freediver wrote on Aug 13^th, 2016 at 11:04pm:


do you?

Mattyfisk wrote on Aug 14^th, 2016 at 2:03am:



Quote:


Matthew 13:11,12


Quote:


Matthew 25:26-29

Sprintcyclist wrote on Aug 14^th, 2016 at 3:15pm:


its a very good piece of "self-help" from jesus to understand this concept.
it is better to give then to recieve ...is true as a business principle.
the servant who buried the money and did not go forward, courageously, and try to expand and grow, had even this small ammount taken from him.
this is certainly true of people who have a certain degree of talent and do not use it...it will be taken from them.

and success does breed success.

everything feeds into everything.
a decision to eat the right food and work hard, might lead to a better creative mind, might lead to better self esteem , might lead to a great relationship, might lead to confidence to take a risk in business and on it goes.

a decision to eat pizza and dick around on facebook, might lead to a foggy mindset, might lead to a desire to take a bit of speed to wake yourself up for work on mondya, might lead to having the wrong people in your life , might lead to co-dependant relationships , might lead to the gutter.

success is absolutley a conscious and very deliberate decision.
success is extremely paradoxical and the bible is an extremely paradoxical book as are the buddhist texts.

one thing about failures though is that failures always have a leeching mentality. a failure is a value leech.
if you want to win lotto, if you look forward to going on the pension and relaxing, if you desire to take value , instead of being a source of good clean expansive energy...you will seal your own fate.

this is why it is better to give then to recieve, not because you lose by giving and contributing, but because you win.
socialism believes that success is a finite asset and the success of others is grinding you down. this is such a rediculous  concept. its why socialism just doesnt get the paradox of how life works and why it will always fail.

John Smith wrote on Aug 14^th, 2016 at 2:56pm:


ok. go find a homeless man and give him half your things. balance and all that, c*nt.

Postmodern Trendoid III wrote on Aug 14^th, 2016 at 9:00pm:


No worries, Mistie. Feel free to join in the discussion then. What do you think of neoliberalism's advancement into "culture"?

There's a Turkish PhD in there, don't you think?

Mattyfisk wrote on Aug 15^th, 2016 at 4:43pm:


Bingo....!  good pick up.

Nicely done.....

Quote:


No Sprint, Jesus still means the same thing in his own language: he is referring to spiritual knowledge, not money.

Jesus doesn't support neoliberalism, he champions the poor. Perhaps the closest you can find to a statement that seems to disregard support for the poor is "the poor will always be with us" - a quote Tony Abbott used to hold back his support for Matthew Talbots, a homeless refuge in Sydney.

The "poor will always be with us" line is not about supporting the rich, it's about encouraging spiritual work: "The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me."

Jesus was all about the poor. His entire message is one of humility and poverty. The words of Jesus can't be used to back Adam Smith, for example, the grandfather of neoliberal economics.

Adam Smith was a moral philosopher. He was pointing out a great moral irony: collective self interest is good for society. He pointed this out because the prevailing ethics at the time favoured the teachings of Jesus, who preached the opposite of self interest.

Social and political theory during the industrial revolution focused on the poor. London was overcrowded with slums. The jails were full. People were being transported to Australia. "The poor you will always have with you" rang true, but this wasn't good enough after the plagues and the great fire of London. Solutions needed to be found for the poor, lest they infect all of society. The colony of New South Wales was one solution; framed as an almost utopian society built on hard work and the rule of law. The penitentiary was another: jails as a place of social reform. And then, after germs were discovered, there was the invention of the hospital and the rise of public health.

All these utilitarian public "good works" competed with Adam Smith's notion of self interest, which taught that the invisible hand of the economy would solve all social ills. In the end, we ended up with the blend of utilitarian and freemarket ideas and policies that we have today.