"L'Accorderie is a social enterprise incorporated as a multi-stakeholder co-op or non-profit organization that supports a bartering system for exchanging services among individuals. The members of an Accorderie provide all types of services for each other based on their individual talents and knowledge. Barters are paid in social currency, which is not money or its equivalent, but time."
Shared by Michel Bauwens, 1 save total
"HYPOMNEMATA is ‘bloc-notes’ or ‘memo’. This ancient Greek word designates the notebooks or notepads (small books in which to write notes). Also it indicates the writings taken (frequently during classes) to memorize relevant facts or observations. In short, they are the instruments or their contents.
Platon (Plato) is among the first (in his times) to recognize the usefulness of writing as a benefit for artificial memory. In fact, for the students of his Academy, he developes the <hypomnesic> principles. According to Michel Foucault “the <hypomnemata> constitute a material memory of things read, heard, or thought“. Referring to Ancient Greece, Foucault writes (1997, Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth – New York: The New Press, p. 273) “these notes are a treasure of info and data for rereading and later meditation. They also form raw material for the writing of more systematic treatises. In the latters there are arguments and means by which to struggle against some defects (such as anger, envy, gossip, flattery). Or to overcome some difficult circumstances (a mourning, an exile, downfall, disgrace)“."
Shared by Michel Bauwens, 1 save total
"The narrative of hate is fundamentally dishonest because it refuses to acknowledge the fact that it is not against hate as such but against the hate that it ascribes to its political opponents. For example, promoters of the narrative of The Hate, hate those who they accuse of practicing the politics of hate. That is why their anti-populist rhetoric often communicates a sense of bitter hatred towards their enemies. The Danish academic Mikkel Thorup argues that ‘when democracies hate, they hate the hater’[iv]. What that means is that promoters of the hate narrative have permission to hate if their animosity is directed at what Thorup characterizes as the ‘hating other’. In other words, they assume that because of their exceptional superior moral status, they alone have the right to hate.
The Yale legal scholar, Robert Post recognizes that content of the narrative of hate ‘always necessarily reflects the views of elites who control the content of law’. It is possible to go a step further and assert that the politicization of hate is an accomplishment of the ruling elites, who have weaponized the term hate to de-legitimate political opponents.
Aside from its manipulative and coercive use the narrative of hate also serves the project of politicizing the internal lives of people. The emotion of hate is an entirely legitimate response to a variety of circumstances. The attempt to turn displays of this emotion into a generic form of evil is likely to have the effect of rendering people’s reaction to hateful people and experiences passive. In some instances, the reluctance to hate can actually represents an acquiescence to evil.
In defence of hate
Hating is as human as loving. That is why hate has been regarded as a normal reaction to evil throughout the ages. Hate is regarded as a legitimate response to evil in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Those familiar with the Old Testament will know that they were taught to ‘love the Lord, hate evil’.[v] ‘The fear of the LORD is to hate evil, pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the forward mouth, do I hate’, states Proverbs 8’013. In some instances, the Judeo-Christian tradition hatred of evil was perceived as an obligatory act of the faithful. The Cappadocian church father Basil of Caesarea declared that ‘If your temper is not roused against the Evil One, you will not be able to hate him as much as he deserves. For I hold that it is necessary to have equal zeal for the love of virtue and for the hatred of sin’. For Basil, as for numerous Christian theologians hatred of evil and sin represented a religious obligation
How hate should be viewed depends on the impulses that drive this emotion and on the context of its use. No doubt often public expressions of hate represent an entirely negative phenomenon. However, not all forms of hate are bad and they can sometime represent an entirely legitimate response to attempts to degrade, dehumanize or discredit an individual.
Within the philosophical tradition of the Ancient Greeks – Plato, Aristotle - certain forms of hatred were frowned upon as a form, of irrational prejudice, whilst other expressions of this emotion were interpreted as responses that were underwritten by reason. Unlike the wholesale demonization of hatred in contemporary society, the ancient Greeks possessed a more nuanced understanding of this emotion and were able to distinguish between its positive and negative manifestations.
In an interesting account, ‘Hate and the State in Ancient Greece’, David Konstan noted that unlike anger, ‘hatred was not singled out by Greek and Roman writers as a particularly abhorrent emotion, or one that was, like envy, beneath the dignity of a virtuous person’[vi]. Aristotle regarded hatred as a moral emotion that represented a response to the perception of vice. Aristotle regarded hatred as a rational reaction ‘to the perceived features of its object’[vii].
In her book Hatred: Understanding Our Most Dangerous Emotion , the Danish philosopher Berit Brogaard Offers a nuanced defence of this emotion. The kind of hatred Brogaard defends are critical rather than dehumanising. She claims that hatred as a reactive moral outlook can be appropriate. For example, hatred directed at acts of malevolence is entirely justifiable. From this standpoint hatred can serve the purpose of defending the moral standards prevailing in society. What that means is that if people become dispossessed of the right to hate they will become helpless when confronted by those attacking their moral norms and values
It was during the second half of the 20th century that hate became politicised. Initially the politicisation of hatred was motivated by the goal of criminalising racist behaviour. Since the 1990s its use expanded to mean a public danger to a variety of minority and identity groups. In recent times the narrative of hate plays an important role in the determining what people can or cannot say. It assists the policing of behaviour and of speech and in practice defends the ruling elites from criticism.
Challenging the weaponisation of hate is essential for the revival of a robust spirit of democratic debate. It is time that society regained the conviction that the freedom to hate is no less important than the freedom to love."
Shared by Michel Bauwens, 1 save total
"A wealth tax on the super-rich and “distributive justice” for the less well-off are certainly front-and-center issues in today’s roiling politics across the Western democracies. But what stirs passions even more is the struggle for social recognition, esteem, prestige, honor and respect. In other words, the perception of a sense of dignity, regardless of where people land in the pecking order.
"
Shared by Michel Bauwens, 1 save total
" the purpose of this post is more exploratory: to look at the major policy changes of the administration and consider what their probable consequences might be.
"
Shared by Michel Bauwens, 1 save total
"Nate Silver. Silver, in fact, has written the latest sally in The Bluesky Discourse, a Substack newsletter entitled “What is Blueskyism?” published Friday:
Bluesky was initially popular with Twitter refugees who disliked Musk’s takeover of the platform, some of whom proclaimed that Elon had unleashed the “gates of hell” by restoring banned accounts or predicted that the platform would implode due to a shortage of engineering talent. […] this also self-selected for a certain type of user, adherents of an attitude that I call “Blueskyism”.
Blueskyism should not be mistaken for general left-of-center political views. […] It’s not a political movement so much as a tribal affiliation, a niche set of attitudes and style of discursive norms that almost seem designed in a lab to be as unappealing as possible to anyone outside the clique.
Silver lists three “essential qualities” to “Blueskyism”:
Smalltentism: “Aggressive policing of dissent… Censoriousness”
Credentialism: “Appeals to authority… Centering of the suitability of the speaker based on his or her credentials and/or identity characteristics”
Catastrophism: “Humorless, scoldy neuroticism”"
Shared by Michel Bauwens, 1 save total
"Over the past two years, roughly three dozen Israeli citizens have been arrested on charges of carrying out espionage and influence operations inside Israel on behalf of the Iranian government. The charges have mostly involved surveillance and vandalism—though some have risen to the level of attempted violence against selected targets. In 2025, Israel witnessed a 400% increase in suspected and confirmed cases of Israelis performing espionage related activities for Iranian intelligence, according to a report by the Dor Moriah Analytical Center, an Israeli think tank."
Shared by Michel Bauwens, 1 save total
"Ecocivilization: Making a World that Works for All
Melville House: available May 26, 2026"
Shared by Michel Bauwens, 1 save total
Diigo is about better ways to research, share and collaborate on information. Learn more »
Join Diigo