31 Quotations Found

In the world of science, we endeavor to uncover fundamental laws and elemental truths indifferent to our opinions of them — those selfsame truths and laws that made us and govern the electrical impulses coursing through our cortices at 100 meters per second to forge the thought-patterns of opinion. But in the human world where we live, we swirl in the movable host of human … [ Read more ]

Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Concepts, Education | Scholarship, Ethics | Integrity | Morality, Life & Society, Math & Science, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior, Sociology | Anthropology

For us, ultra-social human beings, all you need to do to maintain a culture is put in place the pain of social exclusion. Follow the norms, and if you don’t, we’re not going to beat you to a pulp. We’re just going to exclude you. That is legitimately and truly painful to human beings. That’s the glue that holds human cultures together, is that threat … [ Read more ]

Author: Andrew McAfee | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior, Relationships, Sociology | Anthropology

Young people can also be remarkably clannish, and cruel in their exclusion of all those who are “different,” in skin color or cultural background, in tastes and gifts, and often in such petty aspects of dress and gesture as have been temporarily selected as the signs of an in-grouper or out-grouper. It is important to understand (which does not mean condone or participate in) such … [ Read more ]

Author: Erik Erikson | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior, Relationships, Sociology | Anthropology

In 1944, best-selling author and scholar C.S. Lewis delivered the Memorial Lecture entitled, The Inner Ring, at Kings College in London. His speech focused on the innate human desire to belong and the extent to which we will strive to be included, even in groups that don’t serve our highest good. Lewis warned that our desire to belong could unwittingly lead us to actions that … [ Read more ]

Authors: Alaina Love, C.S. Lewis | Source: SmartBrief | Subjects: Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior, Sociology | Anthropology

Across the animal kingdom, dominance hierarchies inform the way social creatures interact. And while people might think that our more evolved brains and advanced social dynamics put us above the kinds of behavior seen in dogs or apes, our actions are still very much steered by primal drives.

Authors: Deborah H. Gruenfeld, Kevin Cool | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Life & Society, Sociology | Anthropology

Knowing that people value hierarchies, one of the most important skillsets I would say that human beings have is to figure out where they belong and how to contribute in a way that’s valued so they can be part of the group.

Author: Deborah H. Gruenfeld | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Life & Society, Sociology | Anthropology

We are desperate to belong in groups… many individuals prefer lower ranks in a hierarchical group to not being in the group at all. So, they accept those positions. It is oddly a strange source of security to know who’s responsible for what, who’s going to lead, who’s going to follow. And it gives everyone a script to follow so they know how to behave … [ Read more ]

Author: Deborah H. Gruenfeld | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior, Sociology | Anthropology

One of the ways in which we are like animals is that we need to organize ourselves in order to survive. It’s not intuitive because we have this sense that in modern civilized society people have a tendency to prefer equality and egalitarian kinds of organizing structures to more hierarchical ones.

But what you find when you look at how people behave despite what they say … [ Read more ]

Author: Deborah H. Gruenfeld | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Psychology | Behavior, Sociology | Anthropology

There’s a big optimism gap between how people feel about their own lives—which is about 6.5 out of 10, on average—and how they feel about the world, which is much more like 4 [out of 10]. And I think the antidote is [to realize] that 100,150 years ago, the average lifespan was in the 40s; now it’s in the low 80s. Malnourishment; access to clean … [ Read more ]

Author: Martin Seligman | Source: GQ | Subjects: Life & Society, Perception | Observation, Psychology | Behavior, Sociology | Anthropology

Fairness comprises outcomes (distributive justice) and process (procedural justice), and these are judged differently depending on a few predictable conditions.

Authors: Marco Bertini, Oded Koenigsberg | Source: Harvard Business Review (HBR) | Subjects: Concepts, Law | Legal, Life & Society, Sociology | Anthropology

When it is the persistent and universal tendency in any society to concentrate upon the intellect and its training, the result will be a society which amasses power, and with power the means to the good life, but which has no correspondingly developed capacity for living the good life for which it has amassed the means… We have immense power, and immense resources; we worship … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Concepts, Education | Scholarship, Intelligence | Knowledge, Life & Society, Power, Sociology | Anthropology

I think there are a number of reasons that looking at human beings as biological organisms can be unsettling. One of them is the possibility of inequality. If human nature is a “blank slate,” then by definition we’re all the same. Whereas if nature endows us with anything, then some people might be endowed with more of it than others are, or with different stuff … [ Read more ]

Author: Steven Pinker | Source: Discover Magazine | Subjects: Life & Society, Nature, Sociology | Anthropology

Historically, the most terrible things—war, genocide, and slavery—have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.

Author: Howard Zinn | Subjects: Life & Society, Sociology | Anthropology

A revolution is any change that alters the power structure. This [Fourth Industrial Revolution] is not a revolution. It’s a reformation, because it bolsters the existing power structure. The rhetoric of revolution is a cover-up.

Author: Gianpiero Petriglieri | Subjects: Change, Concepts, History, Life & Society, Sociology | Anthropology

We argue with our biology, and the result of that argument is civilization.

Author: Charles Siebert | Subjects: Life & Society, Sociology | Anthropology

It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built up upon a renunciation of instinct.

Author: Sigmund Freud | Subjects: Life & Society, Sociology | Anthropology

Yet how was it possible that 10 per cent could effectively master and control 90 per cent of the population? They bribed them; they deceived them; they created internal rivalries; they consoled them for their lack of power by weaving myths of origin and identity.

Author: Peter Ackroyd | Subjects: Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Sociology | Anthropology

William Swann, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, coined the term [identity fusion] in 2009 while studying theories of individual identity. Once fused with a group or leader, he noticed, followers seem tied to them in such a way that things are true because the leader said them. Dystopian as that may seem, it can be a coping mechanism: Orienting your sense … [ Read more ]

Author: James Hamblin | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Psychology | Behavior, Sociology | Anthropology

There is one sentiment, I think, that links the people who were once part of the center-right — the anti-communist movement in Poland or Reaganism or Thatcherism — and who began to change in a different direction over the past decade or so: disappointment.

These are very often people who are disappointed, and they are almost always disappointed with their society. Whether it’s the superficiality … [ Read more ]

Author: Anne Applebaum | Source: Vox | Subjects: Politics & Public Policy, Sociology | Anthropology

The greatest fear in the world is of the opinions of others. And the moment you are unafraid of the crowd you are no longer a sheep, you become a lion. A great roar arises in your heart, the roar of freedom.

Author: Osho | Subjects: Insight, Personal Improvement, Sociology | Anthropology