"Community" came to be seen as a chat-group: you switch on as long as your pleasure lasts, then push another button and switch off. Very easy to go in and out, join and leave.

In our world of rampant individualisation, relationships are mixed blessings. They vacillate between a sweet dream and a nightmare, and there is no telling when one turns into the other.

What is happening now is that the number of people who are not strong enough or do not feel strong enough to decide to live without the security provided by the community or the state, is going up.

As to describing me as an outsider throughout, and an outsider through and through - I have no reason to disagree.

Ingeniously, capitalism discovered that the economy may be moved not by satisfying existing needs, but by creating new ones.

The secret of every durable ... social system is the recasting of 'functional prerequisites' into behavioral motives for actors.

The task is to keep the lost opportunities of the past alive.