I love long comments so don't worry about them.
:)
It weakens the ideal because it finds it profoundly foreign and unnecesary.
Indeed, that is an apt statement.
Do you link inexorably economicism with secularism?
I'm not sure what you mean by economicism.
People depend on the production of goods and services in order to live. If economic activity takes place solely under a secular order, how would it compare to a religious order? However, I believe that this is a rather divisive question and would not produce a particularly good answer. Since every human action is subject to its world view, I would affirm that economics and secularism are inevitably linked where the latter prevails. However, given the complexity of the situations and forms of companies and the people working in them, it is extremely difficult to judge them according to how religious they are, even if the company management, for example, pursues a purely secular course.
You definitely deserved a better response, but I don't have much to say.
Thank you. That's fine.
What I mean by economicism is the fact of reducing society simply to its economic aspect, forgetting all the other aspects such as cultural, religious, etc. Very similar to what is happening today.
Perhaps secularism, or rather, the lack of religion, creates a void that is filled by other things. In this case, work. But I would say it's quite complex and I don't want to be overlooking something.
Confusion arises from my point of view from the fact that economic interests are not generally mentioned in connection with religious/spiritual interests nowadays. The authorities (governments and organisations) of our time have nothing obvious in this sense that can be questioned straightforward by the people, as they do not use official religious terminology. The very act of separating the religious from the secular, then produced legislation texts and do not contain any morals (but it forces to assume/interpret them behind them). This can be seen as a blessing and a curse alike. It depends, I am afraid.
It is therefore difficult to question something that offers so little in this respect. If we take the attackers of authority, such as Julian Assange, his persecution and imprisonment is not based on the fact that he has shaken revolutionary, generally common religious faith, but that he has published state secrets that "jeopardise national/international security". The highest authority then is state authority, which can be perceived to be secular.
He is portrayed by his accusers as someone who has betrayed national secrets as well as risking single lives of the individual people named in the leaking papers. In short, he has not jeopardised people's spiritual integrity, but their physical integrity, according to those who accuse him. They argue in terms of "security architectures", as I interpret it.
US-law says:
Now, the confusion sets in when one asks "who is the United States?" in this case. As well as "what is the offense?". Is national security inevitably linked to the economy? Isn't economics seen as something that can be used both to put a nation in danger and to move it out of it? Aren't economics based on foreign relationships? In order to maintain those relationships, is it important to be seen as a nation of integrity? And if so, if the integrity is seen as being disturbed (offended) and therefore formulated as an indictment, is not a court needed to judge the case and to give a final decision whether it was needed that documents must have had to be leaked or not and whether the whistleblowers are guilty of what they are accused of, or not (or partly)? Now, the task of the court then must be to find out if
If we don't want to let court happen, I am afraid that we lost trust in the bodies of government and its extended bodies. That is more than tragic.
What I think is that, nowadays, ideologies take the place of religion in politics, which determine whether this or that is right. Whether a war is justified. Whether a coup d'état, or a dictatorship, or a revolution is right or wrong.
The problem is, who is going to judge, those who judge? Because if those who are in charge of doing justice have their hands dirty, no matter to which authority you appeal, be it national or international, nothing will happen.
And furthermore, if by "US" they mean people, then it would have to be seen whether the people were offended, or the representatives of the people were offended. Also, it would be necessary to see, as you say, if the representatives of the people themselves did not offend the people with their actions. This is quite likely.
I think that if we move away from the divine, and start looking for justice in men, I'm afraid we may not find it.
I agree.
We, the peoples, are so identified with celebrities, politicians, the big players on the world stage that we forgot about ourselves in the sense that what is small in nature, is huge in scope (like Chesterton pointed it out). If we, the peoples don't live up to what is there and was there for a very long time (religious order) we will not get living examples of this order in the higher levels of hierarchy. We then are the victims of what we call evil while omit what can be done in our small cosmos of possibilities. This is why I find marriage and man-women relationship so important.
I very much agree with what you say. The macrocosm (big order) follows the microcosm (small order) and vice versa. The moment we forget ourselves is the moment we lose power, or maybe, our agency. But when we focus on ourselves, when we give value to the "small things", we realize that, not only do we have more power than we thought, but also that the outside has less power over us than we assumed.
I am a strong advocate of "focus on what I can control and have faith in the rest". And what I've discovered in this regard is that surrendering in terms of any external outcome is often the best way to go about things. Then results matter less, and what we do more.
Yes, a very good motto. :)