Quotes About Society

Numerous cross-cultural studies have shown that modern society—despite its nearly miraculous advances in medicine, science, and technology—is afflicted with some of the highest rates of depression, schizophrenia, poor health, anxiety, and chronic loneliness in human history.

Whether… civilization has most promoted or most injured the general happiness of man is a question that may be strongly contested," he wrote in 1795. "[Both] the most affluent and the most miserable of the human race are to be found in the countries that are called civilized.

I know what coming back to America from a war zone is like because I've done it so many times. First there is a kind of shock at the level of comfort and affluence that we enjoy, but that is followed by the dismal realization that we live in a society that is basically at war with itself. People speak with incredible contempt about—depending on their views—the rich, the poor, the educated, the foreign-born, the president, or the entire US government.

Humans don't mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary. It's time for that to end.

The idea that we can enjoy the benefits of society while owing nothing in return is literally infantile. Only children owe nothing.

a surprising number of Americans—mostly men—wound up joining Indian society rather than staying in their own. They emulated Indians, married them, were adopted by them, and on some occasions even fought alongside them. And the opposite almost never happened: Indians almost never ran away to join white society. Emigration always seemed to go from the civilized to the tribal, and it left Western thinkers

Whether… civilization has most promoted or most injured the general happiness of man is a question that may be strongly contested," he wrote in 1795. "[Both] the most affluent and the most miserable of the human race are to be found in the countries that are called civilized." When

A modern soldier returning from combat—or a survivor of Sarajevo—goes from the kind of close-knit group that humans evolved for, back into a society where most people work outside the home, children are educated by strangers, families are isolated from wider communities, and personal gain almost completely eclipses collective good.

For all the temptations of native life, one of the most compelling might have been its fundamental egalitarianism. Personal property was usually limited to whatever could be transported by horse or on foot, so gross inequalities of wealth were difficult to accumulate. Successful hunters and warriors could support multiple wives, but unlike modern society, those advantages were generally not passed on through the generations.

We are not good to each other. Our tribalism is to an extremely narrow group of people: our children, our spouse, maybe our parents. Our society is alienating, technical, cold, and mystifying. Our fundamental desire, as human beings, is to be close to others, and our society does not allow for that." One

why Western society is so unappealing. On a material level it is clearly more comfortable and protected from the hardships of the natural world. But as societies become more affluent they tend to require more, rather than less, time and commitment by the individual, and it's possible that many people feel that affluence and safety simply aren't a good trade for freedom

author and ethicist Austin Dacey describes as a "shared public meaning" of the war. Shared public meaning gives soldiers a context for their losses and their sacrifice that is acknowledged by most of the society. That helps keep at bay the sense of futility and rage that can develop among soldiers during a war that doesn't seem to end. Such

As affluence and urbanization rise in a society, rates of depression and suicide tend to go up rather than down. Rather than buffering people from clinical depression, increased wealth in a society seems to foster

In the United States we valorize our vets with words and posters and signs, but we don't give them what's really important to Americans, what really sets you apart as someone who is valuable to society—we don't give them jobs. All the praise in the world doesn't mean anything if you're not recognized by society as someone who can contribute valuable labor." Anthropologists

The accumulation of personal property allowed people to make more and more individualistic choices about their lives, and those choices unavoidably diminished group efforts toward a common good.

How do you become an adult in a society that doesn't ask for sacrifice?

Bluntly put, modern society seems to emphasize extrinsic values over intrinsic ones, and as a result, mental health issues refuse to decline with growing wealth. The more assimilated a person is into American society, the more likely they are to develop depression during the course of their lifetime, regardless of what ethnicity they are.

As modern society reduced the role of community, it simultaneously elevated the role of authority.

Recent studies of something called "social resilience" have identified resource sharing and egalitarian wealth distribution as major components of a society's ability to recover from hardship.

And as society modernized, people found themselves able to live independently from any communal group. A person living in a modern city or a suburb can, for the first time in history, go through an entire day—or an entire life—mostly encountering complete strangers. They can be surrounded by others and yet feel deeply, dangerously alone.

As modern society reduced the role of community, it simultaneously elevated the role of authority. The two are uneasy companions, and as one goes up

humans have dragged a body with a long hominid history into an overfed, malnourished, sedentary, sunlight-deficient, sleep-deprived, competitive, inequitable, and socially-isolating environment with dire consequences." The

Vreme potrebno za "oporavak od posla" preduslov je za postojanje bilo kakve borbe. Radni?ka klasa ne može ni biti nosilac društvenih promena, ni raditi na regeneraciji sindikata ukoliko radništvo nema vremena da ?ita, razmišlja, prisustvuje sastancima, diskutuje, analizira, da radi na strategijama, da sanja i da deluje.

Everything in this life passes away — only God remains, only He is worth struggling towards. We have a choice: to follow the way of this world, of the society that surrounds us, and thereby find ourselves outside of God; or to choose the way of life, to choose God Who calls us and for Whom our heart is searching.