Quotes About Collectivities

A city is a kind of pattern-amplifying machine: its neighborhoods are a way of measuring and expressing the repeated behavior of larger collectivities—capturing information about group behavior, and sharing that information with the group.

No man was more sensitive than Zweig to the destructive effects upon individual liberty of the demands of large or strident collectivities. He would have viewed with horror the cacophony of monomanias—sexual, racial, social, egalitarian—that marks the intellectual life of our societies, each monomaniac demanding legislative restriction on the freedom of others in the name of a supposed greater, collective good.

Il mondo può progredire e in effetti progredisce per effetto di azioni umane positive, per effetto dell'impegno, per effetto della non-indifferenza. Il principio vale per le azioni globali e per le azioni locali e noi dobbiamo tenerne conto. [...] Io sono convinto che la storia si muova verso il progresso e che rispetto a questo progresso l'azione consapevole degli individui e delle collettività sia fondamentale, e dunque doverosa.

structural variables, namely (a) class circumstances, (b) age, gender, and race/ethnicity, (c) collectivities, and (d) living conditions, provide the social context for (2) socialization and experience that influence (3) life choices (agency).