The Philosophy of Nothingness
I happened to catch celebrated economist Amitai Etzioni's latest piece, Spent , a call to reject consumerism as a way to extract ourselves from the current economic malaise. In his very first paragraph he perceptively derides the "regulation is the answer" pap, and concludes with this: "What is needed instead is something far more sweeping: for people to internalize a different sense of how one ought to behave, and act on it because they believe it is right." Right away it is easy to see he is a product of the World System, even a sworn operative doing its bidding, spouting about World ways to solve World problems. However eloquent he is, and he is that at some points, no one will ever be able to do anything he thinks they should do because it is missing the most critical part. Etzioni is a wholly devout World guy because he does what all World people do all the time. He appeals to what philosopher Immanuel Kant referred to as the "categorial imperative,...