Sharing, not Killing by Friedhelm Hengsbach

SHARING, NOT KILLING By Friedhelm Hengsbach [This reading sample of the 2014 book “Teilen, nicht Toten” is translated from the German on the Internet, www.westendverlag.de.] “You can interpret the clouds in the sky and the direction of the win. Why can’t you interpret the signs of this time?” These sentences from the Gospel of Luke stimulated me to write this book. I see refused sharing as a sign of the present time. At the periphery of a world of prosperity, a violence erupts that rages with weapons produced in the center and supplied for killing. They drive countless persons in a hopeless flight from persecution and privation to the borders and forecourts of the center. I see another sign of the present time in the rediscovery of sharing. A mental change and a rethinking were announced when the swelling bank crisis mutated into a read growth weakness or growth inertia. More and more people doubt the persuasiveness of that thought current in which individuals competing with each other seek their own advantage although the generated prosperity should be distributed to everyone. Open-minded economists insist: conventional economic theory is unrealistic and wrong when it assumes a view of the persons where social relations and solidarity feelings are excluded. The overall economic output grows and social inequality grows simultaneously. The capitalist dynamic deepens the social division between privileged and disadvantaged groups. It undermines the solidarity of countries with the communes in Germany, in the European Union and at its borders and erodes the consent of many to democracy. What decision-making and action impulses should trigger these signs? A change of the following priorities moves me. Persons who previously revolved around themselves and were self-contained now open the same space they claim for themselves to other fellowpersons. The chase for an aimless growth is condemned as dumb and harmful. Individual gifts and achievements are regarded as trifling compared to the conviction that persons are3 born as equals and have equal rights. The redistribution of a privately appropriated wealth is always a second step. The decision about the level and direction of goods production and about their distribution should occur at the source when the goods are produced. A society with a well-balanced distribution of income and wealth has a greater chance of creating inward and outward prosperity and peace – without weapons. Therefore, the urgent plea seems justified to me: “sharing, not killing”!