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 16to 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