Sheep Eat People
Immortalist
SUMMARY
The process of separating people from each other and their ancestral ground
began with the dismantling of the European *commons* half a millennia ago.
Medieval European agriculture was communally organized. Peasants pooled
their individual holdings into open fields that were jointly cultivated.
Common pastures were used to graze their animals. Peasant councils
administered the commons an early form of democratic form of governance.
*Enclosing* means surrounding a piece of land with hedges, ditches, or other
barriers to the free passage of men and animals. Some historians have called
the enclosure movement the revolution of the rich against the poor. These
acts fundamentally altered the economic relationship between people, and
between people and the natural environment, paving the way for the emergence
of the industrial and urban revolutions.
The European enclosure movement marked the beginning of a worldwide process
of privatization and commodification of the land, ocean, and atmosphere of
the earth that is still being carried out today in every unattended or
unclaimed ecological niche. With the financial help of a new and wealthy
bourgeois class of merchants and bankers, landlords began to buy up the
common lands, turning them to pastureland for sheep.
Fenced off the land, the peasants reacted.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A Private Nature:
The process of separating people from each other and their ancestral ground
began with the dismantling of the European commons half a millennia ago.
Much of the economic life of medieval Europe centered around the village
commons. Although feudal landlords owned the commons, they leased it to
peasant farmers under various tenancy arrangements. Freeholders enjoyed
perpetual tenancy, from generation to generation, and could not be
arbitrarily removed from their land by the landlord.
Leaseholders enjoyed a limited tenancy agreement, generally extending
through three lifetimes, at which point the landlords could renew or change
the conditions of the lease or withhold the lease altogether. Customary
tenants, on the other hand, were without legal rights and their tenancy
depended solely on the goodwill of the landlord.
In return for their rights to cultivate the land, tenant farmers had to turn
over a percentage of their harvest to their landlord or devote a comparable
amount of time working the landlord's fields. With the introduction of the
moneyed economy in the late medieval era, peasant farmers were increasingly
required to pay rent or taxes in return for the right to farm the land.
Medieval European agriculture was communally organized. Peasants pooled
their individual holdings into open fields that were jointly cultivated.
Common pastures were used to graze their animals. Village commons peppered
the European landscape. For the most part, they were self sufficient and
proved to be highly resilient to climate and other environmental and
political assaults. They remained so as long as they continued to be
organized communally for subsistence purposes.
The most remarkable feature of the village commons, and unfortunately the
least known, is their democratic form of governance. Peasant councils
administered the commons. Decisions on crop rotation, the time to plant and
harvest, the number of animals that could graze on the commons, the
introduction of new crops, the cutting of forests, the allocation of water,
and the use of farm animals and plows were all made jointly and
democratically by the members of the commune.
The village commons prospered for over six hundred years along the base of
the feudal pyramid, under the watchful but often nominal presence of the
landlords, monarch, and pope. Then beginning in the 1500's, new and powerful
political and economic forces were unleashed, first in Tudor England, and
later on the continent, which undermined and ultimately destroyed the
communitarianism of the village commons and the economic security that had
bound humans to one another and the land for centuries.
Enclosing means surrounding a piece of land with hedges, ditches, or other
barriers to the free passage of men and animals. Enclosure placed the land
under private control, severing any right the community formerly had to use
it. The enclosure movement was carried out by several means, including acts
of Parliament, the common agreement of all the members of the village
commune, and license by the King.
Some historians have called the enclosure movement the revolution of the
rich against the poor. Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, a
series of political and legal acts were initiated in countries throughout
Europe that enclosed publicly held land.
These acts fundamentally altered the economic relationship between people,
and between people and the natural environment, paving the way for the
emergence of the industrial and urban revolutions. In the process, millions
of peasants were dislodged from their ancestral homes and forced to migrate
into the new industrial cities where, if they were fortunate, they might
secure subsistence employment in the new industrial factories, which were
eager to take advantage of their desperate plight.
The European enclosure movement marked the beginning of a worldwide process
of privatization and commodification of the land, ocean, and atmosphere of
the earth that is still being carried out today in every unattended or
unclaimed ecological niche.
Yet, few among us are more than vaguely aware of either the political
history or environmental consequences of this radical reorientation in human
beings' relationship to nature. The English enclosure movement predates that
of the rest of Europe and provides a representative picture of the impact
that privatizing of commonly held land had on the life of the individual,
the community, and the course of events in Western civilization.
The English Enclosure Movement
England experienced two major waves of enclosure, the first in the 1500s
under the Tudar monarchy, the second in the late 1700s and early 1800s
during King George III's reign.
In the earlier period, increased urban demand for food triggered in
inflationary spiral which, in turn, increased the cost to landlords whose
land rents had been fixed at pre inflationary rates. At the same time, an
expanding textile industry was clamoring for more wool, making sheep grazing
an increasingly attractive and lucrative prospect. These two forces
conspired, creating an irresistible lure to enclose the land.
With the financial help of a new and wealthy bourgeois class of merchants
and bankers, landlords began to buy up the common lands, turning them to
pastureland for sheep. The enclosure of the commons swept through England as
large areas of once common land were brought under private control, forcing
peasants off the land and into the cities. Seemingly overnight, sheep took
over the English countryside.
The landlords defended their actions, pointing out that a single shepherd
tending sheep on enclosed land could bring in far greater returns at far
less expense than could be expected from the paltry fixed rates paid by
dozens of tenant farmers on the commons. The cost of farm labor had risen
dramatically in the 1500s in the wake of the mass deaths of rural
populations during the plague of the preceding century. Many landlords
complained bitterly of the scarcity of farmhands and reasoned that
conversion of arable land to pasture would greatly reduce their labor bill,
as indeed it did.
Fenced off the land, the peasants reacted. Protests and open rebellion
ensued. Sir Thomas More captured the bitter spirit of the times in his
Utopia, a searching attack on the avarice and greed of the landlord class.
Your sheep, that were wont to be so meek and tame and so small eaters, now,
and I hear say, become so great devours and so wild, that they eat up and
swallow down the very men themselves. They consume, destroy, and devour
whole fields, houses and cities.
"Sheep eat men," declared More, echoing the sentiments of hundreds of
thousands of farm families, who watched helplessly as sheep grazed on
grassland that just a few years earlier had been tilled for oats and rye to
feed their own children. Everywhere people were reduced to starvation while
sheep were fattened and fleeced to rush wool to the new textile factories
popping up all over England and on the continent.
British Board of Agriculture statistics tell the story. An acre of arable
land on the commons could produce 670 pounds of bread. that same acre, when
enclosed, could only support a handful of sheep producing less than 176
pounds of mutton. By maintaining production high up on the food chain to
increase the wealth of a few, valuable calories were lost -- calories that
could have been used to feed a hungry population.
This story would be repeated over and over again in the modern age as the
enclosure movement, in various guises, was used to radically redefine the
use of the land. In each instance the land, long regarded as home, became
transformed into a mere resource, changing the basis of economic security
for large numbers of human beings.
In the first wave of enclosures in medieval England, many peasants became
resigned to a new status as landless people, a fate previously experienced
only by the wandering Jew in the long sweep of European history. Without a
home, the newly disenfranchised peasants became the first refugees of the
modern age. Their existence marginalized, they were no longer treated as a
community but, as a class, their worth henceforth determined in dollars and
measured strictly by their labor value per hour worked, rather than by their
long standing ancestral rights.
While some peasants accepted their new condition, others fought back,
determined to regain their former economic status. Throughout England the
banner cry went up: "Enclosures make fat beasts and lean poor people." The
peasants found a partial ally in the crown.
The Tudar monarchs, and later the Stuart kings, were quite interested in
commercial development of agriculture. They were opposed, however, to rapid
and extensive enclosures that resulted in the wholesale depopulation of the
English countryside. Concerned that massive dislodgment of the rural
population might ignite peasant insurrection and rebellion, and that
abandoned countryside might even make much of England vulnerable to military
attack by foreign powers, the monarchy supported weak anti enclosure
legislation.
The crown had ample reason to be worried. The economic foundations of
English life were being torn asunder with unfathomable consequences. The
entire country was being privatized. The land was being transformed into a
marketable resource; agriculture was being reduced to a commodity status;
and from Newcastle to Cornwall there were abandoned homes, deserted
villages, and boarded up churches.
This was a new and unprecedented form of warfare -- economic warfare --
whose consequences bore a striking resemblance to the ravages of military
action. The scenes in the English countryside were to become familiar ones
in the modern age as a new class of entrepreneurs and capitalists swept into
ecological niches and traditional communities around the world, forcing
people off the land (replace land with multinational corporate grabs of what
peoples have developed), which they transformed into a "resource" for short
term market exploitation.
Caught between the greed of the wealthy landlord class with whom they
closely identified, and the fury of the newly landless peasant class, the
monarchy tried to maintain a delicate balancing act designed to enrich its
own coffers while dampening the public rage. Legislation was passed in 1533
to limit the spread and impact of enclosures, but it was not strictly
enforced and did little to stem the movement to privatize English soil. By
the middle of the eighteenth century nearly half of the agricultural land
had been transferred to private possession.
The second and decisive wave of enclosures began around 1760 and extended
into the 1840s, roughly corresponding to the reign of King George III.
England and the continent were beginning to industrialize. Trade routes were
expanding and new markets were opening up overseas. A growing urban
population required more food, and an emerging bourgeoisie was demanding a
greater variety of foodstuffs as well. Wealthy landlords were anxious to
meet the new consumer demands. They made their final drive to enclose the
remaining English countryside, transforming the last vestiges of a
subsistence based rural economy into a new, market oriented agriculture.
The Enclosure movement brought with it a change in temporal as well as
spacial: conception. In fact, the history of this period is as much about
the enclosure of time and space. The time orientation of the commune adhered
strictly to the temporal requirements of nature. Agricultural activity was
shaped but the changing seasons and the rhythms of the larger environment.
In the incipient market economy, the whims and caprices of consumer
preferences began to exercise a greater influence over how the land was to
be used. Private landlords wee willing and able to change their practices
and policies to innovate and adjust to the ever changing demands of the
market.
The changing time orientation dictated by the forces of the marketplace was
to have far reaching consequences in the ensuing centuries. The signs were
already apparent. Private landlords anxious to keep pace with new consumer
demands pushed ahead with agricultural innovations to increase the
productivity of their land. Age old practices of soil conservation were
often compromised or abandoned altogether to accelerate production.
Agricultural land, which had remained fertile for hundreds of years under
the stewardship of the village communes, was exhausted as the time demands
of the market edged out the time requisites of the ecosystem.
In every region of the world where land has been enclosed and converted from
subsistence agriculture to a marketplace orientation over the past several
hundreds of years, the "time demands" Exerted by a growing urban market
have strained the carrying capacity of the soil, threatening erosion and
long term desertification. today American farmers, buffeted by high costs
and lower prices, are overusing the land, exhausting the soil base, and
threatening the food supply for future generations. Over one third of the
prime topsoil of North America has eroded away in this century, much of it
in the last several decades as farmers have attempted to meet the ever
accelerating production pace set by domestic and foreign markets.
It is often argued that the enclosure acts freed the individual from the
iron grip of the collective will. In actuality, privatization of land
allowed a few individuals to pursue their own naked self interests without
having to be accountable to the larger community, leaving each member to
fend for himself against his neighbor.
Interestingly, this new form of individual rights, the right to freely
exploit nature and people, was purchase at the expense of another even more
basic individual right that had been protected by law for hundreds of years.
Under English law, enclosure of a common often required the unanimous
consent of the freeholders of the commune. Even if one member opposed
enclosure it was generally sufficient to block the conversion.
We moderns are so thoroughly indoctrinated by the idea that individual
rights are a creature of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution that we
find it difficult to entertain the notion that long before our own Bill of
Rights was signed into law, peasant freeholders living within the village
commons in medieval England enjoyed an even more basic right:
the right to maintain their ancestral land even against the will of
themajority;
the right to turn over the same ground, to drink from the same well, to gaze
on the same landscape and vistas that had provided context, home, and
existence for one's family for as far back as any could remember:
in short, the right to pass along to one's children a largesse of common
experiences, shared settings, and tasks -- the right to join past, present
and future into a unified experience. This s what the freeholder protected
when he exercised his right under the law not to be moved. That right was a
highly coveted and fiercely championed.
One documented voice from those years long ago conveyed the sentiments of
many at the time:
The freeholder's right of commons is his several right as much as his
tenancy of his home. I defy you to enclose one square yard; I defy you
severally; I defy you jointly; you may meet in your court, you may pass what
resolutions you please; I shall condemn them; for I have a right to put my
beast on this land and every part of it; the law gives me this right and the
King protects it. Increasing commercial pressure to enclose the remaining
commons finally resulted in the passage of special acts of Parliament
stripping members of the co
mons of their rights to hold out against the privatization of the land. In
most instances these acts sanctioned enclosure if three fourths or four
fifths of the members of the commons agreed. Votes, however, were weighed by
the amount or value of the land owned, ensuring that the wealthy landlords
and rich farmers would prevail.
Enclosure fundamentally restructured the way people perceived themselves,
each other, and the soil. English historian Gilbert Slater asks us to
imagine "what a village cataclysm took place" when an act of Parliament was
passed to enclose a village commons. Commissioners descended on the village
with account books in hand. They went door to door, plot to plot, assigning
a monetary value on every property. The commissioners then rearranged the
entire commons, cutting up the arable land and pastures into neat, orderly
rectangles, each with a separate owner. All past relationships and mutual
obligations were severed. Suddenly and arbitrarily, the customs and
traditions of lifetimes were declared null and void. Neighbors were no
longer expected to help plough each other's fields, or mend village fences
together, or share in the grazing of draft animals on the common pasture.
Enclosure introduced a new concept of relationships into European
civilization that changed the basis of economic security and the perception
of social life. henceforth, land and people were no longer treated as ends
but rather as means. The ground people walked on was no longer valued solely
or even primarily in terms of shared experiences. It was no longer something
people belonged to, but rather a commodity people possessed. Land was
reduced to a quantitative status and measured by what it could be exchanged
for. So, too, with people. Relationships were reorganized. Neighbors became
employees or contractors. Reciprocity was replaced with hourly wages. People
sold their time and labor where they used to share their toil. With
enclosure, a myriad of relationships had to be restructured overnight.
People began to view each other and everyone around them in financial terms.
Virtually everyone and everything became negotiable and could be purchased
at an appropriate price.
Philosophers -- like Thomas Hobbes -- welcomed the change. Hobbes attacked
the roots of communalism that nourished the village commons and anchored the
feudal order. Hobbes viewed human life as a "short ad nasty, and brutish
affair" and argued that man is constantly engaged in a war of all against
all. Since perpetual warfare and competition for scarce resources is
inherent to human nature, the village commons could never be an effective
arrangement for organizing economic life. Hobbes ridiculed the notion of
communal obligations and relationships, arguing that they were based on an
illusion rather than reality. "For he that should be modest and tractable
and perform all he promises . . . should then make himself a prey to others
and produce his own certain ruin."
Hobbes was the first to articulate the idea "of the tragedy of the commons,"
the notion that each person will inevitably compete with others for the
limited land and resources available to all. Hobbes championed the idea of
commercial enclosure, arguing that it more accurately reflected the true
nature of human motivation. Hobbes skirted the historical fact, however,
that the village commons successfully maintained itself and sustained the
lives of its members for over six hundred years in Europe. The emerging
bourgeois class chose to ignore history altogether, casting their lot with a
philosophy that justified both their new relationship to the land and people
and their newly acquired fortunes..
Max Weber called this great restructuring of relationships the
"disenchantment of the world" -- life, land, existence, reduced to abstract
quantifiable standards of measurement. The European enclosure movement set
the stage for the modern age. The privatization of the land and the
commodification of human and environmental relationships marked by triumph
of the rational and analytical over the sacred. As Karl Marx later observed,
the enclosure movement also provided an army of surplus labor for the new
industrial factories in England and on the continent. Landless peasants
became the first generation of alienated workers.
The European enclosure movement helped create the necessary conditions for
the emergence of integrated national economies. The passing of agricultural
land into private hands was accompanied by technological innovations in
transportation, providing more reliable and efficient means of connecting
town and country. Improvement in river navigation, the dredging of canals,
the enlarging of paths into paved toll roads, and the laying down of rails
brought villages, towns, and cities into an interconnected framework for the
first time. Ironically, the increasing atomization and isolation of European
peasant and laborers provided a rather striking contrast to the increasing
complexification and integration of economic life. The communal self
sufficiency that characterized medieval life on the manner estate and the
village common gave way to a diversified market economy on the European
continent. Expanding markets, improved transportation, and overseas trade
required new forms of regulation, coordination, and control. Regional
integration of all these activities helped spawn the modern nation state.
In a little more than three hundred years the enclosure movement had
succeeded in fundamentally restructuring people's concept of security.
Medieval man and woman lost far more than their ancestral land during the
waves of enclosure. The privatization of the commons shattered the entire
structure of medieval life and, with it, the spiritual as well as economic
security that for hundreds of years had provided a sense of place and
purpose. exposed and directionless, European peasants became easy prey to a
new phalanx of sovereigns, first in the form of wealthy landlords, later
capitalist merchants and factory owners, and finally the bureaucrats and
autocrats of the nation state.
At the same time, the new bourgeois class turned its gaze from the heavens
to the farthest points on the horizon, where new markets lay in wait. The
Western World constructed a new base for security, which was firmly
entrenched along a horizontal plane. Security was to be found in walls and
fences, guns, and great masted sailing ships, mechanisms, and machines.
Security came to be measured more in technological prowess and earthly
possessions, and less in faith and good works. In return for the great
loss -- the loss of intimate communion with the body and blood of Christ --
the new man and woman were offered a form of security that was secular in
nature, tangible, and accumulative. Henceforth, money and machines were to
be the new guarantors.
Cows Devour People
Today, the worldwide enclosure movement shows little sign of abatement, as
nation states and multi national corporations continue to commodify every
last vestige of the earth's endowment as well as an increasing number of
human relationships, all in the name of profit, autonomy, and security.
From Biosphere Politics pg 36:
Sir Frederick
>
> The Enclosure Movement & Ensuing Rebellion
>
> SUMMARY
> The process of separating people from each other and their ancestral ground
> began with the dismantling of the European *commons* half a millennia ago.
> Medieval European agriculture was communally organized. Peasants pooled
> their individual holdings into open fields that were jointly cultivated.
> Common pastures were used to graze their animals. Peasant councils
> administered the commons an early form of democratic form of governance.
>
> Cows Devour People
>
> Today, the worldwide enclosure movement shows little sign of abatement, as
> nation states and multi national corporations continue to commodify every
> last vestige of the earth's endowment as well as an increasing number of
> human relationships, all in the name of profit, autonomy, and security.
>
> From Biosphere Politics pg 36:
Next to be commodified after information (TV), will be religion, then government.
Actually government may already be commodified (politicians + TV).
How to commodify religion? Don't know.
Then DNA will be commodified.
--
Best,
Frederick Martin McNeill
Poway, California, United States of America
mmcn...@fuzzysys.com
http://www.fuzzysys.com
*************************
Phrase of the week :
"If a man speaks in the forest and there is
no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?"
--Carlin
:-))))Snort!)
*************************
Steve Christie
> Next to be commodified after information (TV), will be religion, then
government.
> Actually government may already be commodified (politicians + TV).
Sigmund Freud's cousins I think, who took his famous relative's ideas to the
USA and revolutioned business and politics. Businessmen realised that people
wrere starting to demand less, as they filled their house with the
essentials and didn't think they needed other items. Freud's cousin made
businessmen tell their customers what they didn't need, they at least wanted
(he invented celebrity-endorsement of goods, for example); and, likewise, he
told politicians to sell themselves as products. You might need an ugly MIT
economics major a lot more than a good-looking actor as President, but which
one do you -want- ?
> How to commodify religion? Don't know.
Take a look at
http://www.catholicshopper.com/products/inspirational_sport_statues.html
Commodifying religion to a certain extent might boost Church turn-outs.
Here's our product, a gateway to eternity in Heaven. Hey, have a free
sample.
> Then DNA will be commodified.
This is a scary and very possible prosect. With new genes being identified
every month, isn't it time the UN got some teeth and bought every single
one, lest GlaxoSmithKline et al do?
yours truly,
Steve Christie
PS: Nice subject title.
Immortalist
"Steve Christie" <steve.c...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote in message
news:vqb29.5502$oo4....@news-binary.blueyonder.co.uk...
Isn't the evangilical nature of christianity and its exponential
propogation, the Ideal Type or model of western capitalism in the first
place?
Immortalist
"Dare" <clyd...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:aibt14$qv9$1...@news3.infoave.net...
>
> "Immortalist" <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:ukhj7tb...@corp.supernews.com...
>
> Who owns the Moon...the planets...the galaxy(ies)...
> the universe(s)?.....
> The etymology of the word own is the same as for
> the word owe. Does "to own" also imply "to owe" ?
> Does the owner have an obligation to that which is
> owned?
>
unfortunately the people who chopped up the commens are with us now and to
describe that.
but it is up to us to find out what that means, we could go off in any of
three general directions i suppose;
1: everything stays the same with an elite owning most stuff in essence
creating an biased aristocracy in spirit and the worlds problems resulting
from unequal distribution of goods and services remain those problems.
2: we create a little black box that makes everyone rich and gives them
anything they need.
3: we end up somewhere between aristocratic elitism and technological utopia
which prevails, until we create the little black boxs.
> Thanks,
> Dare
>
>
>
>
Gea Jones
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Dare" <clyd...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:aibt14$qv9$1...@news3.infoave.net...
<snip rest of interesting thought-provoking article>
Who owns the Moon...the planets...the galaxy(ies)...
the universe(s)?.....
The etymology of the word own is the same as for
the word owe. Does "to own" also imply "to owe" ?
Does the owner have an obligation to that which is
owned?
Thanks,
Dare
Unfortunately the meaning may be technically the same, but it certainly doesn't mean people treat it as such,best wishesGea
Joe Creaney
Immortalist wrote:
> Cows Devour People
>
> Today, the worldwide enclosure movement shows little sign of abatement, as
> nation states and multi national corporations continue to commodify every
> last vestige of the earth's endowment as well as an increasing number of
> human relationships, all in the name of profit, autonomy, and security.
>
> From Biosphere Politics pg 36:
>
>
>
Thst proscess started in the 1500's. People bemoanned iot then. Many groups of the refomation were communistic in nature. They saw true crisitianity as communisitc. I disagree. I think that we are better off and have progressed father because of privat properity. Today farming is a very small part of the economy because we don't need a large part of our population to produce food.
Joe Creaney
Dare wrote:
> "Immortalist" <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:ukhj7tb...@corp.supernews.com...
>
> <snip rest of interesting thought-provoking article>
>
> Who owns the Moon...the planets...the galaxy(ies)...
> the universe(s)?.....
> The etymology of the word own is the same as for
> the word owe. Does "to own" also imply "to owe" ?
> Does the owner have an obligation to that which is
> owned?
>
> Thanks,
> Dare
>
I can't stand these short cutsy saying that don't say anythink and often
cut off debate.
Immortalist
"Joe Creaney" <jo...@annuna.com> wrote in message
news:3D49F029...@annuna.com...
>
> Immortalist wrote:
>
> > The Enclosure Movement & Ensuing Rebellion
>
groups of the refomation were communistic in nature. They saw true
crisitianity as communisitc. I disagree. I think that we are better off
and have progressed father because of privat properity. Today farming is a
very small part of the economy because we don't need a large part of our
population to produce food.
>
If today farming is a very small part of the economy because we don't need a
large part of our population to produce food and in other areas of the
economy better technology progressively and then completely relieves humans
of the need to work in order to produce the needs for survival, and the
distribution of private property is based upon these disappearing means of
economic support, will everything become free as gifts from the self
maintaning machines, and will all people own their own land for free, since
the trend you noted will continue indefinatly?
Keynes
wrote:
Modern Christianity bears no resemblance to classical Christianity.
Most of what is applauded today was condemned in the past.
At root, Christianity is anti-materialist communalism.
It is totally opposed to cut throat competition.
Modern Christians are not serious anyway. For them religion
is not an all consuming spiritual quest, but a Sunday morning habit.
Today's real religion is consumerism. We all worship faithfully at the
TV every night. Material Gain is our idol, constantly in our thoughts.
That is what we worship. Christanity is nothing more than a pose.
If even a fraction of so-called Christians were serious
they would tear down the temple of mammon forthwith.
>>
>> > Then DNA will be commodified.
>> This is a scary and very possible prosect. With new genes being identified
>> every month, isn't it time the UN got some teeth and bought every single
>> one, lest GlaxoSmithKline et al do?
>>
>> yours truly,
>> Steve Christie
>>
>> PS: Nice subject title.
>>
>>
>
Keynes
"If at first you don't succeed, try, try and blame Bill Clinton."
( CONs - men at work greasing the "Axles of Evil". )
The ditto-hydra - 10,000 heads all alike without a thought among them.
If we give up on the constitution, the terrorists win.
You be afraid of the boogyman. I'm afraid of a lawless government.
Immortalist
"Keynes" <Key...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:sljlkug76cbg518ts...@4ax.com...
If the Roman world adopted Christianity and grafted its techniques for
applying power and persuation, and during the Crusades some saw it as an
large religious advertising campaign, how does that differ in spirit to
changes made and acceptance of capitalistic principles after the
reformation? To convince another to be saved is the closest thing to a sale
that I can think of.
Keynes
wrote:
Protestant Christianity is all about commerce and competition.
Catholics on the other hand have been anti-capitalist.
The serious fathers of 'liberation theology' (which has been
effectively suppressed by death squads and even the Pope)
worked to find a means of social justice for the exploited poor.
Spanish Jesuits in the earliest colonization of South America
actually set up communes of native indians. They were forcibly
suppressed as well. Most modern Catholics have lost touch
with the gospel and believe in the 'protestant work ethic',
which reduces humanity to useful or useless cogs in the
holy economic machine. The Catholic position is far-left
liberal as they interpret the gospel, EXCEPT for the non-
scriptural crusade to end abortion. Most Catholics think
that's all that really counts about their religion.
For the rest of it they hold protestant views.
Immortalist
Christianity is the *model* from which we persuade people to form opinions
in the western world. My point is that capitalists have used the religious
technique along with others. The goal is to be a competitor in the market of
ideas and gain adherents.
> Spanish Jesuits in the earliest colonization of South America
Interesting use of colonization and communes in the same sentence in
reference to economic principles. I see you point about communes and the
Catholic Church and all, but the Catholics have created the line used for
centuries designed to alter consumer behavior whether they be religious or
market consumers.