Quote Originally Posted by The Captain
"Alienation is still present, and that is an enemy of freedom."

That is a very good point, and worth reinforcement. For all we do have, we should always be striving to further break down barriers. There are places in this world where if you are a female, you are automatically condemned to be a servant, or in some cases, die. That can certainly be changed. It would also help if we could find a way to have true unity. The UN has had many successes but of late has really fallen off the radar. Either, we must make a concrete effort to rebuild our bridges, or else, we must find a new forum of appreciation for one another.

Take care all.

In fact, I refer to alienation from the part of what happens to the members of industrialized, western, modern societies. In fact, I believe our freedom to be rather controlled in a way, because we fall into the alienation of glorifying what we produce. This concept is not new, it was already critizized in ancient Greece, but from a very different perspective. The we got Kant doing a brief manifesto (What is Enlightment?) where he discussed about this concept of not only freedom to vote, but freedom to be. Of course, the best ideas arround alienation come- in my opinion- from the time of philosophies of suspicion, this means Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche, both developing arround this, Marx from a social way and Nietzsche facing more on what he called "The superhuman". Still, Marx did have his analysis on the alienation of the individual, and it is sad this part of marxism is not studied, because I believe it was Marx's first problem was arround alienation, even in front of economical equality. Of course, both Marx and Nietzsche have been horribly manipulated, prostituted and misunderstood, to a point they were actually used to justify atrocities, such as the absolutisms of both Russia and Germany. Sad, very sad.

Well, and then we got the modern critics. Herbet Marcuse, Martin Heidegger, Erich Fromm, Norbert Bilbeny, Charles Taylor...yes, alienation is still a problem today. I haven't explained why...of course, it would be a very long post, and it would be going off topic. Wait, I have already gone off topic!!!

*shuts up*


PS: Sapere aude!