Fully "biodegradable" structures are nowadays the ideal and the standards to which most, if not all structures, struggle to measure up.

Like the phoenix, socialism is reborn from every pile of ashes left day in, day out, by burnt-out human dreams and charred hopes.

In "solid modernity" difference was tolerated as a temporary irritant only, expected to disappear tomorrow, when "those aliens" will become like us. "Living with strangers" was therefore not something to last and did not call for developing appropriate arts and skills. Now, however, it looks like that diasporic context of our living will not go away - it will be there forever, so learning how to live with strangers day in, day out without abandoning my own strangeness is high on the agenda.

I am not a prophet; I cannot predict what will happen.

In a nutshell: if freedom visualised by the Enlightenment and demanded/promised by Marx was made to the measure of the ideal producer; the market-promoted freedom is designed with the ideal consumer in mind; neither of the two is "more genuine" than the other.

While a few poor countries are catching up with the rich world, the differences between the richest and poorest individuals around the globe are huge and likely growing.

Indeed, I did not truly "belong" to any school, order, intellectual camaraderie or clique; I did not apply for admission to any of them, let alone did much to deserve an invitation; nor would I be listed by any of them - at least listed unqualifiedly - as "one of us".