On context and contradictions...

Burning Fight: The Nineties Hardcore Revolution In Ethics, Politics, Spirit, And Sound - A book review

Often, I encounter people who speak of hardcore in terms of the distinguishing elements of the myriad of bands and their common musical archetypes: palm muted chords on a dropped tuned distorted guitar; blast beats and breakdowns; growls, screams and sing-along choruses about politics, frustration, veganism among others. While I would agree that hardcore can be defined as a specific musical genre that came out of punk rock, I believe it more than that as it is a set of varying ideas, ethics, principles, attitudes and, yes, music, that converge to form a community.

Brian Peterson’s "Burning Fight: The Nineties Hardcore Revolution In Ethics,Politics, Spirit, And Sound" is a literary testament to the 90s hardcore scene in the United States where he interviews and features commentary from the many participants of the 90s hardcore scene to explore its political, social, ethical and spiritual ideas amidst the screamed vocals and abrasive chords. 

Capitalism as sin...

At a time when Wall Street bankers are amassing more and more– and they do their best to pay little or no income tax. Interestingly many of them are self-professed Christians who attribute capitalism as a system that is compatible with Calvin’s support for pursuit of economic gain to which hard work is seen as a consequence of being one of the elect.

However, the historic experience that we have with capitalism shows that only those who has private ownership of the means of production (like land as a classic example) has much higher chances of meriting profit over the ones that doesn’t which finds many who do not have private ownership working more yet earn only enough to last them until next pay day.