Humanity vs. Hyper-Modernity
* Book: New Directions for Catholic Social and Political Research: Humanity vs. Hyper-Modernity. Guido Preparata.
Description
"This book offers scholars who ground their research in compassion and pacifism a new framework for the socio-political analysis of current global events. By tackling a broad range of critical themes in various disciplines, the essays compose a critical narrative of the ways in which power and violence shape society, culture, and belief. In addition to the contemporary dynamics of international economics, political murder, and the rhetorical antagonism between Christianity and Islam, the book addresses cultural strife in the West, the societal effects of neoconservative hegemony in the United States and the world, and the overall question of religious credence in connection with political action. All such topics are discussed with a view toward providing solutions and policies that are informed by a comprehensive desire to resist violence and war, on the one hand, and to foment cohesion and harmony at the community level, on the other."
Contents
On the last chapter: The Blueprint
Guido Preparata:
"the disclosure of a plan of our own: “The Blueprint: A Modest Monetary and Organizational Proposal for Re-launching the Economic Welfare of Communities.” In the “blueprint” we sketch, in very broad strokes, the economic contours of the ideal, communal district as we imagine it. In essence, the plan comprises a few corrective measures that, we believe, would improve the functioning of the economy.
With an eye single to social
justice and to the damages of exploitation, the project seeks also to release
creative potential by advocating
(1) a system of monetary management based on the issuance of time-dated regional currencies
(2) an organizational model of the firm in which individuals are not employees but “selfentrepreneurs” remunerated according to an agreed upon and detailed grid of roles and responsibilities;
(3) the assignment of community-owned capital usage to an entrepreneurial leadership democratically elected and answerable only to the community;
(4) bio-agriculture, environmental conscientiousness, and a zero-waste policy; and
(5) a redefinition of the approach to consumption by which the final user is systematically embedded in the productive process."