Books by Ignacio L. Gotz

Eliminate manners and respect vanishes with them. The connection between the decline of manners and the increase of violence is documented by reference to a variety of social instances and trends.

This book presents the thesis that happiness does not mean just one thing but many, and that these many meanings have been studied, described, argued, and practiced throughout the centuries in many climes and places. This book explores many views of happiness as espoused by their original founders and developers.

Goetz proposes that there is no opposition between faith and humor, belief and laughter. The tragic and the comic are sisters, as Aristotle saw in antiquity. On the other side,Goetz shows what happens when faith and humor depart from paradox: faith becomes dogmatic and fanatical, and humor becomes superficial and banal.

Most contemporary accounts of the role of technology in world culture are alarmist and, at times, condemn many uses of technology without much effort to get beyond the surface of this worldwide phenomenon. Technological innovations that might rightly be critiqued are taken as representative of the entire field of technology. On the other hand, there are those, including some scientists, for whom technology and its uses pose no questions at all and who seem to delight in predictions of a future totally dominated by technology. They prey on the human delight in newness and innovation and on our readiness to be surprised by what may someday come to be. Gotz takes the position that so-called technology problems are really our problems, not the fault of technology.Technology is an integral part of what we are as human beings, a significant aspect of our evolution. Gotz also advances the thesis that technology may be viewed from the perspective of the human capacity to grow, and that when we do so, we are, in effect, spiritualizing technology and rendering it more meaningful to ourselves. Gotz suggests several models that may be employed to achieve this spiritualization. This provocative analysis will be of interest to general readers as well as scholars, students, and researchers concerned with contemporary social and religious issues.

Goetz also explores briefly some psychological mechanisms operative in the formation of womb envy, and he examines schooling as one institution that has perpetuated the womb envy that is so much a part of sexism.