"Inside a religious body you get sects and hierarchies, inside an information network you get bazaars and cathedrals, it is the same, call them what you like. They survive by pointing the finger of blame at each other."

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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 people want to compete for leadership of a religious group, they can compete in ..."
• "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 ..."
• "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. "
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• "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 ..."
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• "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 ..."
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• "There are mountains of books on terrorism just now, because we are all so worried ..."
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• "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 ..."