but that they were the products of social circumstances.
Not least in importance is another factor: people’s relation to nature became deeply hostile. Being “freaks of nature” who by the very conditions of our existence are within nature and by the gift of our reason transcend it, we have tried to solve our existential problem by giving up the Messianic vision of harmony between humankind and nature by conquering nature, by transforming it to our own purposes until the conquest has become more and more equivalent to destruction. Our spirit of conquest and hostility has blinded us to the facts that natural resources have their limits and can eventually be exhausted, and that nature will fight back against human rapaciousness.
Industrial society has contempt for nature—as well as for all things not machine-made and for all people who are not machine makers (the nonwhite races, with the recent exceptions of Japan and China). People are attracted today to the mechanical, the powerful machine, the lifeless, and ever increasingly to destruction.
The need for profound human change emerges not only as an ethical or religious demand, not only as a psychological demand arising from the pathogenic nature of our present social character, but also as a condition for the sheer survival of the human race. Right living is no longer only the fulfillment of an ethical or religious demand. For the first time in history the physical survival of the human race depends on a radical change of the human heart. However, a change of the human heart is possible only to the extent that drastic economic and social changes occur that give the human heart the chance for change and the courage and the vision to achieve it.
Is There an Alternative to Catastrophe?
All the data mentioned so far are published and well known. The almost unbelievable fact is that no serious effort is made to avert what looks like a final decree of fate. While in our private life nobody except a mad person would remain passive in view of a threat to our total existence, those who are in charge of public affairs do practically nothing, and those who have entrusted their fate to them let them continue to do nothing.
How is it possible that the strongest of all instincts, that for survival, seems to have ceased to motivate us? One of the most obvious explanations is that the leaders undertake many actions that make it possible for them to pretend they are doing something effective to avoid a catastrophe: endless conferences, resolutions, disarmament talks, all give the impression that the problems are recognized and something is being done to resolve them. Yet nothing of real importance happens; but both the leaders and the led anesthetize their consciences and their wish for survival by giving the appearance of knowing the road and marching in the right direction.
Another explanation is that the selfishness the system generates makes leaders value personal success more highly than social responsibility. It is no longer shocking when political leaders and business executives make decisions that seem to be to their personal advantage, but at the same time are harmful and dangerous to the community. Indeed, if selfishness is one of the pillars of contemporary practical ethics, why should they act otherwise? They do not seem to know that greed (like submission) makes people stupid as far as the pursuit of even their own real interests is concerned, such as their interest in their own lives and in the lives of their spouses and their children (cf. J. Piaget, The Moral Judgment of the Child). At the same time, the general public is also so selfishly concerned with their private affairs that they pay little attention to all that transcends the personal realm.
Yet another explanation for the deadening of our survival instinct is that the changes in living that would be required are so drastic that people prefer the future catastrophe to the sacrifice they would have to make now. Arthur Koestler’s description of an experience he had during the Spanish Civil War is a telling example of this widespread attitude: Koestler sat in the comfortable villa of a friend while the advance of Franco’s troops was reported; there was no doubt that they would arrive during the night, and very likely he would be shot; he could save his life by fleeing, but the night was cold and rainy, the house, warm and cozy; so he stayed, was taken prisoner, and only by almost a miracle was his life saved weeks later by the efforts of friendly journalists. This is also the kind of behavior that occurs in people who will risk dying rather than undergo an examination that could lead to the diagnosis of a grave illness requiring major surgery.
Zitate
Letzte Worte
Die Informationen stammen von der englischen "Wissenswertes"-Seite.Ändern, um den Eintrag der eigenen Sprache anzupassen.
If the City of God and the Earthly City were thesis and antithesis, a new synthesis is the only alternative to chaos: the synthesis between the spiritual core of the Late Medieval world and the development of rational thought and science since the Renaissance. This synthesis is The City of Being.
)
Google Books — Lädt ...
3
Heute sind in vielen Teilen der Erde hungrige Menschen vom Nichtverhungern auf dem Weg zum wenigstens etwas Haben, sie wollen es unbedingt, jene Kleinigkeiten des Konsums, die unsere Eltern und wir in den 60ern etc. so dringend brauchten. Alles wollten wir damals haben, um alle Sicherheit der Welt zu besitzen, ja, wir wollten sogar den Tod vergessen. Heute erkennen wir die Grenzen des Wachstums, um gleichzeitig jene Lebensweisen überdeutlich zu sehen, deren Reichtum langsam des Wahnsinns fette Beute wird.
Griechenland ist ein besonders deutliches Beispiel für eine Rückkehr des Feudalismus ebenso wie Russland oder andere extrem-kapitalistischen Staaten, die von einer Geldfettschicht ohnegleichen umstülpt sind, die dem Staat jene Grundlagen entziehen, die für ein gesundes Wachstum notwendig sind. Die Gier legt sich sauer auf alles und wird im (reichen, besitzenwollenden) Individuum bei Todesnähe zu einem schmelzend zähen Brei, der kaum aushaltbar scheint. Das Sein, die Kooperation, die Menschwerdung, Hilfe, Liebe und MItgefühl sind Auswege, die Fromm weise schon längst vorausgesehen hat.
Unsere Verkaufs- und Marketinggesellschaft wird dort immer lächerlicher, wo sie im Überschwang das Paradies errichten und sogar die Todsünden dafür nutzen möchte. Eine Religion, die denkende Menschen mit dem Irrsinn des täglichen Medienkonsum einfach nur noch ersticken will. Karl Rabeder und viele anderen gehen einen Weg, der für unsere westlichen Gesellschaften der einzig mögliche ist. Weil wir morgen den aufstrebenden Haben-Staaten Wege aus dem Dilemma des Konsums hin zum natürlichen Kreislauf, zum menschlichen Tun und gegenseitiger Hilfe weisen müssen.
Diese Abkehr von der Marketinggesellschaft hat bei uns schon längst begonnen und überall wachsen die Zeichen für Menschen, die einfach das sein wollen, was in natürlichen Kreisläufen für uns vorgesehen ist: vergängliche, soziale, mitfühlende, kooperierende Wesen.
2011