Words matter. These are the best Mary Douglas Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
The history of the Church of Rome is a constant leakage of members into such breakaway cults, which go on splitting.
Real equality is immensely difficult to achieve, it needs continual revision and monitoring of distributions. And it does not provide buffers between members, so they are continually colliding or frustrating each other.
I have increasingly, over the years, felt that religion today does our civilization more harm than good.
Hierarchy is is much reviled in the present day.
If people want to compete for leadership of a religious group, they can compete in piety. A chilling thought. Or funny.
Islam is in principle egalitarian, and has always had problems with power.
Just in our lifetime our society has become looser and more private, it becomes extremely difficult to hold to any permanent commitment whatever, least of all to organized religion.
Religion can make it worse. Are you supposing that if people were encouraged to believe in a transcendent reality, and to be encouraged by grand rituals and music and preaching, to love their neighbors, then they would put jealousy and frustration aside?
Some scholars have been arguing that a civilizational clash between organized religions is the next step in human history.
Hierarchy works well in a stable environment.
An escalating, violent tit-for-tat may lead to terrorism.
Any great organization can go through sectarian phases.
Yes, disappointment over perceived unfairness, injustice, promises not kept, tends to go hand in hand with increasing prosperity. Expectations are dashed. What can I say!
Mormons… are so strong, they can handle wealth, they are confident. I think it is because they are not bogged down by rules for equality, but have a firmly defined system of relative status and responsible command.
Since 1970, relationships can be more volatile, jobs more ephemeral, geographical mobility more intensified, stability of marriage weaker.
Pretensions to moral superiority are devastatingly destructive.
What did our nation ever do to provoke these madly vicious enemies? What is seen as injustice in one place is seen as just requital in the other.
Inside a religious body you get sects and hierarchies, inside an information network you get bazaars and cathedrals, it is the same, call them what you like. They survive by pointing the finger of blame at each other.
I am convinced that living in an enclave shapes the personality, and living alone shapes the personality too.
Every year the progress of advanced capitalist society makes our population consist of more and more isolates. This is because of the infrastructure of the economy, especially electronic communications.
It seems true that the growth of science and secularism made organized Christianity feel under threat.
It’s unlikely that the organized religions will get more sectarian… or is it? I am not at all sure.
