giving away $10,000

 Shane Claiborne , in Practicing Jubilee, pp.36-38 in Schools for Conversion, edited by The Rutba House :

“A couple of years ago we had two things happen. First, we won a lawsuit for police misconduct in New York City. The police had been arresting homeless people for sleeping in public, and charging them with disorderly conduct. I was arrested one night as I slept out in protest. Through a long legal process, I was found not guilty and filed a civil suit of wrongful arrest, wrongful prosecution, and police misconduct. And we won, in addition to a legal precedent, around $10,000. We knew it did not belong to me or to The Simple Way, but to the homeless in New York for all they endure. It was their victory. The second thing that happened was that after our study of biblical economics, we had an anonymous gift of $10,000 which had been invested in the Stock Market and now was being returned to the poor. A bunch of us started conspiring, and before long we said: It is time for a celebration of God's Jubilee.’ And where else should we have it but on Wall Street, in the face of the world's economy? This was not a one-time celebration, but an ancient celebration going back to Leviticus 25 and an eternal celebration of the New Jerusalem. We decided to send 100 dollars to 100 different communities that incarnate the spirit of Jubilee and the economics of love. Each $100 bill had ‘love’ written on it. And we invited everyone to Wall Street for the Jubilee.

After months of laughter and dreaming, it really happened.

About 40 people had all the change they could carry over 30,000 coins in bags, coffee mugs, briefcases, backpacks. Another 50 people would be meeting us on Wall Street. A dozen ‘secret stashers’ ran ahead, hiding hundreds of two-dollar bills all over lower Manhattan in parks, napkin holders, and phone booths. At 8:15 we started trickling into the public square in front of the main entrance to the New York Stock Exchange. Word of the redistribution had spread throughout New York, and nearly 100 folks from the alleys and projects were gathered. We had choreographed the celebration like a play production, making Wall Street the stage of our theatrics of counter-terror. At 8:20, Sister Margaret and I stepped forward to proclaim the Jubilee:

—

‘Some of us have worked on Wall Street and some of us have slept on Wall Street. We are a community of struggle.

Some of us are rich people trying to escape our loneliness.

Some of us are poor folks trying to escape the cold. Some of us are addicted to drugs and others are addicted to money.

We are a broken people who need each other and God, for we have come to recognize the mess that we have created of our world and how deeply we suffer from that mess.

Now we are working together to give birth to a new society within the shell of the old. Another world is possible. Another world is necessary. Another world is already here The money for this Jubilee Celebration was formerly invested in the Stock Market. Over $10,000 has been set free, poured out to be shared with our sisters and brothers in need. This money belongs to the poor, the workers, the refugees, the homeless... to all those who have suffered most from the wreckage of the current system. May we return it with joy, with our heads bowed in repentance, and with our hearts lifted in Jubilee.’

——

Then Sister Margaret blew the ram's horn (like our Jewish ancestors used to), and we announced: ‘Let the celebration begin!’ Ten people stationed on balconies above the crowd threw hundreds of dollars in paper money, covering the sky. Then they dropped banners which read,

‘STOP TERRORISM... SHARE.’

‘love,’ and ‘THERE IS ENOUGH FOR EVERYONE'S NEED BUT NOT ENOUGH FOR EVERYONE'S GREED.’

The streets turned silver. Our ‘pedestrians,’ ‘tourists,’ ‘homeless’ and ‘business people ’began pouring out their change. We decorated the place with sidewalk chalk and filled the air with bubbles. Joy was contagious. Someone bought bagels and started giving them out. People started sharing their winter clothes. One of the street-sweepers winked at us as he flashed a dustpan full of money. Another guy hugged someone and said, ‘Now I can get my prescription filled.’

It worked. We had no idea what would happen. We knew it was dangerous, intentionally bringing God and Mammon face to face. But this is precisely what we have committed our lives to. It is risky, and yet we are people of faith, believing that giving is more contagious than hoarding, that love can convert hatred, light can overcome darkness, and grass can pierce concrete.,,even on Wall Street."

Old School Third Places, The Pastor Gruen Effect, and Strange Loopy Megachurch and Malls

Great post from Jeremy on shopping mall and church.

One interesting topic was a mall in Portland, OR that is "built in a loop, not one long hallway with different offshoots. So you can go round and round and forget where you parked your car and somehow you buy an Annie’s Pretzel while you search–or is it just me? It can feel overwhelming, but that’s the point of the Gruen effect: to make us forget the focused reason we came and become open to more possibilities."

Hmmm...strange loop indeed.
One Yelp reviewer:

Once I do find my way inside, I feel like I am always lost.  I don't like the circular layout.  I always feel like I am missing seeing something or I walk by the same store 3 times because I don't know where I am.  I prefer the way Lloyd Center is designed, all the stores are lined up in a tidy row.  link

In a wonderful irony, I found through Googling that the name of the circular, loopy mall is Washington Square

Virginia Postrel: 1)Economic value and buying what we don't need to need 2)Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion

Economic value and buying what we don't need to need LOL, must be a college class, see 44 min mark..one  student on Google; another on Facebook during the lecture (:
 
Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion:

"Anyone who wants to understand this pope must grasp _______________"

find out here

amerikan arkitecture: even realer than the fake real thing?

image source

My wife, on her first visit to Disneyland (specifically, Tiki Room):  "It's all fake!"
Me: "I think that's the point."


--
Below excerpt from pp 36-38 of   The Experience Economy (updated edition here )

... Note that the Rainforest Cafe, which combines the dining room with a retail shop and bills itself as A Wild Place to Shop and Eat," is not out to simulate the actual experience of being in a rain forest . Rather it aims to stage an authentic-and esthetic-experience of the Rainforest Cafe.

 Another wild place to shop can be found in Owatonna, Minnesota, at Cabela's, a 150,000-square-foot outfitter of hunting, fishing, and other outdoor gear. Rather than add elements of entertainment to the store, Dick and Jim Cabela turned it into an esthetic experience, centered (literally) around a thirty-five-foot-high mountain with a waterfall and featuring more than a hundred stuffed taxidermic animals, many of them shot by the two brothers or other family members. This part of the store represents four different North American ecosystems. Elsewhere, two huge dioramas depict African scenes that include the so-called Big Five big-game targets: the elephant, lion, leopard, rhinoceros, and cape buffalo. Three aquariums hold a number of varieties of prized fish, while almost seven hundred different kinds of animals in total are mounted in and around every department of the store. Truly, as Dick Cabela told the St. Paul Pioneer Press, "We're selling an experience."" So much so that more than 35,000 people visited the refurbished store on the day it opened, and the company expects more than one million visitors every year

The esthetics of an experience may be completely natural, as when touring a national park, primarily man-made, as when dining at the Rainforest Cafe, or somewhere in between, as when shopping at Cabela's. There's no such thing as an artificial experience. Every experience created within the individual is real, whether the stimuli be natural or simulated. Extending this view, renowned architect Michael Benedikt discusses the role he believes architects play in connecting people to a "realness" within their created environments: 

Such experiences, such privileged moments, can be profoundly moving; and precisely from such moments, I believe, we build our best and necessary sense of an independent yet meaningful reality. I should like to call them direct esthetic experiences of the real and to suggest the following: in our media-saturated times it falls to architecture to have the direct esthetic experience of the real at the center of its concerns

 . While architects may lead, it really falls to everyone involved in the staging of esthetic experiences to connect individuals and the (immersive) reality they directly (albeit passively) experience, even when the environment seems less than "real." Benedikt would likely call the Rainforest Cafe and similar venues "non-real," and insist that its architects address "the issue of authenticity by framing [displaying the inauthentic as inauthentic], by making fakery honest, as it were."Z3 To stage compelling esthetic experiences, designers must acknowledge that any environment designed to create an experience is not real (the Rainforest Cafe, for instance, is not the rain forest ). They should not try to fool their guests into believing it's something it is not. 

Architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable makes a similar distinction when she says "it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell the real fake from the fake fake. All fakes are clearly not equal; there are good fakes and bad fakes. The standard is no longer real versus phony, but the relative merits of the imitation. What makes the good ones better is their improvement on reality. " To illustrate the difference, we'll consider two invented envi- ronments Huxtable spends considerable time critiquing: Universal City Walk and just about anyplace Disney.

 City Walk in Los Angeles is a collection of retail shops, restaurants, movie theatres, high-tech rides, and low-tech kiosks, each with a distinctive facade. Controlled exaggeration abounds, as in the four-story guitar adorning the Hard Rock Cafe. Visitors lazily stroll through a water fountain that shoots up at well-timed intervals. Guests pay an There's no such entrance fee for parking (nobody walks to anything in L.A., thing as do but here they pay admission to walk around) that's reim- artificial bursed only if they spend money at a dining or movie experience (purchases of goods merit no reimbursement). Part experience theme park and part public square, City Walk primarily imparts an esthetic experience, Huxtable confirms, as it "is being used for its own sake."" The realness of its fakery evidences itself from the very moment you park your car in the ungarnished lot. The back of the buildings greet arriving guests, who thus see the unadorned undersides of the facades as they walk in. Outside you see the inside of the mask; inside you see its outside. Adjacent buildings, unassociated with City Walk, remain visible through alleys and other off-shoots to the main drag. Its esthetic acknowledges its fakeness. Through framing, it's truly a real fake.

 The esthetic of most Disney experiences, on the other hand, seeks to hide all things fake: No one gets to see behind the curtain. Parking lots smoothly flow into shuttle buses, welcoming booths, and turnstiles. Facades seamlessly integrate into one another, lest some guest detect the trickery in the dimensional downsizing. Mickey Mouse never takes off his mask, lest we see the pimply faced kid inside. It's the fake fake that Huxtable and other critics decry, not being true to what they deem it really is. 

Or is it real fake fake? Other critics laud Disney for creating wholly immersive environments, consistent and engaging within themselves. One writes "that from whatever angle, nothing looks fake. Fabricated, yes- fake, no. Disneyland isn't the mimicry of a thing; it's a thing.... I'm convinced the genius of Disneyland isn't its fancifulness, but its literalism."" On the subject of Disney theme parks many people (including coauthors) disagree. But one thing remains clear: an esthetic experience must be true to itself and come off as real to its guests.  - pp 36-38 of   The Experience Economy 

"a cautionary tale for anyone challenging the (economic) authority of the Temple courts"

Bill O' Reilly (and Martin Dugard)'s  #1 book,  "Killing Jesus"  is presented as history and “an accurate account of not only how Jesus died, but also the way he lived and how his message has affected the world"; they are also  clear it is "not a religious book,"  and includes  no resurrection (!).

I'm not buying it (literally, as in the book, or much of its thesis), but it is fascinating that they at least get--even though the section is largely misguided--the cruciality of the temple encounter and economic  issues ("the bankers and the preachers nailed him to the cross," , as U2, covering Woody Guthrie, once sang..in another song  of Jesus' death without resurrection, though such may be hinted at) issues

...But here the authors’ disavowal of faith leads them to conclude that money – not claims about God or Judaism – is the real reason the Sanhedrin wanted Jesus killed. In interrupting the money flow by overturning the tables in the Temple, “Jesus has committed a grave offense,” and Annas, father-in-law of the high priest Caiaphas, desires to eliminate Jesus as “a cautionary tale for anyone who considers challenging the authority of the Temple courts.”

In the Gospel according to Bill O’Reilly, then, the trial of Jesus for blasphemy – a religious charge if there ever was one – is ultimately a front for protecting the position of the high priest’s family and the Temple’s money supply from a God-centered rabbi who spent three years preaching the Kingdom of God while insinuating that he was God’s Son. 

The historical Jesus remains undiscovered in Killing Jesus, and for good reason. By removing faith from the history, the authors have also removed much of the evidence for a comprehensive understanding of Jesus. O’Reilly notes that “[t]he Pharisees believe in miracles but not in Jesus.” Perhaps someday history will believe in faith and not only in itself.  link

Related;

Pope Francis Cleans House At Vatican Bank With New Cardinals As Advisors

"Pope" N.T. Wright asked on Facebook about capitalist consumerism's spiritual side effects

NT Wright doesn't post statuses, selfies,  pictures of cute cats, memes and pics of his lunch on Facebook..

                  but he does answer a couple of questions a month on his page (:

Like this one below; interesting in light of  (and likely inspired by) the pope's recent comments

Question 1 from Simon Meadows:
“What might Paul make of our western culture of capitalist consumerism and its spiritual side effects?”


The answer from N. T. Wright:
“Paul would recognise current western consumerism as one aspect of a cultural phenomenon he knew well, namely that of a global empire. Wealth flows to the imperial centre (think of Revelation 18). The difference between his world and ours is that the number of people at the top of the pile has increased – the elite now numbers millions. But the proportion hasn’t changed that much: for every million elite consumerists (with more possessions than they can store in their own homes!) there are a billion non-elite living in poverty or near-poverty, with very limited access to clean water, medical care, education and so on. What would shock Paul particularly is that a great many of the first category claim to be followers of Jesus, and yet some of them at least seem not to mind the fact that their wealth sits on the back of the poverty of others (held in place by the unpayable debts incurred by silly western bankers lending vast sums to corrupt dictators in a previous generation). When Peter and James told Paul to ‘remember the poor’ (Galatians 2) this wasn’t just a reference to poor Christians in Jerusalem. This was a reference to an entire way of life in which the needs of the poor became the paramount concern of Jesus’ followers. The whole western church needs to learn and re-learn this lesson, which is radically counter-cultural in our post-enlightenment world where we assume that because ‘we’ are the ‘enlightened’ or ‘developed’ ones we somehow have an automatic right to the benefits of consumerism. Of course, we are all compromised (just in case anyone supposes I am blind to my own complicity with ‘the system’: as I was writing this answer there was a ring at the doorbell and a delivery arrived from a well-known department store . . . ).  link

Pope shares birthday breakfast with the homeless

story

Pundits and the Pope

E. J. DIONNE (Brookings Institution): There is something different here. I think there are three things: one—there is a radicalism and an urgency to what he is saying and you read the language of this latest document and in so many places, he talks about a deified market. He talks about a system which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits. He talks about defenseless beings and so I think we cannot deny that he has given a higher priority to the church’s social teachings, to our obligations to the poor, and to criticism of an unjust economy than we have heard in a long time; not that he is inconsistent with John Paul or Benedict because they said some tough things about the market as well, but I think this is so central to who he is.
MICHAEL GERSON: I would say that the heart, that for all of this discussion, the reason that Francis is powerful and attractive to so many is because he talks about Jesus and because he acts like Jesus. And that is the source of power and authority in the Christian church in all of its expressions. And I would only conclude by saying that a church that looked like this would transform the entire world

What's the most important command in the whole OT?

Form an answer in your mind
....and then...

check out Brueggemann's answer:


here.

Rush Limbaugh needs to study quantum physics before he says "nope" to pope

This article and video

Rush Limbaugh: Pope is preaching 'pure Marxism'

  ..reminds us that Rush (and everyone) should read:

                  The Quantum Pope

--

Responses:

• Rush Limbaugh Knows Nothing About Christianity
• The pope as Marxist: Is Limbaugh right? (CNN)

• Would Someone Just Shut That Pope Up?

  Go Home, Mr Novak

   

   

----------- 

See also: 

• "train wreck" or quantum evangelism? Pope's interview with atheist

• Is the pope conservative or liberal?"

• Sarah Palin, Lawrence O' Donnell, James Martin, and the "quantum pope" as "conscientious objector in the culture wars"

 

 

 

Myers-Briggs and income

My type is the lowest?

Wow,  must be because (as everyone knows) my type is Jesus' type (homor alert for Steve: LOL JK)...and we aren't much for money.   (:

HT Jesus Creed.
Source article:

Your personality type determines your paycheck

Kraybill on Jesus' upside-down fumigating of the temple

Due to Kraybill's "The Upside Down Kingdom" being (for now) readable online and Google-able  here on ISSUU (along with several theological book en espanol here),  it is nice to be able post the key sections on the temple tantrum here in one place. (see what you think about this publishing model here).
Note: a previous edition of the book is complete  and downloadable here on Scribd..

1)Page 53:

Purging the temple of moneychangers wasn't a mandate for violence..Had a major riot erupted the 600 Roman soldiers in Fort Antonia, overlooking the temple, would have quickly intervened. The temple drama was a prophetic  condemnation of profiteering by money and a sign that the temple should be opened for Gentile worship The prophetic Word--not action--stood at the center of the temple purge  

2)In a section "Fumigating the Temple,"  that is pp 150-152 in the current edition, here is the text in the older edition (161-63):

(Scribd: the upside-down kingdom)  

3)Page 202:

The Gentile vision  flashes through the Gospels in other places as well.  Jesus sends out seventy missionaries, a number symbolizing the wholeness and completeness of his mission (luke 10:1)  He instructs the disciples to be light and salt, not just within Judaism but in the whole world (Matt. 5:13-14.  He chases the money changers from the temple's outer court so it can be a house of prayer for all nations (Mark 11:17) Jesus' earthly sojourn begins and ends in “Galilee of the Gentiles” where his  disciples receive a final mandate to go and make disciples of all nations (Matt. 28:19)

4) page 275 footnote 15:

Kelber expands the traditional interpretation that the temple  cleansing was done primarily to open up the outer court to the Gentiles.   He also suggests that the prohibition to carry vessels had more religious significance than stopping people who were taking a shortcut through the temple.  Sanders contends that the temple incident was not merrly chasing out moneychangers  or“cleansing” the temple for the purpose of restoring it to routine operation.  It was rather a defiant public act directed against the temple itself, and it was and it was this provocative act that more than any other led to Jesus' death.  Myers argues that the temple was fundamentally an economic institution  and sees Jesus taking symbolic direct action against the temple operation.

Here below is the current edition embedded:

Preaching about money on Easter Sunday/"Congregational Government is From Satan"

It may sound shocking to say that a prominent megachurch pastor preached about money, and not the resurrection, on Easter Sunday..

But

• where is Easter  (or an annual celebration of the resurrection) mentioned in Scripture?
• Where is a pastor preaching a sermon as a normative part of a church gathering mentioned in Scripture?

Our church is so organic that I am sure on many recent Easters that the teaching/sharing didn't have a whole lot to do (directly) with the resurrection.  I am also sure it was mentioned (Kind of like Christmas..how do you NOT?).  
See also Special Days Trump Preaching Series: Andy Stanley):

…On an Easter Sunday in Dallas Texas, I visited a Bible Church with some friends. On the way they explained that their pastor was preaching through the book of Psalms.  They were in their 43d week. Easter would be week 44.  And sure enough, on Easter Sunday, this guy picked up with Psalm 44.  He made a reference to Easter at some point along the way.  But it was a stretch.  In his defense, he was teaching the Bible to people and his approach matched his goal.”

~Andy Stanley,Communicating for a Change, 2006, Multnomah Publishing, p.94

The story is about James MacDonald, pastor of 13,000 member Harvest Bible Chapel.
And for those watching the MacDonald sermon below, and realizing "Oh, my, he really did preach about money on Easter"  ( "for those who think "You can’t start a new series on Easter about money!": WATCH ME!!", 2:04ff) what doesn't show in the video is all kinds of resurrection-themed songs and skits that surrounded the sermon.

BUT there still seems to be quite an interesting backstory.



And you may not trip up the way I did, but what hit me about MacDonald's blog post is that fact that he capitalizes the word "pastor" throughout the post.  I don't mean pastor as a title ("Pastor James"), but
phrases like "Statistics tell us that Pastors move every 2-3 years"  and "Many of the Pastors who have come into Harvest Bible Fellowship these past years have." 
Every one knows (or should) that this is just wrong, according to any grammar book (It's true of "president," etc.)It may seen like a subtle thing, or a typo, but I wonder if it is just the inevitable result of wanting a pastor-led church.

• James MacDonald Preaches about Money on Easter Sunday
• Harvest Bible Chapel Debt Crisis: The Real Elephant In The Room?

James MacDonald blog:Congregational Government is From Satan

Comments  on Jesus Creed: James Macdonald: Congregationalism from Satan?

Harvest website: statements from the elders

.

Subverting Abercrombie And Fitch: Image, Exclusion and Homelessness

See Hugh's response to the video,  Some backstory here  and here

"The Heart and the Sewer: The strange power of Les Mis, the book"

by Paul Berman, for New Republic:
The most famous and revealing scenes in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables get underway fairly late in the novel—on page 1,280 in the Pléiade edition—at the moment when the physically powerful Jean Valjean pries loose an iron-bar sewer grill in a Paris street and prepares to escape into the underground tunnels, carrying on his back the half-dead body of young Marius, the barricade fighter. It is 1832, a year of insurrections. Marius has been battling against the National Guard at Les Halles. The republican rebels have gone down to defeat; the monarchy will stay in power; the guardsmen have broken into the tavern that serves as rebel headquarters; the massacre is about to begin. And Jean Valjean—who is present at the barricade only because he has discovered that his adopted daughter, Cosette, is in love with young Marius, and Marius has decided to sacrifice his life to the doomed revolution, and Jean Valjean, who detests the young man, will do anything for his daughter and therefore is determined to rescue the barricade fighter from his chosen martyrdom—what a plot!—Jean Valjean, steely ex-con, cool under fire, disdainful of authority, bitter, self-reliant, climbs downward with the unconscious young man into the fetid sewer beneath the street.

Jean Valjean pulls the grill back into place above his head. And as he goes creeping through the tunnel, we readers ought to be able to detect amid the gloom a peculiar propulsive energy in Hugo’s book, the mysterious subterranean power that, over the last century and a half, has somehow allowed the gigantic, sprawling text to assume one new shape after another: a theater play in the 1860s, a series of parodies mocking the novel from the same era, silent movies and talkies in the twentieth century (Fredric March and Charles Laughton, among others), a TV mini-series (John Malkovich and Gérard Depardieu), a musical-theater play in France in the 1980s, which evolved into a British production, which ran on Broadway as Les Mis and has been seen, or so it is claimed, by sixty million people, which has now emerged as a teary-eyed movie-opera called Les Misérables, the soundtrack to which has reached number one on theBillboard chart, and which will doubtless give way, soon enough, to still odder, weepier presentations. Les Misérables is many things, but never has it been dead. It respires. It procreates. And there, in the viscous murk of the pages devoted to sewage and tunnels, you can glimpse, bubbling in the mud, a few telling signs of the procreative power at work.

At each of the transition points in the giant book, when the story is about to turn a corner, Hugo interrupts his recitation to launch into long-winded disquisitions on historical and social-scientific themes. In this instance, when the sewer grill clangs shut, he produces a dossier on sewage called “The Intestines of the Leviathan,” with Paris identified as the Leviathan and the sewers as its intestines. The problem of mass poverty, or la misère, has been the novel’s insistent theme from the title onward. By this point in the book Hugo has already made clear at preposterous length that he advocates the grandest of social reforms, beginning with a reform of the human heart. He has shuddered in horror at medieval superstitions; has abominated the police; has throbbed with sympathy for the downtrodden. 

Here and there he has made the case for specific ameliorative continued, full article

e

The three testations of Jesus (and us): different takes on defining them

Various thinkers from early in church history through today have categorized/collated  the three core  temptations (testations) of Jesus  into grids/taxonomies. (See previous article: Timelines and Testations: Jesus, Sexonomics and Facebook, and other posts tagged "testation below.

 Below, the Kraybill reference is "The Upside Down Kingdom," Nouwen's is "In the Name of Jesus" , and Scazzaro's is "Emotionaally Healthy Spirituality." (HT Len).
 The last two are a bit more ancient..




Note also that

some suggest a specific responses for each:

• Nouwen: relevant (contemplative prayer), spectacular (confession and forgiveness), and  ruler (theological reflection); 
• The monastic vows money (poverty), sex (chastity), and power (obedience)

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If that was helpful, see my previous post which includes the two crazy charts below 

"Rob Bell, Economies of Desire, and a Megachurch as a Site of Resistance."

James Wellman posted this.  Hope there will be a video:

For those interested, I'm giving the Presidential Plenary for PNWAAR this Friday, May 3rd, at 6:30 pm. at Seattle University. "Rob Bell, Economies of Desire, and a Megachurch as a Site of Resistance."

Here is the gyst:

The Megachurch for most of us is a logical extension of the marketization of religion in a culture suffused by an economy of consumer desire. As they say, “We are all capitalists now.” And so, Christianity must do its best to fit into that model and mode of desire, and it does–it gives us what we need: salvation; hope; heaven; ecstasy; peak performance; a marriage market; religious entertainment, and an outlet for charity. In the midst of our culture of consumption, we consume a religion that fills the needs of our desires. And megachurches are expert at that task. However, Bell’s megachurch, I will argue, reversed that trend; he built in his short tenure at Mars Hill Bible Church, an economy of desire oriented toward community, a way of descent, solidarity with the poor and independence from state loyalties. The question is how did he do it? I would argue this experiment was a kind of sociological miracle. Capitalism absorbs most critics, and in the end, it seems to have absorbed Bell as well. Or, at least, that is one of the questions for this talk.  link

Intersubjectivity: Rene Girard's Vision of Mimetic Desire and Economic Dynamics

 "Intersubjectivity: Rene Girard's Vision of Mimetic Desire and Economic Dynamics" at the Institute for New Economic Thinking's "Changing of the Guard?" conference in Hong Kong. Featured panelists include Edward Fullbrook, Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Mark Anspach, Paul Dumouchel, and André Orléan.link

Hauerwaus on Pope Francis