"If people want to compete for leadership of a religious group, they can compete in piety. A chilling thought. Or funny."

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More quotes from: Mary Douglas

• "An escalating, violent tit-for-tat may lead to terrorism. "
• "Any great organization can go through sectarian phases. "
• "As to the staff, if they put up with never having a chance to criticise ..."
• "Behind a leader there must be followers, but they should always be on the lookout ..."
• "Enclave life becomes very tense, Even when they do elect a leader, the factions remain, ..."
• "Every year the progress of advanced capitalist society makes our population consist of more and ..."
• "Hierarchy has a lateral organisation as well as the up-down one. It has multiple peaks, ..."
• "Hierarchy is is much reviled in the present day. "
• "Hierarchy works well in a stable environment. "
• "I am convinced that living in an enclave shapes the personality, and living alone shapes ..."
• "I am impressed by a study of the Church of God, a Caribbean Pentecostal sect ..."
• "I am not sure about a future in which the organized religions clash with each ..."
• "I am not sure I believe in an unacculturated personality. "
• "I am saying this to be fair; at heart, I like hierarchy best. It would ..."
• "I am sure I do believe in real injustice. But I also believe that each ..."
• "I am sure it must be true that people opt out of the mainstream society ..."
• "I believe that violent attack just strengthens commitment, it is just what the enclave needs ..."
• "I certainly don't assume that the coherence is successfully achieved, ever! "
• "I do think that the spiritually unorganised will be attracted by what Stewart Brand called ..."
• "I grew up in a prominant Jewish family that, for the most part, did not ..."
• "I have increasingly, over the years, felt that religion today does our civilization more harm ..."
• "I have lately with some others been discussing cults, and their consequences when they arrive ..."
• "I predict that our grandchildren will be joining enclaves in search of a meaningful life, ..."
• "If people are just pawns of their structures, they can't be held accountable. So it ..."
• "If we flatten them with guns or missiles we inflame their rage and give more ..."
• "If you want a real culture to contrast with individualism, you need to compare them ..."
• "If you want to change the culture, you will have to start by changing the ..."
• "If, instead of hating enclaves and fundamentalists, we have to ask ourselves why they hate ..."
• "In Iraq, culture has been squashed out. That is the trouble. No trust, no judicial ..."

• "In the English midlands there is a huge population of Moslems, poor and unemployed, who ..."
• "In the States you had such a huge outcrop of small communes and enclaves of ..."
• "Individualism is rational, pragmatic, and thinks up to the mid-term. It recruits its supporters by ..."
• "Individualism produces leaders, relies on them and gives them a lot of responsibility, but because ..."
• "Inequality can have a bad downside, but equality, for its part, sure does get in ..."
• "Inside a religious body you get sects and hierarchies, inside an information network you get ..."
• "Islam is in principle egalitarian, and has always had problems with power. "
• "It is a serious mistake to imagine that Saddam Hussein is a hierarchist. He is ..."
• "It is always a great excitement to discover something important about how a sacred book ..."
• "It is only partly true that religion does more harm than good in society. The ..."
• "It is very reasonable to worry about the harm done by organized religion, and to ..."
• "It seems true that the growth of science and secularism made organized Christianity feel under ..."
• "It would be nice to think we are trading a duller world for a more ..."
• "It's unlikely that the organized religions will get more sectarian... or is it? I am ..."
• "Just in our lifetime our society has become looser and more private, it becomes extremely ..."
• "Market principles are very competitive. There are more losers than winners, and the losers are ..."
• "Mormons... are so strong, they can handle wealth, they are confident. I think it is ..."
• "Most of the sects and fundamentalist groups originate in protests against an organized religion, which ..."
• "One day the isolates will be tempted to join a sect that puts their sense ..."
• "One way to unite the factions is to provoke attack from outside. Then all the ..."
• "Our technological infrastructure alienates us from each other. No need to form a workplace community, ..."
• "People mostly think of worldview or culture as existing independently, nothing to do with problems ..."
• "Pretensions to moral superiority are devastatingly destructive. "
• "Real equality is immensely difficult to achieve, it needs continual revision and monitoring of distributions. ..."
• "Religion can make it worse. Are you supposing that if people were encouraged to believe ..."
• "Religion for our species was a necessary and useful practice as we grew more aware ..."
• "Since 1970, relationships can be more volatile, jobs more ephemeral, geographical mobility more intensified, stability ..."
• "Smiles and other supportive signals just look hypocritical if they don't fit the organization. "

• "So many reasons for being angry or unhappy, no wonder the enclaves have got recruits ..."
• "Some people withdraw to live apart from others, by their own choice. Generally these isolates ..."
• "Some scholars have been arguing that a civilizational clash between organized religions is the next ..."
• "Some starry-eyed sociologists really think that other people are easy to get on with. "
• "Striking a blow for justice is close to heroic suicide. But some young people feel ..."
• "The Benedictine rule is supposed to keep the monks firmly apart. The rules of where ..."
• "The Catholic Church is essentially hierarchical in its structure. "
• "The culture that produces strong leaders is one of individualists who are entrepreneurial at every ..."
• "The enclave strategy is to push the conflict to the border between insiders and outsiders. ..."
• "The enclaves don't mind losing the pageantry of the grand calendrical rituals, losing the colour, ..."
• "The future of religions is more likely to be unorganised, people just failing to be ..."
• "The hierarchical buffers that stop one person from walking on another's toes are gone. Each ..."
• "The hierarchists are completely without good standing, no one has a good word to say ..."
• "The hierarchy only works if there is a lot of trust, but it makes trust ..."
• "The history of the Church of Rome is a constant leakage of members into such ..."
• "The horizon! Whither does an 80-year-old anthropologist plan to go in the future? The ideas ..."
• "The Mosaic dietary laws are for the people of Israel, not for everyone. "
• "The natural response of the old-timers is to build a strong moral wall against the ..."
• "The rule of holding goods in common... The Amish instituted this rule, which really barred ..."
• "The theory of cultural bias... is the idea that a culture is based on a ..."
• "There are mountains of books on terrorism just now, because we are all so worried ..."
• "We ought to be able to learn from the past histories of enclaves, to discover ..."
• "What did our nation ever do to provoke these madly vicious enemies? What is seen ..."
• "When community flies out of the window it leaves a population of isolated individuals. Boredom ..."
• "When we are reflecting on terrorism we can grieve for many things we do and ..."
• "Why is terrorism so much more in evidence now than before? The kind of society ..."
• "Without that assured American largesse Israel would have been obliged to come to an accommodation ..."
• "Yes, disappointment over perceived unfairness, injustice, promises not kept, tends to go hand in hand ..."