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3902c56
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Without people around, furniture has nothing to do but bear witness to the structural inadequacies of the human body: How much padding, cushioning, embracing, enfolding, and supporting we had needed just to stumble about through our days!
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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b47e096
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A thing cannot be conscious without having agency, but it can have agency without being conscious.
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thing
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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1067cfb
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A hint of - dare I say? - animism has entered into the scientific worldview. The physical world is no longer either dead or passively obedient to the "laws."
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physics
world
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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6b09636
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las grandes empresas cada vez se parecen mas a lo que llamamos sectas: organizaciones que exigen total sumision a un lider de inspiracion divina.
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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fc76c2b
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There are no secret economies that nourish the poor; on the contrary, there are a host of special costs. If you can't put up the two months' rent you need to secure an apartment, you end up paying through the nose for a room by the week. If you have only a room, with a hot plate at best, you can't save by cooking up huge lentil stews that can be frozen for the week ahead. You eat fast food or the hot dogs and Styrofoam cups of soup that can..
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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f57a830
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With his long hair, his hints of violence, and his promise of ecstasy, Dionysus was the first rock star.
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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bd50be9
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the very notion of personality, which is what we are trying to get at here, seems to have very limited application to me and quite possibly to everyone else. Self is another dodgy concept, since I am, when I subject this 'I' to careful inspection, not much more than a flickering of affinities, habits, memories, and predilections that could go either way- towards neediness or independence for example courage or cowardice.
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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f6998d5
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Very often in a classroom or a conversation I feel like yelling, 'What difference does it make?' Because 94% of my life is occupied with utter trivia. Much of my rebelliousness starts with indifference to what is urgently important to others.
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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0d56e72
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In Workers in a Lean World: Unions in the International Economy (Verso, 1997), Kim Moody cites studies finding an increase in stress-related workplace injuries and illness between the mid-1980s and the early 1990s. He argues that rising stress levels reflect a new system of "management by stress" in which workers in a variety of industries are being squeezed to extract maximum productivity, to the detriment of their health."
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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d0605bd
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Si hablamos en terminos globales, el mayor obstaculo para la felicidad es la pobreza. Las encuestas sobre felicidad, hasta donde podemos confiar en ellas, muestran siempre que los paises mas felices del mundo suelen ser los mas ricos. Estados Unidos esta en el puesto 23 y el Reino Unido en el 41, por ejemplo; mientras que la India aparece en el nada halagueno puesto 125 (de 178 paises).
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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3646f41
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La mayoria elegiriamos a un medico que este dispuesto a investigar si el diagnostico podria ser el peor posible, en vez de uno que llegue enseguida a la conclusion de que todo esta fenomenal.
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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f7a5a30
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Six witnesses affirmed that Jacoba had cured them, even after numerous doctors had given up, and one patient declared that she was wiser in the art of surgery and medicine than any master physician or surgeon in Paris. But these testimonials were used against her, for the charge was not that she was incompetent, but that--as a woman--she dared to cure at all.
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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a1a6a40
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In fact the "mask" theme has come up several times in my background reading. Richard Sennett, for example, in "The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism", and Robert Jackall, in "Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate managers", refer repeatedly to the "masks" that corporate functionaries are required to wear, like actors in an ancient Greek drama. According to Jackall, corporate managers stress the ne..
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corporate-culture
corporate-world
drama
fake
faking
mask
masks
moral
morality
phony
self-control
smile
smiling
theatre
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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b75e6d9
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Why did the adults in my life demand so much attention anyway? 'Are you listening Barbara?' was one of their favorite inquiries, followed up cleverly by, 'Then what did I say?' Sometimes their eyes bulged out so far when they asked these questions that I wondered whether the attention they needed wasn't medical. Or maybe they lacked inner resources and had no way of being sure they existed unless someone like me was around to confirm that t..
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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a7e558b
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If we want developed societies with women doctors, political leaders, teachers, bus drivers, and computer programmers, we will need qualified people to give loving care to their children. And there is no reason why every society should not enjoy such loving paid child care.
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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e71a26d
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But mining is also an intellectual exercise, requiring the combined skills of a plumber, a carpenter, and an electrician as well as an explosives expert. You had to be able to judge the load strength of a beam or the friability of rock at a glance and do instant calculations in your head, because one false step or misplaced stick of dynamite could blow you into body parts or at least send a few digits flying off on their own. So this was th..
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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a3fc9c6
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Way before puberty, before the journal, before the formulation of my life's mission, when I must have been eight or younger, I had a rule: "Think in complete sentences." No giving way to inner screams or sobs--just keep stringing out words in grammatical order. This was a way to keep from going under"
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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c4a84ac
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We don't usually talk about American nationalism, but it is a mark of how deep it runs that we apply the word "nationalism" to Serbs, Russians, and others, while believing ourselves to possess a uniquely superior version called "patriotism."
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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83718fd
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Just as layoffs were making a mockery of the team concept, employees were urged to find camaraderie and a sense of collective purpose at the microlevel of the "team". And the less teamlike the overall organization became with the threat of continuous downsizing, the more management insisted on individual devotion to these largely fictional units."
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capitalism
corporations
corporatism
downsizing
flexploitation
jobseeking
motivational
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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22a0c7b
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To this day, and no doubt for good reasons, suffering remains the almost exclusive preoccupation of professional psychology. Journals in the field have published forty-five thousand articles in the last thirty years on depression, but only four hundred on joy.40
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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43bb6ae
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Once I stand and watch helplessly while some rug rat pulls everything he can reach off the racks, and the thought that abortion is wasted on the unborn must show on my face, because his mother finally tells him to stop.
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funny
kids
nickel-and-dimed
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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d860eb4
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Once I realized I was old enough to die, I decided that I was also old enough not to incur any more suffering, annoyance, or boredom in the pursuit of a longer life.
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life
old
suffering
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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7ceda43
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But apparently you don't need dot-com wealth to ruin an area for its low-income residents. The Pioneer Press quotes Secretary of HUD Andrew Cuomo ruing the "cruel irony" that prosperity is shrinking the stock of affordable housing nationwide: "The stronger the economy, the stronger the upward pressure on rents."
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gentrification
nickel-and-dimed
poverty
rent
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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b8be9eb
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It was doubtless true," she later wrote "that I was 'Weary of myself and sick of asking What I am and what I ought to be."
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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7e71292
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Lo primero que hay que tener en cuenta es que nuestro sistema inmunologico esta disenado para detectar invasiones externas y pasar por alto a nuestras propias celulas. Con unas pocas excepciones, el sistema inmunologico no parece reconocer los canceres que desarrolla el individuo como intrusos, porque de hecho son parte de el mismo."17"
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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82a9779
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En 2004, un estudio puso de manifiesto que el optimismo no aportaba beneficio alguno, en terminos de supervivencia, a los que sufrian cancer de pulmon,
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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7317052
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Hasta el ambito academico, que uno podia considerar un reducto seguro para los grunones y misantropos, esta empezando a sufrir las incursiones del pensamiento positivo.
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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511b348
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WITCHES LIVED AND WERE BURNED LONG BEFORE the development of modern medical technology. The great majority of them were lay healers serving the peasant population, and their suppression marks one of the opening struggles in the history of man's suppression of women as healers. The other side of the suppression of witches as healers was the creation of a new male medical profession, under the protection and patronage of the ruling classes. T..
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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12de3b8
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Just as welfare was said to "cause poverty," the experts may soon announce that Medicare causes baldness and that Social Security is a risk factor for osteoporosis: the correlations are undeniable."
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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a60dd15
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The first time I had a pap smear done, I was so traumatized, I now take prescription Xanax to avoid having panic attacks when I get pap smears done now. And I'm only 24. How many more am I going to have to have for the rest of my life? What am I going to do when I want to have children and every doctor wants to shove his/her fingers and tools inside me?
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panic-attacks
pap-smear
xanax
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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2b16b9b
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The impasse was this: If I let myself speculate even tentatively about that something, if I acknowledged the possibility of a nonhuman agent or agents, some mysterious Other, intervening in my life, could I still call myself an atheist?
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god
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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ba31433
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Most accounts of mystical experiences... insist that the Other in the encounter appears to be "living" or alive, as in "living God." But is it alive in any biological sense? Does it eat and metabolize? Does it reproduce - an option that monotheism would seem to foreclose?"
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god
living
monotheism
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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1038126
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Why "revere" the unknowable? Why not find out what it is?"
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mystery
reverence
unknowable
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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b88409b
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A man who is a good lover to his wife is his children's best friend.... Child care is play to a woman who is happy. And only a man can make a woman happy. In deepest truth, a father's first duty to his children is to make their mother feel fulfilled as a woman.
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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ec61d53
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That's what "meaning" is--a special additive like salt or garlic that could make even the most fetid piece of meat seem palpable, even delicious."
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mysticism
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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cf9cc79
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Quienes estan haciendo las reestructuraciones despiden a una persona de cada tres y luego ponen un poster inspiracional en el pasillo para tapar la herida psicologica.
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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1885465
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Por ahora, no puedes sino cambiar tu percepcion de la realidad: que de negativa y amarga pase a positiva y afirmadora. Y este fue el gran regalo que le hizo el mundo de la empresa a sus empleados despedidos y a los que se quedaron trabajando el doble: el pensamiento positivo.
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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9c7cb9f
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The conventional term is "mystical experience," meaning something that by its very nature lies beyond the reach of language, except for some vague verbal hand-wavings about "mystery" and "transcendence." As far as I was concerned - as a rationalist, an atheist, a scientist by training - this was the realm of gods and fairies and of no use to the great human project of trying to retain a foothold on the planet for future generations."
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mysticism
philosophy
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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24ee897
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la persona que sabe trabajar en equipo es, por definicion, alguien "positivo". Alguien que siempre luce una sonrisa, que no se queja, que no les da demasiadas vueltas a las cosas, y que se somete con buen humor a lo que le pida el jefe."
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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3ee2205
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Si te basta con una foto chula y una frasecita para motivarte, es que tienes un trabajo muy facil... uno de esos que dentro de poco haran los robots"."
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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8f03c0f
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My religious friends - and my friends were almost all Catholics or Protestants or occasionally something more exotic like Jewish or Greek Orthodox - were convinced that God had a "plan" for us, and since God was good, it was a good plan, which we were required to endorse even without having any idea what it was. Just sign the paperwork; in other words, don't overintellectualize."
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god
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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888b894
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La gran mayoria de los oficinistas despedidos se tragaron el sapo, como se suele decir, y aceptaron que les dieran pensamiento positivo en vez de la nomina mensual y la seguridad de antes. No tomaron las calles, no forzaron ningun cambio en la politica, no se presentaron en su ex oficina con una pistola.
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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e49e14d
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El calvinismo y el pensamiento positivo ya se habian visto las caras en el siglo XIX, aunque al segundo se le llamaba entonces Nuevo Pensamiento; cuando volvieron a encontrarse, cerca ya del cambio de milenio, la confrontacion ya no fue publica sino que tomo la forma de batalla silenciosa por el dominio del mercado: la audiencia de television, las ventas de libros y la asistencia a las iglesias.
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Barbara Ehrenreich |
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6ff14fd
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La nueva teologia positiva ya no se dedica a hacer juicios de valor tajantes ni a contar historias desgarradoras de sufrimiento y redencion: lo que ahora se ofrece en las megaiglesias (y en muchos templos normales) es la promesa de dinero, exito y salud en esta vida, ahora mismo o dentro de muy poco.
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Barbara Ehrenreich |