30 August 2011

Social utopia

"The two most basic goals of social utopias are to eliminate deprivation – hunger, ignorance, homelessness – and to forge a society in which no one is an outsider, no one is alienated." (A Paradise Built In Hell, Rebecca Solnit, 2009; page 18) 
By that standard the Chumash is clearly angling to create a social utopia. Those two goals are precisely the two most oft repeated instructions in the Chumash: take care of the orphan and the widow; and be kind to the stranger for you were a stranger in a strange land. 

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