Theology must begin and end with the question of truth.
To be located in society means to be at the intersection point of specific social forces. Commonly one ignores these forces one also knows that there is not an awful lot that one can do about this.
One can’t understand the Christian Right and similar movements unless one sees them as reactive – they’re reacting to what they call secular humanism.
There is a continuum of values between the churches and the general community. What distinguishes the handling of these values in the churches is mainly the heavier dosage of religious vocabulary involved.
It has been true in Western societies and it seems to be true elsewhere that you do not find democratic systems apart from capitalism, or apart from a market economy, if you prefer that term.
In a market economy, however, the individual has some possibility of escaping from the power of the state.
If you say simply that pressures toward democracy are created by the market, I would say yes.
We also have a cultural phenomenon: the emergence of a global culture, or of cultural globalization.
If a socialist economy is opened up to increasing degrees of market forces, a point will be reached at which democratic governance becomes a possibility.
But we don’t have an example of a democratic society existing in a socialist economy – which is the only real alternative to capitalism in the modern world.
There is an intrinsic linkage between socialism and economic inefficiency.
So I think one can say on empirical grounds – not because of some philosophical principle – that you can’t have democracy unless you have a market economy.
India is the most religious country in the world, Sweden is the most secular country in the world, and America is a country of Indians ruled by Swedes.
Capitalism has been one of the most dynamic forces in human history, transforming one society after another, and today it has become established as an international system determining the economic fate of most of mankind.
The botanist looking at a daffodil has no reason to dispute the right of the poet to look at the same object in a very different manner. There are many ways of playing. The point is not that one denies other people’s games but that one is clear about the rules of one’s own.
Human existence is, ab initio, an ongoing externalization. As man externalizes himself, he constructs the world into which he externalizes himself. In the process of externalization, he projects his own meanings into reality. Symbolic universes, which proclaim that all reality is humanly meaningful and call upon the entire cosmos to signify the validity of human existence, constitute the farthest reaches of this projection.80 b.
Whatever happens “here below” is but a pale reflection of what takes place “up above.
Joy is play’s intention. When this intention is actually realized, in joyful play, the time structure of the playful universe takes on a very specific quality – namely, it becomes eternity. This is probably true of all experiences of intense joy, even when they are not enveloped in the separate reality of play. This is the final insight of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra in the midnight song: “All joy wills eternity – wills deep, deep eternity!”33.
The world of everyday life is not only taken for granted as reality by the ordinary members of society in the subjectively meaningful conduct of their lives. It is a world that originates in their thoughts and actions, and is maintained as real by these.
Our lives are but episodes in its majestic march through time. In sum, society is the walls of imprisonments in history.