No we can't abolish poverty or the poor -- since so much of that is relative, and driven by Pareto distributions.....but also in a more general sense, Jesus was talking about suffering. Suffering is part of the human condition. And the liberal-utopian idea that we can abolish suffering has always created a murderous totalitarian nightmare. Even were we to succeed, the result would be the destruction of humanity -- which is what Huxley understood in Brave New World. I don't want liberal utopians like Pinker to run around with the idea that they can fix everything.
No we can't abolish poverty or the poor -- since so much of that is relative, and driven by Pareto distributions.....but also in a more general sense, Jesus was talking about suffering. Suffering is part of the human condition. And the liberal-utopian idea that we can abolish suffering has always created a murderous totalitarian nightmare. Even were we to succeed, the result would be the destruction of humanity -- which is what Huxley understood in Brave New World. I don't want liberal utopians like Pinker to run around with the idea that they can fix everything.
The label "liberalism" has undergone significant semantic drift. To argue about it in a meaningful manner, it is first necessary to define it. I did that here: https://open.substack.com/pub/jonathanblake/p/the-liberal-manifesto
Does anyone disagree? Please let me know in the comments.
The repeats in the automated audio reading are REALLY annoying. I can basically only get through half of these articles without just giving up.