Gesellschaft – Page 2 – Writer Between Worlds

Quote of the day

“People need their group identification, because this identification protects them, literally, from the terrible forces of the unknown. It is for this reason that every individual who is not decadent will strive to protect his territory, actual and psychological. But the tendency to protect means hatred of the other, and the inevitability of war –…
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Quote of the day

“Piaget’s value system considers rule by cooperation a more satisfactory equilibration in human relations than rule by authority. (…) Rigid traditionalists assume that the answer to the question ‘what is the good?’ can be – has been – answered permanently, and concretely, with the list of laws. (…) Adherents of tradition rely on the attribution…
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Quote of the day

“Life without law remains chaotic, affectively intolerable. Life that is pure law becomes sterile, equally unbearable. The domination of chaos or sterility equally breeds murderous resentment and hatred.” Peterson, J. (1999) – Maps of Meaning, p. 397
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Quote of the day

On strangers and strange ideas: “Arrival of the stranger, concretely presented in mythology, constitutes a “threat to the stability of the kingdom” (…). The stable meaning of experiential events, constrained by the hierarchical structure of group identity, is easily disrupted by the presence of the “other”, who practically poses a concrete threat to the stability…
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Quote of the day

“In fact, we humans (and all other organisms) are almost selfless slaves whose entire purpose is to serve our molecular masters. (…) If the gene-centred view is correct, then evolution is nothing at all to do with ‘us’. We are nothing more than sophisticated robots, constructed over 3.5 billion years of mutation and selection to…
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Citatul zilei

“Este oare posibil să înțelegi cauzele celui de-al doilea război mondial fără să știi nimic despre ideologia național-socialismului german? Firește, există istorici care nu văd nimic dincolo de mobiluri economice. Și totuși, sunt oare suficiente aceste mobiluri pentru a explica de ce Germania n-a fost satisfăcută cu o expansiune moderată în Europa Centrală și în…
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Citatul zilei – Despre magie

“Magicianul se ocupă azi de relații publice, de propagandă, de prospectarea pieței, de anchete sociologice, de publicitate, informație, contra-informație și dez-informație, de cenzură, de operațiuni de spionaj și chiar de criptografie, această știință fiind în secolul al XVI-lea o ramură a magiei. (…) Pe nedrept istoricii au tras concluzia dispariției magiei odată cu apariția științei…
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Humanity (haiku)

amid cherry tree blossoms, humans fight for their right to kill humans.
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On religion

“Despite cautionary comments by Kluckhohn and others on the “gain and cost” of various religious practices such as witchcraft, the tendency has been consistently to stress the harmonizing, integrating, and psychologically supportive aspects of religious patterns rather than the disruptive, disintegrative, and psychologically disturbing aspects; to demonstrate the manner in which religion preserves social and…
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On love

“Florentino Ariza, for his part, suddenly asked himself what he would never have dared to ask himself before: what kind of secret life had she led outside of her marriage? Nothing would have surprised him, because he knew that women are just like men in their secret adventures: the same stratagems, the same sudden inspirations,…
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On ideologies (2)

“Four main classes of explanation have been most frequently employed: the cathartic, the morale, the solidarity, and the advocatory. By the “cathartic explanation” is meant the venerable safety-valve or scapegoat theory. Emotional tension is drained off by being displaced onto symbolic enemies (“The Jews,” “Big Business,” “The Reds,” and so forth). The explanation is as…
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On ideologies

“It is when neither a society’s most general cultural orientations nor its most down-to-earth, “pragmatic” ones suffice any longer to provide an adequate image of political process that ideologies begin to become crucial as sources of sociopolitical meanings and attitudes. In one sense, this statement is but another way of saying that ideology is a…
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Category: Gesellschaft