I’m not sure who Timothy Burke is or where exactly he’s coming from, but this is a superb piece on how neoliberal societies try to get people to change:
“If you want an explanation of the meanness of 21st Century American public discourse, for the fractures in the body politic, this will do as a starting place. “Get that guy to wear his helmet, because otherwise he’s going to cost you money.” “Get that woman to lose weight, because otherwise she’s going to cost you money.” “Hassle that couple because their kid plays too many video games and might slightly underperform in school and not make the contribution to net productivity that we are expecting of him.”
Questions concerning how people treat one another, I believe, are ultimately theological. Whatever we think people are will determine what we think the problems are and why we must solve them. If we think of people primarily as gobs of material or units of economic activity, then we’ll get diagnoses like the above-quoted.
But what would happen if we acknowledged man as the image of God, as capable having his humanity completed and fulfilled in Christ, brought into the fellowship of the Trinity, and finally able to live at peace with himself and his neighbor?