I have only gotten up to about paragraph 50 of Pope Francis' new encyclical, on fraternity and social friendship. So far it strikes me as among the most consistently apt studies of what is dangerous as well as some of what is good in today's world, the world of the internet and, also of terrible poverty, destruction, especially through conscious, planned exploitation of people, of communities, of societies, of the natural world, of everything including the destruction of valuing or even believing that such a thing as truth, of reality matters.
Here's a link to the English version of it.
Just one example that resonated for me:
14. These are the new forms of cultural colonization. Let us not forget that “peoples that abandon their tradition and, either from a craze to mimic others or to foment violence, or from unpardonable negligence or apathy, allow others to rob their very soul, end up losing not only their spiritual identity but also their moral consistency and, in the end, their intellectual, economic and political independence”. One effective way to weaken historical consciousness, critical thinking, the struggle for justice and the processes of integration is to empty great words of their meaning or to manipulate them. Nowadays, what do certain words like democracy, freedom, justice or unity really mean? They have been bent and shaped to serve as tools for domination, as meaningless tags that can be used to justify any action.
Remember this as you listen to the hearings in which Amy Coney Barrett will, I have every confidence, along with the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee "empty great words of their meaning,' or "manipulate them," including those in that paragraph and similar ones.
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