Great Societies Quotes & Sayings

The word corruption does not arouse the moral revulsion that it should. We think of it as more a nuisance than a great evil. But corruption kills societies every bit as much as murder kills an individual. Moreover there is no hope for any society in which corruption is endemic. One final thought: Here in Cameroon, as elsewhere in Africa, the knowledgeable guides who lead tours of the slave centers note that Africans were deeply involved in the slave trade, and that without them, the slave trade could not have existed. If only this fact were taught as readily in American universities as it is here in Africa - not in order to minimize white complicity, but because universities should teach truth. Flawed human nature has no color. — Dennis Prager

A young man is the perfect soldier. He has great potential for aggression and a limited critical capacity - or none at all - with which to analyze it and judge how to channel it. Throughout history societies have found ways of using this store of aggression, turning their adolescents into soldiers, cannon fodder with which to conquer their neighbors or defend themselves against their aggressors. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The novel had reached its apogee with the marriage plot and had never recovered from its disappearance. In the days when success in life had depended on marriage, and marriage had depended on money, novelists had had a subject to write about. The great epics sang of war, the novel of marriage. Sexual equality, good for women, had been bad for the novel. And divorce had undone it completely. What would it matter whom Emma married if she could file for separation later? How would Isabel Archer's marriage to Gilbert Osmond have been affected by the existence of a prenup? As far as Saunders was concerned, marriage didn't mean much anymore, and neither did the novel. Where could you find the marriage plot nowadays? You couldn't. You had to read historical fiction. You had to read non-Western novels involving traditional societies. Afghani novels, Indian novels. You had to go, literarily speaking, back in time. — Jeffrey Eugenides

It is perfectly possible that a grandfather can have a more scientific mind than his grandchildren! Societies do not always go forward! Sometimes old generations are much luckier! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

For every Aruna story we hear there are hundreds of thousands that will never be heard, swept under the great rug of shame societies have so eloquently woven. It is up to us to speak up, to lift this heavy rug and reveal the ugliness it conceals. — Aysha Taryam

Imbalance of reason and emotion may explain the tenacity of religion in societies: world religions are optimized to tap into the emotional networks, and great arguments of reason amount to little against such magnetic pull. — David Eagleman

Rebellion against technology and civilization is real rebellion, a real attack on the values of the existing system. But the green anarchists, anarcho-primitivists, and so forth (The "GA Movement") have fallen under such heavy influence from the left that their rebellion against civilization has to great extent been neutralized. Instead of rebelling against the values of civilization, they have adopted many civilized values themselves and have constructed an imaginary picture of primitive societies that embodies these civilized values. — Theodore Kaczynski

At the Foley Center for the Study of Lives at Northwestern University, McAdams studies the stories that people tell about themselves. We all write our life stories as if we were novelists, McAdams believes, with beginnings, conflicts, turning points, and endings. And the way we characterize our past setbacks profoundly influences how satisfied we are with our current lives. Unhappy people tend to see setbacks as contaminants that ruined an otherwise good thing ("I was never the same again after my wife left me"), while generative adults see them as blessings in disguise ("The divorce was the most painful thing that ever happened to me, but I'm so much happier with my new wife"). Those who live the most fully realized lives - giving back to their families, societies, and ultimately themselves - tend to find meaning in their obstacles. In a sense, McAdams has breathed new life into one of the great insights of Western mythology: that where we stumble is where our treasure lies. — Susan Cain

It's important to debunk the myths of Africa being this benighted continent civilized only when white people arrived. In fact, Africans had been creators of culture for thousands of years before. These were very intelligent, subtle and sophisticated people, with organized societies and great art. — Henry Louis Gates

Love is the beauty and the strength of all societies and the great pleasure of our lives on earth. — John Bunyan

In Jefferson's mind great historical leaps forward were almost always the product of a purging, which freed societies from the accumulated debris of the past and thereby allowed the previously obstructed natural forces to flow forward into the future. Simplicity and austerity, not equality or individualism, were the messages of his inaugural march. It was a minimalist statement about a purging of excess and a recovery of essence. — Joseph J. Ellis

Although failure is a great teacher, we cannot afford the time to learn from our failures. Human societies cannot be subjected to such a process. — Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum

When we over consume the Earth's resources, we create an economic imbalance in societies and in the world. Affluent people and affluent societies can afford to buy everything in large quantities. They have an abundance of wealth and think they have the license to waste. They use a great deal and leave others with very little. It is this imbalance between rich and poor that gives rise to crime, violence, prejudice, and other negative attitudes.

When some people cannot get what they need through honest hard work, and see others wasting what is so precious, they feel justified in taking it by force. The Earth can only produce enough for everyone's need, but not for everyone's greed. Our greed and wasteful habits perpetuate poverty, which is violence against humanity. — Arun Gandhi

In a world of democracies, in a world where the great projects that have set humanity on fire are the projects of the emancipation of individuals from entrenched social division and hierarchy; in such a world individuals must never be puppets or prisoners of the societies or cultures into which they have been born. — Roberto Unger

Sacrifice, which is the passion of great souls, has never been the law of societies. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Perhaps when I first arrived on this world so long ago I may have known more. Now, though, I do not have knowledge of as much as I used to. The years, many of them, have changed this world and the great societies flourish with change. Although I feel nothing but pride for this, I am saddened as well. For as the changes occur my knowledge of this world dwindles. As such, I seek to learn, to regain that which I have lost. Do you now understand?" ~ except from "Raging Land", book 2 of 3 in the "Patrons of Earth" Trilogy by A. N. Jones (quote is subject to change) — A.N. Jones

From earliest times, water has always been acknowledged as a primary human good and an indispensable natural resource. Around the great rivers of the world, like the Mississippi, great cultures have developed, while over the course of the centuries the prosperity of countless societies has been linked to these waterways. Today, however, the great fluvial systems of every continent are exposed to serious threats, often as a result of man's activity and decisions. — Pope Benedict XVI

In Jump Time's developing hybrid world, capacities once nurtured in separate societies are available to the entire family of humankind. This is a stupendous happening, as important as the discovery of new continents during the time of the great sea journeys. For the first time in human history the genius of the human race is available for all to harvest. These rediscovered capacities may be evolutionary accelerators, now being gathered from many places, times, and cultures to awaken our species to who we are and what we yet may be and do. Often, however, it is not comfortable. We can for a time find ourselves strangers in a very strange land, wishing we could return to the comforts of a more insular and familiar worldview. Yet when we get beyond the shutterings of our local cultural trance, we gain the courage to nurture the emerging forms of the possible human and the possible society. — Jean Houston

It's disheartening that animal people criticize societies that enlist the help of actors or organize creative acts like 'I'd rather go naked than wear fur,' to increase public awareness to our cause. These are great/courageous ideas which time has come! Liberation of animals is REVOLUTION - not elegant performance/ intellectual competition. We should do most anything to advance the animal rights cause. All the bickering may make the one step forward ... TWO STEPS BACKWARD??? — Adela Popescu

Of course great hotels have always been social ideas, flawless mirrors to the particular societies they service. — Joan Didion

Because the great beauty of embryo development, the bit that human beings find so hard to grasp, is that it is a totally decentralised process ... no cell need wait for instructions from authority; every cell can act on its own information and the signals it receives from its neighbours. We do not organise societies that way ... Perhaps we should try. — Matt Ridley

If you read Herodotus, the first Greek historian 2,500 years ago, he was talking about that - about people mixing with other people. Sometimes it produces great societies. Sometimes it triggers war. But, we're not going to change that. I don't think so. We're living in nations that are state nations and countries. — Philippe Falardeau

To use Freud's famous phrase, the civilized are, therefore, the discontent. We do not become losers in civilization but become civilized losers. The collective result of this ineradicable sense of failure is that civilizations take on the spirit of resentment. Acutely sensitive to an imagined audience, they are easily offended by other civilizations. Indeed, even the most powerful societies can be embarrassed by the weakest: the Soviet Union by Afghanistan, Great Britain by Argentina, the United States by Grenada. — James P. Carse

When God brought the first man his spouse, he brought him not just a lover but the friend his heart had been seeking. Proverbs 2:17 speaks of one's spouse as your "'allup," a unique word that the lexicons define as your "special confidant" or "best friend." In an age where women were often seen as the husband's property, and marriages were mainly business deals and transactions seeking to increase the family's social status and security, it was startling for the Bible to describe a spouse in this way. But in today's society, with its emphasis on romance and sex, it is just as radical to insist that your spouse should be your best friend, though for a different reason. In tribal societies, romance doesn't matter as much as social status, and in individualistic Western societies, romance and great sex matter far more than anything else. The Bible, however, without ignoring the importance of romance, puts great emphasis on marriage as companionship. — Timothy Keller

Tradition matters because it is not given to societies to proceed through history as if they had no past and as if every course of action were available to them. they may deviate from the previous trajectory only within a finite margin. the great statesmen act at the outer limit of that margin. if they fall short, society stagnates. if they exceed it, they lose the capacity to shape posterity. — Henry Kissinger

After all, we know that the foraging societies in which human beings evolved were small-scale, highly egalitarian groups who shared almost everything. There is a remarkable consistency to how immediate return foragers live - wherever they are.* The !Kung San of Botswana have a great deal in common with Aboriginal people living in outback Australia and tribes in remote pockets of the Amazon rainforest. Anthropologists have demonstrated time and again that immediate-return hunter-gatherer societies are nearly universal in their fierce egalitarianism. Sharing is not just encouraged; it's mandatory. Hoarding or hiding food, for example, is considered deeply shameful, almost unforgivable behavior in these societies. — Christopher Ryan

I believe in all human societies there is a desire to love and be loved, to experience the full fierceness of human emotion, and to make a measure of the sacred part of one's life. Wherever I've traveled
Kenya, Chile, Australia, Japan
I've found the most dependable way to preserve these possibilities is to be reminded of them in stories. Stories do not give instruction, they do not explain how to love a companion or how to find God. They offer, instead, patterns of sound and association, of event and image. Suspended as listeners and readers in these patterns,we might reimagine our lives. It is through story that we embrace the great breadth of memory, that we can distinguish what is true, and that we may glimpse, at least occasionally, how to live without despair in the midst of the horror that dogs and unhinges us. — Barry Lopez

The supposed great misery of our century is the lack of time; our sense of that, not a disinterested love of science, and certainly not wisdom, is why we devote such a huge proportion of the ingenuity and income of our societies to finding faster ways of doing things - as if the final aim of mankind was to grow closer not to a perfect humanity, but to a perfect lightning-flash. — John Fowles

Societies need heroes. So we travel to places where the revisionists cannot dismantle the great. — David Gemmell

This posture of skepticism towards the classics displays a profound misjudg- ment. For the great works of Western culture are remarkable for the dis- tance that they maintained from the norms and orthodoxies that gave birth to them. Only a very shallow reading of Chaucer or Shakespeare would see those writers as endorsing the societies in which they lived, or would over- look the far more important fact that their works hold mankind to the light of moral judgment, and examine, with all the love and all the pity that it calls for, the frailty of human nature. It is precisely the aspiration towards universal truth, towards a God's-eye perspective on the human condition, that is the hallmark of Western culture. — Theodore Dalrymple

Humans are remarkable: the first species in almost four billion years of life on earth that dominates the biosphere. This gives us the power, in principle, to build societies in which everyone flourishes. But it also creates great dangers because it is not clear that we really understand how to use our potentially devastating powers. — David Christian

Casually, unconsciously, but with deadly effectiveness, western man all round the globe destroyed the traditional gods and the ancient societies with his commerce and his science ... Does it mean nothing to him if great areas of the world, where western influence has been predominant, emerge from this tutelage unable to return to the old life, yet unfitted for the new? It is hard to believe that the future could ever belong to men demonstrating irresponsibility on so vast a scale. — Barbara Ward, Baroness Jackson Of Lodsworth

The problems we have now in communities and societies are going to be resolved only when we are brought together by a common sense that each of us is a visionary. Each of us must come to the realization that we can function and live at the level of vision rather than following some great leader's vision. Instead of looking for a great leader, we are in an era where each of us needs to find the great leader in ourselves. — Werner Erhard

It explains the great quandary of why the most depressed societies are those with the fewest wants. — Hugh Howey

If we want to sum up the theory of evolution by natural selection in two words, which have great relevance for all societies and businesses, we should simply remember: diversity works. — Richard Koch

The link between literacy and revolutions is a well-known historical phenomenon. The three great revolutions of modern European history
the English, the French and the Russian
all took place in societies where the rate of literacy was approaching 50 per cent. Literacy had a profound effect on the peasant mind and community. It promotes abstract thought and enables the peasant to master new skills and technologies, Which in turn helps him to accept the concept of progress that fuels change in the modern world. — Orlando Figes

The finest SF comes to grips with life's mysteries, with our resentments against our own natures and our limited societies. It does so by asking basic questions in the artful, liberating way that is unique to this form of writing. Echoes of it are found in other forms of fiction - in the novel of ideas, in the historical novel, in the writings of the great philosophers and scientists; but the best SF does this all more searchingly, by taking what is in most people only a moment of wonder and rebellion against the arbitrariness of existence and making of it an art enriched by knowledge and possibility, expressing our deepest human longing to penetrate into the dark heart of the unknown. — George Zebrowski

It is important to distinguish between the power of the Internet to make the great change it can, and the limits and vulnerabilities of that change without real-time political mobilization deployed globally to protect those who venture out, especially in closed societies, into the heady new vistas it offers. — Naomi Wolf

I never really have believed in the existence of friendship in big societies - in great towns and great crowds. It's a plant that takes time and space and air; and London society is a huge "squash", as we elegantly call it - an elbowing, pushing, perspiring, chattering mob. — Henry James

We see frequently societies of merchants in London, and other trading towns, purchase waste lands in our sugar colonies, which they expect to improve and cultivate with profit, by means of factors and agents, notwithstanding the great distance and the uncertain returns, from the defective administration of justice in those countries. — Adam Smith

William Wilberforce ... w as a great man who impacted the Western world as few others have done. Blessed with brains, charm, influence and initiative, much wealth ... he put evangelism on Britain's map as a power for social change, first by overthrowing the slave trade almost single-handed and then by generating a stream of societies for doing good and reducing evil in public life ... To forget such men is foolish. — J.I. Packer

Without world unification the species would destroy itself by the enlarged powers that had come to it. This, said the men of science, is no theory, no political alternative; it is a statement of fact. Men had to pool their political, economic and educational lives. There was no other way for them but a series of degenerative phases leading very plainly to extinction. They could not revert now. They had to go on - up or down. They had gone too far with civilisation and in societies, to sink back into a merely "animal" life again. The hold of the primates on life had always been a precarious one. Except where they were under human protection all the other great apes were extinct. Now plainly man had to go on to a larger life, a planetary existence, or perish in his turn. — H.G.Wells

Gradually the idea for a book began to take shape. It was to be a wildly ambitious and intolerant work, a kind of 'Anatomy of Restlessness' that would enlarge on Pascal's dictum about the man sitting quietly in a room. The argument, roughly, was as follows: that in becoming human, man had acquired, together with his straight legs and striding walk, a migratory 'drive' or instinct to walk long distances through the seasons; that this 'drive' was inseparable from his central nervous system; and, that, when warped in conditions of settlement, it found outlets in violence, greed, status-seeking or a mania for the new. This would explain why mobile societies such as the gypsies were egalitarian, thing-free and resistant to change; also why, to re-establish the harmony of the First State, all the great teachers - Buddha, Lao-tse, St Francis - had set the perpetual pilgrimage at the heart of their message and told their disciples, literally, to follow The Way. — Bruce Chatwin

The greatest historical events in the twentieth century - in fact, in all of human history - have been the overthrow of capitalism and establishment of societies run by and for the working class in the two great communist revolutions in Russia and China. — Grover Furr

It is one of history's great ironies that capitalists built decent and humane societies on the basis of an amoral approach to the economics of pricing, whereas socialists built exploitative and inhumane societies on the basis of a morally inflamed approach to economics. — Kevin D. Williamson

I suppose the half-breeds in Manitoba, in 1870, did not fight for two hundred forty acres of land, but it is to be understood there were two societies who treated together. One was small, but in its smallness it had its rights. The other was great, but in its greatness it had no greater rights than the rights of the small, because the right is the same for everyone. — Louis Riel

For nearly a century, the moral relativism of science has given faith-based religion
that great engine of ignorance and bigotry
a nearly uncontested claim to being the only universal framework for moral wisdom. As a result, the most powerful societies on early spend their time debating issues like gay marriage when they should be focused on problems like nuclear proliferation, genocide, energy security, climate change, poverty, and failing schools. — Sam Harris

There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories. — Ursula K. Le Guin

There was great political uncertainty in South Asia at the time of the Buddha. The older small tribal societies were cracking up and gave way to bigger states. There was much more trade and travel going on than before. To people in the cities the experience of living in a small place where you knew everyone and governed your affairs by consensual democracy had been lost. — Pankaj Mishra

Societies exist under three forms sufficiently distinguishable. 1. Without government, as among our Indians. 2. Under governments wherein the will of every one has a just influence, as is the case in England in a slight degree, and in our states, in a great one. 3. Under governments of force: as is the case in all other monarchies and in most of the other republics. To have an idea of the curse of existence under these last, they must be seen. It is a government of wolves over sheep. — Thomas Jefferson

Homosexuality is the most beautiful aspect of humanity. For its existence is proof that altruism is natural; it is to demonstrate that the theory of the "survival of the fittest" can only apply to the species as a whole, and that reproduction is insufficient to secure our place in the great jungle of life, which means being nice is a more stable evolutionary strategy than making kids; and if the homosexual is attracted to religion or to art - or, in smaller societies, to shamanism or caring for other people's children - is this not due to his or her search for purpose? If so, then what we call purpose must be something that encompasses all modes of life. What we call love must be greater than child rearing or caring for a mate. — Anthony Marais

Homer, Hesiod, Pythagoras, Plato, and Cicero, just to name a few, all lived in pagan societies. Some of the greatest political and military leaders of all time, such as Alexander the Great, Pericles of Athens, Hannibal of Carthage, and Julius Caesar of Rome, were all pagans, or else living in a pagan society. — Brendan Myers

"War," says Machiavelli, "ought to be the only study of a prince;" and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. "He ought," says this great political doctor, "to consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute military plans. "A meditation on the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature. — Edmund Burke

Great works of art can be produced in barbarous societies in fact the very narrowness of primitive society gives their ornamental art a peculiar concentration and vitality. At some time in the ninth century one could have looked down the Seine and seen the prow of a Viking ship coming up the river. Looked at today in the British Museum, it is a powerful work of art; but to the mother of a family trying to settle down in her little hut, it would have seemed less agreeable as menacing to her civilisation as the periscope of a nuclear submarine. — Kenneth Clark

Democracy represents the disbelief in all great men and in all elite societies: everybody is everybody's equal. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Humility is the great preserver of peace and order in all Christian churches and societies, consequently pride is the great disturber of them, and the cause of most dissensions and breaches in the church. — Matthew Henry

It is a quite remarkable fact that the great religions of the most civilized peoples are more deeply fraught with sadness than the simpler beliefs of earlier societies. This certainly does not mean that the current of pessimism is eventually to submerge the other, but it proves that it does not lose ground and that it does not seem destined to disappear. — Emile Durkheim

America is a great disappointment to me. As I said in one of my books, other societies create civilisations; we build shopping malls. — Bill Bryson

To play with baubles is our ambition, not to deal with grave questions in a spirit of serious energy. But while we are playing with baubles, with our Legislative Councils, our Simultaneous Examinations, our ingenious schemes for separating the judicial from the executive functions, while we, I say, are finessing about trifles, the waters of the great deep are being stirred and that surging chaos of the primitive man over which our civilised societies are superimposed on a thin crust of convention, is being strangely and ominously agitated. — Sri Aurobindo

The main goal is to increase diversity. The one thing that is bad for society is low diversity. This is true for culture or evolution, for species and also for whole societies. If you become a monoculture, you are at great risk of perishing. — George M. Church

The things we love individually not only determine our character, but what a society loves collectively shapes its culture. This latter idea was the heart of Augustine's great work City of God. He believed societies are the mutual associations of individuals united by what they love in common. — Timothy J. Keller

The original of all great and lasting societies consisted not in the mutual good will men had toward each other, but in the mutual fear they had of each other. — Thomas Hobbes

The great cause which divides our countries is not to be decided by individual animosities. The harmony of private societies cannot weaken national efforts. — Thomas Jefferson

Few societies have come to grips with the new demography. We cling to the notion of retirement at sixty-five - a reasonable notion when those over sixty-five were a tiny percentage of the population but increasingly untenable as they approach 20 percent. People are putting aside less in savings for old age now than they have at any time since the Great Depression. More than half of the very old now live without a spouse and we have fewer children than ever before, yet we give virtually no thought to how we will live out our later years alone. — Atul Gawande

Now Europe are experiencing a wave of eroding solidarity, first of certain societies and then entire governments. At the same time, we have two giant new challenges to meet: the migration movement and terror. And then Great Britain is thinking about leaving the EU. That should suffice as a description. — Martin Schulz

It is useless to deny, and impossible to conceal, that a great part of Europe, the whole of Italy and France, and a great portion of Germany, to say nothing of other countries - is covered with a network of these secret societies, just as the superfices of the Earth are being covered with railroads. — Benjamin Disraeli

To Muslims, I repeat that Islam is a great and noble religion but that all Muslims and Muslim majority societies did not in the past and do not now live up to this nobleness: critical reflection is required about faithfulness to our principles, our outlook on others, on cultures, freedom, the situation of women, and so on. Our contradictions and ambiguities are countless. To Westerners, I similarly repeat that the undeniable achievements of freedom and democracy should not make us forget murderous "civilizing missions," colonization, the destructive economic order, racism, discrimination, acquiescent relations with the worst dictatorships, and other failings. Our contradictions and ambiguities are countless. I am equally demanding and rigorous with both universes. — Tariq Ramadan

A lifetime spent in the study of the history of societies since the dawn of mankind presumably inclined him to skepticism and misgivings in regard to any great scheme, religious or political, that set out to create universal happiness in one fell swoop; what it was more likely to create, in his opinion, was universal misery; and his faith in heaven-sent saviors was hardly greater. — Francois Maspero

It will be said that great societies cannot exist without government. — Thomas Jefferson

I have looked warily at anthropologists ever since the day when I went to hear a great Greek scholar lecture on the Iliad, and listened for an hour to talk about bull-roarers and leopard-societies. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

Civilized people can talk about anything. For them no subject is taboo ... In civilized societies there will be no intellectual bogeys at sight of which great grownup babies are expected to hide their eyes. — Clive Bell

Feudal societies don't create great cinema; we have great theatre. The egalitarian societies create great cinema. The Americans, the French. Because equality is sort of what the cinema deals with. It deals with stories which don't fall into 'Everybody in their place and who's who,' and all that. But the theatre's full of that. — Brian Cox

The onus is on us to determine whether free societies in the twenty-first century will conduct electronic communication under the conditions of freedom established for the domain of print through centuries of struggle, or whether that great achievement will become lost in a confusion of new technologies. — Ithiel De Sola Pool

The Islamic teachings have left great traditions for equitable and gentle dealings and behavior, and inspire people with nobility and tolerance. These are human teachings of the highest order and at the same time practicable. These teachings brought into existence a society in which hard-heartedness and collective oppression and injustice were the least as compared with all other societies preceding it ... Islam is replete with gentleness, courtesy, and fraternity. — H.G.Wells

For a patrimonial state to be stable over time, it is best ruled with consent, at least with consent from the largest minority, if not from the majority. Instinctive obedience must be the norm, otherwise too much effort needs to be put into suppressing disaffection for the regime's wider aims to be achievable. Consent is, however, not always easy to obtain. The collective view of most societies is rather conservative: in the main people prefer to see the social arrangements of their youth perpetuated into their old age; they prefer that things be done in the time-honoured way; they are suspicious of novelty and resistant to change. Thus when radical action must be taken, for whatever reason, a great burden falls on the ruler, the father-figure, who has to overcome this social inertia and persuade his subjects to follow his lead. In order that his will shall prevail, he needs to generate huge respect, preferably adulation, and if at all possible sheer awe among his people. — Paul Kriwaczek

Teachers still command great respect in the families and societies of many Asian cultures. — Andy Hargreaves

Finally there is the topic we talked about earlier, which is of great interest to me at the moment, the relationship between biology and culture. I've been reading the work of the late philosopher and theologian Claude Tresmontant. Tresmontant was a Christian, but his books interest me for what they have to say about genetic programming. He situates Christianity at the point of transition between genetic programming - dominant in archaic societies with regard to territorial defense, sexual and hoarding instincts, and so forth - and a new kind of evolutionary programming contained in culture rather than in genes. The argument is suggestive, but it needs to be developed further. Tresmontant doesn't take into account archaic religion, which he conflates with genetic programming in animals. Room has to be made for one more stage. MSB — Rene Girard