Is Davos the new Calvinism?

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kalm
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Is Davos the new Calvinism?

Post by kalm »

Some of you may not appreciate this but it’s a damn good, thought provoking take and well worth the read.

If you disagree with it what is your philosophical/religious basis?
One of the stories out of the Davos Morbidly Rich Support Group meeting in Switzerland yesterday was Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema high-fiving each other, celebrating their success at killing voting rights legislation while preserving massive tax loopholes for banking and fossil fuel industry billionaires.

But there was more “high” to that high-five than the media showed. They were literally high, both from the fortunes each has acquired and the billions they were surrounded by onstage.

Science shows that acquiring wealth stimulates the pleasure/reward circuits in the brain’s ventromedial prefrontal cortex, just behind the eyes in the front-most part of the brain. Studies that map blood flow and electrical activity in the brain demonstrate that even anticipating money lights up this region, much like what happens when we’re presented with food or sex………..

“For the love of money is the root of all evil: which, while some coveted after, they have … pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”

Jesus, of course, was history’s most famous communist: he and his disciples shared everything they owned via a common purse. When a rich man asked him how to get to heaven, Jesus told him to sell everything he owned and give the money to the poor.……………

The American version of this comes via the followers of the 16th century protestant reformer John Calvin, who fled European religious persecution and populated the US east coast and western Michigan in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Instead of salvation coming from confession or good works, Calvin taught, his god decided our social station before we were even born (predestination). As St. Paul wrote in Ephesians 1:4–6 and Calvin loved to quote, each of our fates was determined “before the foundation of the world.”

Thus, whoever has the most money must have the biggest measure of spiritual blessing. (Probably not be a coincidence that the DeVos family are Calvinists.) And those with the most spiritual blessing should, of course, run things from companies to governments.

The more widespread “prosperity gospel” is simply a modern reinvention of Calvinism, although in recent years it’s moved from the fringes to the mainstream of protestant Christianity.

The crisis for our society from this worshiping of wealth and power is that it contradicts the first evolutionary imperative built into all social species: cooperate or die.

This is how we humans, lacking fangs, fur, or claws, made it through the three million years of our species’ evolution……………..

Americans once shared this skepticism of great wealth and the political power it brings. After Wall Street millionaires’ greed crashed our economy in 1929 and Franklin D. Roosevelt came to power with the election of 1932, he relentlessly called out the morbidly rich:

“[O]ut of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital—all undreamed of by the Fathers—the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service.

“There was no place among this royalty for our many thousands of small businessmen and merchants who sought to make a worthy use of the American system of initiative and profit...

“It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over Government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property. …

“These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power.

“In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the over-privileged alike.”



https://open.substack.com/pub/thomhartm ... medium=web
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Winterborn
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Re: Is Davos the new Calvinism?

Post by Winterborn »

1) That the author is a typical progressive and would throw out the baby with the bathwater.

2) Author gets more wrong than he gets right about multiple topics (Bible, Economics, Society, etc), IMHO

3) One thing he does get right is the chemical reaction we all have to certain stimuli (money is only one of them).

4) His thoughts on Regan match yours.


All in all about a 5 on a 1-10 scale on thought provoking and usefulness. What it is really good for is a start of a debate as it uses/confuses multiple different topics depending on ones background and level of understanding.
“The best of all things is to learn. Money can be lost or stolen, health and strength may fail, but what you have committed to your mind is yours forever.” – Louis L’Amour

“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.” - G. Michael Hopf

"I am neither especially clever nor especially gifted. I am only very, very curious.” – Albert Einstein
kalm
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Re: Is Davos the new Calvinism?

Post by kalm »

Winterborn wrote: Fri Jan 20, 2023 10:17 am 1) That the author is a typical progressive and would throw out the baby with the bathwater.

2) Author gets more wrong than he gets right about multiple topics (Bible, Economics, Society, etc), IMHO

3) One thing he does get right is the chemical reaction we all have to certain stimuli (money is only one of them).

4) His thoughts on Regan match yours.


All in all about a 5 on a 1-10 scale on thought provoking and usefulness. What it is really good for is a start of a debate as it uses/confuses multiple different topics depending on ones background and level of understanding.
Fair. He sometimes writes long form expansive pieces. Stuff guys like me enjoy, but engineers would find all over the map. His historical takes are typically quite accurate. He was the guy who discovered that the 1800’s Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific case laid the groundwork for corporate personhood via clerks footnotes in the ruling. He’s also done groundbreaking work on ADHD.

I’d be curious what specifically you disagree with regarding economics, society, and the Bible. (Btw, he’s also had audiences with a pope and the Dalai Lama. Lol)
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Re: Is Davos the new Calvinism?

Post by houndawg »

Winterborn wrote: Fri Jan 20, 2023 10:17 am 1) That the author is a typical progressive and would throw out the baby with the bathwater.

2) Author gets more wrong than he gets right about multiple topics (Bible, Economics, Society, etc), IMHO

3) One thing he does get right is the chemical reaction we all have to certain stimuli (money is only one of them).

4) His thoughts on Regan match yours.


All in all about a 5 on a 1-10 scale on thought provoking and usefulness. What it is really good for is a start of a debate as it uses/confuses multiple different topics depending on ones background and level of understanding.
Reagan. :roll:

Regan worked for Reagan.
The best way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of opinion but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - Noam Chomsky
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