Wow...replying to the controversies...and Rob..Thans a lot for the comment!! No worries, you can write as much as you like. I love to see people interested in these things!!! THANK YOU GUYS!!!

 

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From: rolli2006@hotmail.com
To: aliocean@hotmail.com
Subject: RE: Blurring identities...Is this a secular society or what??!! Everyone needs something to hold on to...INTERESTING!!
Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2009 19:12:16 +0000

 Well...I was trying to explain that either in a Religious or Secular society, we are gonna be governed by some sort of creed...and the ones with power, will be the ones dictating what it's right or no...So, when the Romans gave to the lions that bunch of revolutionaries that were destinied to finish the Empire off, they did it fighting with Reason in their mouths. So did the Church when it sent many to the bonfires for preaching science...
 This historical moment is marked by the very same dilema of ideolgcal clashes, with the particularity that right now, state and religion are going through a divorce, instead of getting married!! And, of course, the arena is not so bloody morbidus.
 European kingdoms and the birth of the State were UNARGUEBLY and highly influenced (and impossible to understand without) by the power of the Catholic Church, and succesive wars were fought in the name of God (when we now know tha that was just a nickname for POWER!!)
 The project of the EU that you and me are building right now must try to embrace all nationalities and cultures, and be respectable to their identities and differences. But, are we the citizens matture enough to embrace a Community which higher scope is based on SECULAR DEMOCRACY??
 I'd love to see that. Ant I don't think we should fear to loose what we are.
 I agree it's inevitable to want to hold on to what experience and tradition has dictated as the pilars of our identity, but this one IS NOT FIXED. It's fluent and moves with us, with our efforts to change for the better, and the global village that the digital revolution of the 21st century has helped to create is a good example of it.
Probalby because I am Spanish, and because my country heritage its deeply rooted in cultural hybridity (though 500 years of Catholic rule had made some forget that we once lived in peace with msulims and Jews in the same territory. Our country wouldn/t have been the same with their influnece), I am quite sympathetic towards the idea of the Europe is being created.
 I don't see it as a totalitarian project which political aim is to transform us all in one-dimmensional citizen (if Marcuse allows me to borrow the term).
 I am less pesimistic than that. I think we should encourage the idea of a place where freedoms and rights are protected by a superior idea of a secular democracy.
 And the USA (very religious orientated (in God they trust)...It's just somthing to have in mind to build our own path in a different way. 
  
 
 
 

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