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Tag Archives: consumerism
Can You Have Your Lent and Capitalism Too?
This past week, have you been indulging or denying yourself? The warring sides of human existence—the selfishly sensual and the altruistic—are brutally depicted in the below painting by Pieter Bruegal titled, “The Fight Between Carnival and Lent” (1559). At left … Continue reading
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Tagged Ayn Rand, capitalism, Catholicism, charity, Christianity, consumerism, God, Jesus, lent, love, selfishness
2 Comments
Shopping Rage: Black Friday’s Competitive Shopping Road Rage
From the Los Angeles Times today comes this disturbing little item worthy of a scene from Dante’s Inferno: In Porter Ranch, a woman pepper sprayed customers at a Wal-Mart in what authorities say was a deliberate attempt to get more “door … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged America, black friday, Charles Darwin, competition, consumerism, evolution, shopping, survival of the fittest, wal-mart
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In Philadelphia, Opera Singers Interrupt a Marketplace
A bit of guerilla opera in Philadelphia: Hmm. Do you suppose that the inward experience of death might be like this? Perhaps you’ll be walking along one day when an epiphany of light and song will break in on your life, and … Continue reading
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Tagged consumerism, death, happiness, life, love, music, NDEs, near death experience, opera, song, the sacred, worry
3 Comments
Today’s Question: Is the Goal of Existence an Epiphany?
Is the goal of existence, the end, an epiphany—a vision, as it were of God—as in “I see you”? Or is the goal of existence rational coping with passing appearances, seeking to enjoy one’s existential freedom and independence from the (opaque and … Continue reading
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Tagged atheism, atheist, consumerism, death, epiphany, God, life, love, near-death experiences, the ground of being, the ontological mystery
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Six years later, I collapse (my defenses) and listen to Jared Diamond present the broad outlines of his book, “Collapse” (Viking 2004)
Back in December of 2004, when Jared Diamond’s Collapse came out, I decided that I wouldn’t buy it. I simply didn’t want a Paul Ehrlich-1970s-style-downer book about the environment marring my otherwise sunny disposition. I’m not brave Oedipus: I don’t necessarily … Continue reading
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Tagged America, collapse, conservatism, consumerism, ecology, green movement, Greenpeace, jared diamond, life, the environment, UCLA, vegetarianism
1 Comment
Would the Ante-Nicene Fathers call contemporary American Protestants Christians (followers of Jesus)?
Early Orthodox (or proto-Orthodox) Christians writing after the apostolic period but before western Christendom’s adoption of the Nicene Creed (325 CE) are sometimes called the Ante-Nicene Fathers, and there is a fascinating (and rather thick) book I’m reading that catalogues quotes from … Continue reading
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Tagged ante-Nicene fathers, authoritarianism, Christianity, consumerism, fundamentalism, God, islamic fundamentalism, Jesus, materialism, psychology, religion, the Bible
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Henry Fairlie on the Iffy Desirability of Being an American Consumer
Back in the 1980s, Henry Fairlie wrote in the New Republic something that I think speaks to our own era as we go through a recession and Americans seem to be tightening their belts and trying to pay down (rather … Continue reading
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Tagged Buddhism, capitalism, Catholicism, consumerism, economy, essays, henry fairlie, life, philosophy, psychology, writers, writing
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Americans Moving Along Their Cages, Tracks, and Grooves—and Imagining It as Freedom: An Image I Snapped From a Bridge in Las Vegas
Of course, to take this picture I too show myself to be in the cage.
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Tagged America, capitalism, consumerism, freedom, Las Vegas, patriotism, photography, poetry, roller coasters, Santi Tafarella, slavery, Statue of Liberty
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Prometheus Unbound 