< --Excuse me, but I must mildly protest.  You have expressed a very
< Philistine attitude that must be challenged.  There are many thoughtful
< people who have religious beliefs.  Thinking differently doesn't mean
< thinking wrong--except to the Philistines.  And there is nothing particularly
< Christian about the work ethic.  Weber, whom I suppose you depend on for
< the term, was clear about that and I will look out an appropriate citation
< if you like.  He said, in essence, that the pursuit of profit was present
< in all sorts of people since the beginning of time.  Besides, it's
< Protestant ethic, not Christian ethic, isn't it?


Protestant, christian, same thing right?  You are not going to tell me that
Catholics should be considered christians, are you?  (just kidding!)

Adam,
     Very interesting note you sent.  One sidenote, I used to have an Amiga
computer (Commodore no longer exists) that I bought in the states (Maine, to
be precise).  In France I bought some french software, mostly adventure games,
and was surpised to find that none of them worked with my Amiga.  Turned out
that there were two diffrent versions of the Amiga, one that used NTSC video,
and the other that used PAL.  The reason the Amiga followed a video standard
was because it was designed for multi-media stuff andso you were supposed
to be able to use it with a VCR. (the Video Toaster by Newtek for example).  So
software was designed to either use NTSC or PAL.
     Anyway with PCs and Macs, this problem does not exist...
I have one question for you Adam:  I am curious, what is MESECAM?.....marc

> Satellite TV is wonderful!  I can watch MTV (Music, not Magyar) in Spanish.
 > can watch Dallas in French, and I can catch a few German pornos.  If that is
 > not intellectual stimulation, what is???....marc
 >
 The Dallas is no great loss in any languages; watching pornos is your
 business; What about do you want to inform us?
 Regards S. B.

S.B.,
     Sorry if you misread my comments.  I was making a sarcastic remark about
someone (I have forgotten whom) who pointed out that Satellite TV might help
to alleviate some of the ignorance that exists in the world.  I was simply
trying to make the point, that Satellite TV is no Godsend, in fact it is
probably a curse upon mankind.  It's a spewer of cultural garbage.  A sort of
cultural Chernobyl if you will.
     FYI: I do not watch pornos, or Dallas.  In fact I don't even own a TV.
regards...........marc horchler

On Mon, 5 Sep 1994 09:28:15 FST H. MARC said:
>
>Protestant, christian, same thing right?  You are not going to tell me that
>Catholics should be considered christians, are you?  (just kidding!)

--I know that you're kidding, but I'm a philistine when it comes to
history.  In *The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism*,
Weber wrote:

The impulse to acquisition, pursuit of gain, of money, or of the
greatest possible amount of money, has in itself nothing to do with
capitalism.  This impulse exists and has existed among waiters,
physicians, coachmen, artists, prostitutes, dishonest officials,
soldiers, nobles, crusaders, gamblers, and beggars.  One may say
that it has been common to all sorts and conditions of men at all
times and in all counties of the earth, whereever the objective
possibilities of it is or has been given (p. 17).

And Weber tried to forestall criticism that he was saying that
Luther and Calvin and their fellows were personally responsible for
the Protestant Ethic:

But it is not to be understood that we expect to find any of the
founders of these religious movements considering the promotion of
what we have called the spirit of capitalism as in any sense the
end of his life work.  We cannot well maintain that the pursuits of
worldly goods, conceived as an end in itself, was to any of them
of positive ethical value (p. 89).

Both quotes are from the 1930 edition, published by Allen and Unwin
in London.  A brief discussion of the work ethic as a moral concept
can be found in Prigmore and Atherton (1986), *Social Welfare Policy*
(2nd ed.) Lexington, MA:  D.C. Heath, pp. 94-95, he added modestly.

While economics and politics had more to do with the development of
capitalism than anything else, Weber believed that the puritanical
sort of Protestantism that developed primarily in Calvinist and
Lutheran areas in Northern Europe tended to support the kind of single-minded
devotion to profit that he could best explain as analogous to the
idea of a religious calling.

So he called it the Protestant Ethic and not the Christian Ethic.

Thank you for your kind attention.  Have a good day.

Charles

Charles,
     I must confess that the "Christian Work Ethic" is a term I invented myself
in order to include catholics into my feeble argument for an "opiate for the
masses."
     I always believed that the protestant work ethic started in America during
the early puritanical days of colonialisation when "if you don't work, you
don't eat" was a term commonly used.  I believe this term was originally used
in the Jamestown colony.
     Now if the protestant work ethic started in Northern Europe than how would
one explain the transformation of these Northern European nations into welfare
states?.......marc

Date: 31 Aug 94 19:50:53 +0100


JACKSON CIRCUS HIJACKS BUDAPEST
by Adam LeBor   Additional reporting by John Nadler
Excerpt of article from Budapest Week
Transcribed for the Internet by John Horvath

        For the first time in years the red flag flew over Budapest
again last weekend but this time it heralded the arrival of naked
capitalism, in the avaricious form of the pop music business, rather
than communism.
        Together with his wife of three months, Lisa Marie Presley
Jackson, Michael Jackson spent four days in Budapest to film a video for
his new album entitled History which features the star as a freedom
fighter helping liberate eastern Europe from the yoke of Soviet
domination.
        The whole panoply of Soviet theatre reappeared on the streets of
the Hungarian capital, five years after the collapse of communism,
including giant red banners and standards with Cyrillic lettering and
soldiers wearing red armbands. Many Hungarians were angered over what
they saw as naked exploitation of painful episodes in the country's
turbulent history.
        Jackson's film is seen here by many as a patronizing attempt to
resurrect the now deeply unpopular socialist-era cult of personality.
        Feelings still run high about the symbols of communist
domination, especially among older people, and it is illegal to display
the red star in public in Hungary, unless for artistic purposes. The
film also illustrates his shaky grasp of recent events in this region as
the last Soviet soldier left Hungary over three years ago, without a
shot being fired.
        The Hungarian press was quick to mock Jackson's pretentions,
noting acidly that eastern Europe freed itself without help from the
west and even saying that his presidential-style wave from the airplane
as he landed on Friday night reminded them of the Communist era.
        Legions of self-important functionaries from the Jackson
entourage, backed by several large men with necks alarmingly wider than
their heads, vigilantly patrolled the entrances of the filming at the
Castle district, Heroes' Square and the Chain Bridge, to keep out the
press. But Budapest Week managed to sneak on set at the National Museum
and mingle with the extras, who were each being paid just Ft 1700
forints per day.
        Armed with handfuls of pieces of paper and rolls of ticker tape
we stood expectantly on the balcony until Jackson appeared, dressed in a
black uniform and sheltering from the sweltering summer heat under a
mauve umbrella. When the command came we cheered and hurled the paper
down onto the soldiers as they marched off.
        Here the record company's pseudo-socialist iconography got
somewhat confused and the giant red banners hanging down the walls
depicted Jackson in a sort of Mexican bandit-style outfit.
        A cloud still hangs over Jackson's reputation after an out of
court settlement earlier this year over allegations of child abuse. He
was careful to be seen everywhere with his wife Lisa Marie, in an
attempt to project an image of happy newly-weds.
        The pair spent their first afternoon distributing toys and
hospital items to two childrens hospitals in Budapest, where Jackson
patted the young patients in front of the television cameras and
distributed 2,655 toys and other items from his Heal the World
foundation.
        That trip merely laid the groundwork for his latest PR stunt. On
Monday night Jackson's spokesman Lee Solters announced that the couple
would pay all the costs of the Ft 12 million liver transplant for Bela
Farkas.
        Four year old Bela, a ward of the city's Bethesda Choildren's
Hospital, needs the transplant or he will probably die within a year, or
even sooner. Hospital medical director Dr Tamas Dizseri said: Bela
cannot be the toy of the pop world and nobody can own him. But the pop
world can help Bela. Jackson will also pay for a Ft three million oxygen
machine and an air-conditioning system.
        Magyar Nemzet reported that the Jackson camp paid $3 million for
filming in Budapest.

For those of you who either don't know Hungarian or don't subscribe to
"Hirmondo" I would like to summarize an already summarized version of a
five-part article written by Janos Kornai in the Nepszabadsag. I think it is
extremely interesting.

Here comes an abbreviated version:

First, he emphasizes that optimism is an important ingredient of economic
growth. After many years without public optimism concerning the future, at
last public opinion polls indicate that there is a change in public mood. He
is afraid that this optimism is being squashed by the government's repeated
reference to a "catastrophic economic situation." This is first of all not
true. "Our economy is strong." Second, this continuous emphasis on a "crisis
situation" must be abandoned because "it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy."
The more often an entrepreneur hears about "the catastrophic economic
situation" the less willing he will be to invest. He is not surprised that a
new government uses such tactics but it would be important to judge the
economic situation objectively. Admittedly, there are some economic problems.
        Some of these have been inherited from the communist regime which the
Antall-Boross governments didn't correct or actually added to (for example,
further foreign indebtedness, caving in to the pressures for higher wages,
and the continuation of an abortive, unsupportable welfare state) but at the
same time many very important, essential and healthy changes have been
introduced, partly "by themselves" as a result of democratic political
changes and partly by the actions of the government and the parliament (for
example, the formation of a market economy, the expansion of the private
sector, the introduction of democratic institutions). We should build on
these achievements when not the continuation of the practice of the Nemeth
government is on the agenda but the formulation of an economic policy
suitable to today's situation. This is a new situation and there are no
ready-made answers.

His economic thinking was reflected in the political arena by the FIDESZ but
similar ideas were expressed by the MDF and the KDNP as well. On the other
hand, the monetarist doctrine is widely accepted by the economists of the
SZDSZ and the MSZP. If this phenomenon is mentioned abroad, people express
great surprise because normally conservatives favor monetarist principles not
liberals and socialists.

Kornai then speculates that in the old regime the "reform" economists were
opposing the Kadar regime's fruitless efforts at "dynamization" of the
socialist economy. It was at that time that they "discovered" monetarism,
which wants to decrease the the role of the state and emphasizes the force of
the market. It seemed like a handy economic theory for the times. It seems
that many of the economists who are today in the liberal and socialist camps
can't rid themselves from their earlier theories which today might not be
effective.


I was just delighted to read such a well-balanced piece. I was very much
disturbed by my discovery of the Hungarian public's pessimism concerning the
future when I visited Hungary the last time, at the end of last year. I was
happy to hear from Marc Nasdor, who was there after the elections, that
public confidence was high in May and June. But I am afraid that Mr. Kornai
is most likely right about what he calls self-fulfilling prophecy. The number
of reports about the economic crisis is incredible!

Altogether, it is nice to hear that, after all, Hungary is not at the brink
of collapse and, in fact, the economy is quite strong. It was a pleasure to
read something as sober and objective without the exaggerations of some
members of the media, according to whom the former government was nothing
else but a bunch of thieves who "robbed the country blind," and who are
solely responsible for the crisis situation of today. Eva Balogh

On Mon, 5 Sep 1994 14:17:54 FST H. MARC said:
>     I always believed that the protestant work ethic started in America durin
g
>the early puritanical days of colonialisation when "if you don't work, you
>don't eat" was a term commonly used.  I believe this term was originally used
>in the Jamestown colony.

--No.  It was Plymouth.  It is based on a statement in the Letter from
St. James.  In any case, the term Protestant Ethic wasn't coined until
1920 when Weber wrote *The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism*

>     Now if the protestant work ethic started in Northern Europe than how woul
d
>one explain the transformation of these Northern European nations into welfare
>states?.......marc

---How much time have you got?  It would take a very long posting which
would bore everyone else and maybe you too, but there is a perfectly
good explanation.  In brief, it has to do with the rise of socialism--
not, in my view, the Marxist variety, but the French--Fourier and St.
Simon, primarily, and the rise of sociology, primarily again French
through Auguste Compte who believed that one could engineer the good
society.  Further, the welfare state is basically a capitalist creation.
You may find this hard to swallow, but I assure you that there is a
whole literature behind it.  I don't mean to sound like a Philistine
here, but you are now playing my game and in my home ballpark.  This
is how I make my living.  In the last five years, I have published
ten articles in professional journals (well, one is a chapter in
a book edited in England) on the welfare state.  Or maybe it's eight.
I'll check my vita!  Anyway, this is my teaching area, so I thought I
ought to tell you.

Charles R. Atherton
Professor (Emeritus, because of a generous buyout allowing early
retirement!)

On Mon, 5 Sep 1994 14:05:30 -0400 Scott_Mincey said:
>        Together with his wife of three months, Lisa Marie Presley
>Jackson, Michael Jackson spent four days in Budapest to film a video for
>his new album entitled History which features the star as a freedom
>fighter helping liberate eastern Europe from the yoke of Soviet
>domination.

--I knew that this would be as bad as the article suggests.

                                Many Hungarians were angered over what
>they saw as naked exploitation of painful episodes in the country's
>turbulent history.

--They are not alone.

>film also illustrates his shaky grasp of recent events in this region as
>the last Soviet soldier left Hungary over three years ago, without a
>shot being fired.

--Exactly.  In fact, they sort of snuck out.

>        The Hungarian press was quick to mock Jackson's pretentions,
>noting acidly that eastern Europe freed itself without help from the
>west and even saying that his presidential-style wave from the airplane
>as he landed on Friday night reminded them of the Communist era.
>        Legions of self-important functionaries from the Jackson

--Good for the Hungarian press.

>        Magyar Nemzet reported that the Jackson camp paid $3 million for
>filming in Budapest.

--And so I hope it made somebody happy.  I am embarassed, but I never
was a Jackson fan.  Too old.  Besides I  like music.  I think I'll go
and play some Bartok.  Might make me feel better.

Charles

Thank you very much for providing this information.

>> Most of the people of Hungary today has no familiarity at all with
>> religion and therefore they never had the chance to make an informed
decision.

i beg to differ. on my various visits to hungary i found the level of
knowledge about religion comparable to that in australia. i attended
midnight mass and other services  in budapest in large crowds indeed,
and it was not a crowd of old people.


d.a.

Subject: Re: Sinead, the army and the churches
From: paul, 
Date: 26 Aug 94 00:15:50 GMT
In article > paul,
 writes:

>For example, for a Christian, killing is wrong, PERIOD!

the only conclusion i can draw from that is that the christian churches
have been devoid of christians for centuries. i mean if i look at the
conquest of the extra-european colonies or the inquisition, or the
religious wars or the consecration by priests of the machines of war, i
cannot see that the official christian churches abide by your categorical
imperative.

> Many liberals from the
>1960 in the US are now more conservative that they are older/wiser.

i presume that that is a typo and that you meant to write:

"many liberals from the 1960's in the e.s.a. are now more conservative
than
 they are older/wiser"


 d.a.

In article > Norbert Walter,
 writes:
>
>     Over 60% of the American population is Protestant, White
>Anglo-Saxon Protestants have historically been at the helm of the
>economy and government of the US (as far as modern American history
>is concerned, they are the indigenous population), the large
>Catholic population is relatively poor and new,

in texas, nevada, new mexico, california, louisiana, mississipi at least
the catholic population predates the protestant one. that hardly
qualifies them as "relatively new" in modern american terms.

d.a.

On Fri, 2 Sep 1994, H. MARC wrote:

> Satellite TV is wonderful!  I can watch MTV (Music, not Magyar) in Spanish. I
> can watch Dallas in French, and I can catch a few German pornos.  If that is
> not intellectual stimulation, what is???....marc
>
The Dallas is no great loss in any languages; watching pornos is your
business; What about do you want to inform us?
Regards S. B.

On Mon, 5 Sep 1994, H. MARC wrote:

>  > Satellite TV is wonderful!  I can watch MTV (Music, not Magyar) in Spanish
.
>  > can watch Dallas in French, and I can catch a few German pornos.  If that 
i
s
>  > not intellectual stimulation, what is???....marc
>  >
>  The Dallas is no great loss in any languages; watching pornos is your
>  business; What about do you want to inform us?
>  Regards S. B.
>
> S.B.,
>      Sorry if you misread my comments.  I was making a sarcastic remark about
> someone (I have forgotten whom) who pointed out that Satellite TV might help
> to alleviate some of the ignorance that exists in the world.  I was simply
> trying to make the point, that Satellite TV is no Godsend, in fact it is
> probably a curse upon mankind.  It's a spewer of cultural garbage.  A sort of
> cultural Chernobyl if you will.
>      FYI: I do not watch pornos, or Dallas.  In fact I don't even own a TV.
> regards...........marc horchler
>
Marc!
I beg your pardon for my misunderstand but I haven't read the previous
message. Your'statements standing alone were surprizing and  made me to
write those sentencies. I totally agree wit you!
My best wishes Be'la Somosva'ri