sounds like he equated capitalism with democracy.
Big mistake...
Eva
Octavio
> Paz's
> In Light of India, where I came across this passage:
> "In the West since the l8th century change has been overvalued. Traditional
> India, like old European societies prized immutability....Along with change
> the modern West glorifies the individual...Change and the individual fulfill
> each other. With his habitual insight, Tocqueville differentiated between
> egotism
> and individiualism. The first "is born from blind instinct..it is a vice as old
> as
> the world and is found in all societies." Individualism, in contrast, was born
> with democracy, and it tends to separate each person and his family from
> society.
> In individualistic societies, the private sphere displaces the public. For the
> Athenian,
> the greatest honor was citizenship, which gave him the right to take part in
> public
> affairs. The modern citizen defends his privacy, his economic interests, his
> philosophy,
> his property, what couonts is himself and his small circle, not the general
> interests of
> his city or nation. " ...Aristocratic societies were heroic: the fidelity of
> the vassal for
> his lord, the soldier for his faith. These attitudes have almost completely
> disappeared
> in the modern world. In democratic societies, where change is continual, the
> ties that
> bind the individual with his ancestors have vanished, and those that connect him
>
> with his fellow citizens have slackened. Indifference and envy are democracy's
> great defects. Tocqueville concludes: Democracy makes each individual not
> only forget his ancestors, but also neglect his descendents and separate himself
>
> from his contemporaries: he is plunged forever into himself and, in the end, is
> eternally surrounded by the solitude of his own soul" , A prophecy that has
> been utterly fulfilled in our time.
> I find modern societies repellent on two accounts. On the one hand, they have
> taken the human race--a species in which each individual, according to all the
> philosophies and religions, is a unique being-- and turned it into a homogeneous
>
> mass; modern humans seem to have all come out of a factory, not a womb.
> On the other hand, they have made every one of those beings a hermit.
> Capitalist democracies have created uniformity, not equality, and they have
> replaced fraternity with a perpetual struggle among individuals. It was once
> believed that, with the growth of the private sphere, the individual would have
> more leisure time and would devote it to the arts, reading, and self-reflection.
>
> We now know that people don't know what to do with their time. They have
> become slaves of entertainments that are generally idiotic, and the hours that
> are not devoted to cash are spent in facile hedonism. I do not condemn the cult
> of pleasure; I lament the general vulgarity.
> I note the evilsw of contemporary individualism not to defend the caste system,
> but to mitigate a little the hypocritical horror it provokes among our
> contemporaries.
> ....Castes must not disappear so that its victims may turn into the servants of
> the
> voracious gods of individualism, but rather that, between us, we may discover
> a fraternity.
>
> Durant wrote:
>
> > Yes, the resources are finite, and the only way we can survive
> > to the point where our population level out without any
> > war or other means of mass death,
> > if we use what we have sustainably, which needs global
> > cooperative employment of the best science we can muster.
> > It cannot be done with the present profit-centered system.
> > It can only be done with everybody taking part voluntarily.
> >
> > Eva
> >
> > > Re: William Rees and his "ecological footprint" . Most people still don't
> > > "get" it. The Globe and Mail had an editorial yesterday ridiculing him
> > > and maintaining everyone's right to go to Florida for the winter and to
> > > drive a van. They see no limits to the size of the pie, as U.S. consumers
> > > who are now spending more than they earn to keep fueling their economy.
> > > The Globe's article ridiculed Rees for presuming to know that "happiness"
> > > does not depend on material wealth. To be rich is glorious. But to be
> > > happy?
> > > Melanie
> > >
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
>
>
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
