Our democratic societies are in danger. In allowing ourselves to be infiltrated by fear, to be blinded by the passion of identity, we are entertaining the most serious illusions about our freedom.
A lot of journalists help us to better understand the world by zooming out and sometimes zooming in on a really important case but sort of helping us to get a grasp of what are the structural forces that govern our lives and our societies and that is incredibly important.
I like to make films with characters that resemble real people, about societies that exist.
Millions of men have lived to fight, build palaces and boundaries, shape destinies and societies; but the compelling force of all times has been the force of originality and creation profoundly affecting the roots of human spirit.
Societies that depend on natural resources tend to have certain inherent problems. The limited concentration of wealth – whether from oil, coal, diamonds, or bauxite – often leads to corruption and authoritarianism.
Those who have heard or read anything from me on the subject, know that one of the principal points insisted on is, the forming of societies or any other artificial combinations IS the first, greatest, and most fatal mistake ever committed by legislators and by reformers.
People who study primate societies make a distinction between two kinds of cultural interactions, agonic and hedonic. In agonic societies, you gain status by asserting dominance over others. In hedonic societies, you gain status by drawing attention to yourself. Open source is a hedonic culture.
In contrast, fear societies are societies in which dissent is banned.
Climate change brings pressures that will influence resource competition between nations and place additional burdens on economies, societies and governance institutions around the globe. These effects are threat multipliers.
The 1 to 2 billion poorest in the world, who don’t have food for the day, suffer from the worst disease: globalization deficiency. The way globalization is occurring could be much better, but the worst thing is not being part of it. For those people, we need to support good civil societies and governments.
Many journalists are influenced by a myopic multiculturalism that is suspicious of anything Western, while giving the benefit of the doubt to non-Western societies.
There is no kind of harassment that a man may not inflict on a woman with impunity in civilized societies.
Very few societies on Earth developed science as we know it today. On the other hand, the number is not zero – the Greeks, the Chinese, and the Maya did, among others. Once invented, science proved so useful that it spread like mold on a petri dish.
When we are unwilling to draw clear moral lines between free societies and fear societies, when we are unwilling to call the former good and the latter evil, we will not be able to advance the cause of peace because peace cannot be disconnected from freedom.
Sharing food has always had a central place in civilized societies; it’s no accident that so many of our cultural, religious and patriotic rituals are involved with eating.
In a lot of Indian societies, spirituality has been lost, I think it’s still the best way of looking at the world for Indians – better than any organized religion in this country.
Societies can easily talk themselves into conflict and misery. But they can also talk, and act, their way out.
Societies cannot move forward without law, and our constitution is the cornerstone of the law and our National Assembly is its umbrella and fortress.
In most of history, societies have not been free. It’s a very rare society that is free. The default condition of human societies is tyranny.
Secularism and pluralism are two of the defining ethos of Western societies. The former decouples religion from governmental institutions whilst the latter seeks to protect the rights of all citizens to freely practice their creed.
Education enables people and societies to be what they can be.
Nothing in our evolutionary history specifically prepared us to live in large societies. Almost everything about the way culture works does.
Happiness is a real, objective phenomenon, scientifically verifiable. That means people and whole societies can now be measured over time and compared accurately with one another. Causes and cures for unhappiness can be quantified.
The degradation of natural resources such as forests and freshwater has removed much of the resilience that societies formerly enjoyed.
Economic activity can help repair war-torn societies, but if it’s not conducted responsibly, it can also create or prolong violence. Companies and international organisations must help strengthen communities and overcome the trauma of violence.
Historically, we’ve attached a lot of shame to women and their bodies – probably since biblical times. It’s a way that patriarchal societies have perpetuated.
One of the things that put me off writing for a while was that piece of advice everybody gives new writers: ‘Write what you know.’ Nobody would ever want to read about my boring life! But I do know a lot of things about different societies’ cultures and mythologies. The way people were and are.
Giving and receiving kindness are easy ways to feel good and to help others feel good too. People, organizations, and societies thrive when they are grounded in a culture of kindness.
Institutionalized discrimination is bad for people and for societies. Widespread discrimination is also bad for economies. There is clear evidence that when societies enact laws that prevent productive people from fully participating in the workforce, economies suffer.
Though women are no longer barred from university laboratories and scientific societies, the idea that they are innately less suited to mathematical science is deeply ingrained in our cultural genes.
One of the enduring problems with certain societies in the world – and this is certainly true of a lot of places in the Middle East – is that the capacity for self-governance and self-organizing just isn’t there. It has to do with history.
