Quotes About Society

Today, the society called New Zealand is composed of 4.5 million Sapiens and 50 million sheep.

Patriarchy has been the norm in almost all agricultural and industrial societies. It has tenaciously weathered political upheavals, social revolutions and economic transformations.

Just try to imagine how difficult it would have been to create states, or churches, or legal systems if we could speak only about things that really exist, such as rivers, trees and lions.

Cómo se hace para que la gente crea en un orden imaginado como el cristianismo, la democracia o el capitalismo? En primer lugar, no admitiendo nunca que el orden es imaginado.

the rise of AI might eliminate the economic value and political power of most humans.

drivers and traffic police (since when rowdy humans are replaced by obedient algorithms, traffic police will be redundant). However, there might be some new openings for philosophers, because their skills—until now devoid of much market value—will suddenly be in very high demand. So if you want to study something that will guarantee a good job in the future, maybe philosophy is not such a bad gamble.

Over the last seventy years humankind has broken not only the Law of the Jungle, but also the Chekhov Law. Anton Chekhov famously said that a gun appearing in the first act of a play will inevitably be fired in the third. Throughout

Like the elite of ancient Egypt, most people in most cultures dedicate their lives to building pyramids. Only the names, shapes and sizes of these pyramids change from one culture to the other.

One new model gaining increasing attention is universal basic income.

The humanities and social sciences devote most of their energies to explaining exactly how the imagined order is woven into the tapestry of life. In the limited space at our disposal we can only scratch the surface. Three main factors prevent people from realising that the order organising their lives exists only in their imagination:

Al haber sido hasta hace muy poco uno de los desvalidos de la sabana, estamos llenos de miedos y ansiedades acerca de nuestra posición, lo que nos hace doblemente crueles y peligrosos.

The new Romanian elite that controls the country to this day is composed mostly of former communists and their families.

The secret was probably the appearance of fiction. Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths.

in many countries around the world biological poverty is a thing of the past.

Incluso Estados Unidos, ultracapitalista, se ha dado cuenta de que la protección de la libertad requiere al menos algunos servicios de bienestar facilitados por el gobierno. Los niños hambrientos no tienen libertades.

Christians and Muslims who could not agree on religious beliefs could nevertheless agree on a monetary belief, because whereas religion asks us to believe in something, money asks us to believe that other people believe in something. For

Humans will no longer be autonomous entities directed by the stories their narrating self invents. Instead, they will be integral parts of a huge global network.

los algoritmos pueden servir para la circulación de vehículos y la cura de enfermedades, pero cuando se trate de resolver problemas sociales, tendremos que seguir confiando en políticos y sacerdotes.

La hambruna, la peste y la guerra coparon siempre los primeros puestos de la lista. Generación tras generación, los seres humanos rezaron a todos los dioses, ángeles y santos, e inventaron innumerables utensilios, instituciones y sistemas sociales…, pero siguieron muriendo por millones a causa del hambre, las epidemias y la violencia.

A maior parte das redes de cooperação humana foi concebida para a opressão e a exploração.

Sin embargo, en las últimas décadas, la situación se ha invertido, y la visión de Bentham se ha tomado mucho más en serio. Cada vez más gente cree que los inmensos sistemas establecidos hace más de un siglo para fortalecer la nación deberían en verdad estar al servicio de la felicidad y el bienestar de los ciudadanos. No estamos aquí para servir al Estado: él está aquí para servirnos.

Under liberalism, went a famous quip, everyone is free to starve.

Any large-scale human cooperation – whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe – is rooted in common myths that exist only in people's collective imagination. Churches are rooted in common religious myths.

Yuval Noah Harari