Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84to Community E B E R H A R D A R N O L D From property to community: that is the great theme that occupies us today. First of all, we will examine the poison that lies at the root of property. Property means disintegration: it fragments the world into “mine” and “thine.” But since disintegration is decomposition, the consequence of property must be death. When our body falls apart, it decays; in the same way, when the community of humankind disinte- grates into isolated individuals, each with his or her own property, it is in a state of corruption. The separation of the isolated individual is the poisonous root of property. Its curse consists in the fact that individuals no longer are con- nected to one another. They no longer live with each other and for each other, but only next to each other. Worst of all, individuals lose their connection to God, who is the root of all being and life. The effects are mortal. Humankind lies in agony; it is on the brink of death. And the most obvious symptom of its deathly state is property, the outgrowth of the egoistic will to possess. In what follows, we will explore how and why this is so. Then we will turn to search for the way out. Wassily Kandinsky, The Ludwigskirche in Munich, oil on cardboard (1908), Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid