British - Scientist | March 25, 1921 - May 16, 2007
I am convinced that living in an enclave shapes the personality, and living alone shapes the personality too.
Mary Douglas
AlonePersonalityI AmLivingShapes
The natural response of the old-timers is to build a strong moral wall against the outside. This is where the world starts to be painted in black and white, saints inside, and sinners outside the wall.
Black And WhiteWorldStrongBlack
Hierarchy is is much reviled in the present day.
DayPresentHierarchyMuchReviled
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.
EqualityAchieveDifficultReal
If you want to change the culture, you will have to start by changing the organization.
ChangeCultureOrganizationStart
An escalating, violent tit-for-tat may lead to terrorism.
TerrorismLeadMayViolent
Inequality can have a bad downside, but equality, for its part, sure does get in the way of coordination.
EqualityBadInequalityWaySure
The history of the Church of Rome is a constant leakage of members into such breakaway cults, which go on splitting.
HistoryChurchGoRomeCultsWhich
It seems true that the growth of science and secularism made organized Christianity feel under threat.
GrowthScienceFeelTrueOrganized
Hierarchy works well in a stable environment.
EnvironmentHierarchyWellStable
It is only partly true that religion does more harm than good in society. The community makes God into the image it wants, vengeful, or milky sweet, or scrupulously just, and so on.
GoodGodCommunityReligionSweet
The theory of cultural bias... is the idea that a culture is based on a particular form of organization. It can't be transplanted except to another variant of that organization.
CultureOrganizationBiasTheory
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