With the emergence of literacy as part of human cultural evolution, new kinds of relations and activities formed that have created structures of participation in larger and more distant organizations, relying on accumulating knowledge and mediated through genre-shaped texts. It is for these activity contexts that individuals must produce texts, mobilizing the resources of language, and it is within these contexts that the texts will have their effect.

This second, companion volume to A Rhetoric of Literate Action supplies the theoretical understanding of what written language is and does which underlies that volume’s practical advice. But far from being a mere appendix, this survey of psycho-social theories of media and culture serves well as a compelling introduction to the theory of language in general and its place in society.

This article addresses an issue of growing political importance: the global rise of civilizational populism. From Western Europe to India and Pakistan, and from Indonesia to the Americas, populists are increasingly linking social belonging with civilizational identity—and at times to the belief that the world is divided into religion-based civilizations, some of which are doomed to clash with one another.

Another interesting source of ‘slavery’ in Buddhist temples in historic Sri Lanka was donating oneself voluntarily as a slave to gain merit attached to the deed…

Temples in medieval Sri Lanka had a range of laborers from volunteers to serfs to prisoners of war who laborered under conditions that ranged from the purely symbolic to the truly harsh.

Conflating religious practice with ethnic culture is considered to carry the risk of breeding “splittism” – especially in Tibet and Xinjiang. While in the post-Mao era the outright hostility against religion has given way to a religious revival, keeping religion and politics separate has remained a major concern for the Chinese Communist Party. Religion is supposed to be a private matter that does not interfere with politics. Against this backdrop, a recent phenomenon in the Tibet Autonomous Region is all the more remarkable: the (re-)fusion of ethnicity and religion under the label of cultural heritage and its protection.

I argue that endorsing religion as an attribute of Tibetan heritage corresponds to the concept of defining public spaces and events in which religious practice is legitimate and expected. Simultaneously, religious practices outside these dedicated spaces and events become even more problematic, leading to everyday Buddhist practices, such as circumambulation, being seen as (and performed as) political acts.

Many rural crime sprees punctuated the last two decades of King Chulalongkorn’s reign, but one of the worst broke out in early 1903. A violent gang of robbers repeatedly made off with herds of water buffaloes, consistently eluding the newly established provincial police force…

The interrogation of this group of robbers yielded such a wealth of information about bandit practices that Damrong concluded that it ought to be written down and distributed to the kingdom’s administrators so that they would be better informed in dealing with rural crime.

A Thai prince’s manual on how crime worked in rural Thailand, written in an elevated question-and-answer style no doubt inspired by the Theravāda exegetical tradition.

Bruges in the 15th century was the hub of international trade, and people came from all over the world wanting to get rich, including the Arnolfinis

The fifth Dalai Lama was figured as the state’s absolute ruler on the basis of a power in excess of his own person. In technical terms, he was the latest in a rebirth line of Avalokiteśvara, here assuming the novel identity of a “renunciate king” or vow-bound sovereign.

In the first part of his two-part study, Ian MacCormack examines the theological foundations of the Dalai Lama’s divine kingship as articulated by the Desi Sangyé Gyatso (1653–1705), the 5th Dalai Lama’s regent. This nuanced depiction underscores the complex interplay between ultimate truth and conventional reality in Tibetan political theology.

Part two of this study can be found here

The data presented here seems to support the theory that first generation migrants generally occupy the lower strata of the community while second generation migrants find the opportunity to move up the social scale.

Behind this marriage of the court and Buddhism, however, were the outstanding Buddhist monks who offered the ideology for it.

Utilizing Norbert Elias’s figurational sociology, this article analyses how postcolonial states have built a national habitus that plays a decisive role in the politicization of religion. It focuses on examples from Islam and Buddhism and discusses how hegemonic types of politicised religions have negative impacts on democracy.

The political problem to which the social contract must be able to provide a solution is the following: to imagine a form of association that protects the person, the goods, and the privacy of each partner, and promotes conviviality and justice conceived as the sharing of nourishment.

A gray hoodie will not protect my son…

the abandoned factories
there has lately been so much conversation about
through broken windows they stare
asking for us to decide…

In a large cross-national statistical study of risk factors for democratic erosion, we establish that economic inequality is one of the strongest predictors of where and when democracy erodes.

… integration rather than segregation is the typical outcome. However, the tendency toward adaptation and integration can be impeded when economic frictions in the form of income inequality and housing cost are present.

We argue that the study of collective behavior must rise to a “crisis discipline” just as medicine, conservation, and climate science have, with a focus on providing actionable insight to policymakers and regulators for the stewardship of social systems.

super rich people people are going to support this because they realize that hatred of foreigners is the main thing standing between them and high levels of taxation. And they don’t want to pay taxes

The above is talking about the wealthy in general. For a discussion of Silicon Valley ideology specifically, see this talk by Bhante Sujato and for a discussion of Elon Musk’s specific flavor of psychopathy, listen to this conversation with Elon’s friend, Kara Swisher.

A systems perspective teaches one to focus not only on the various components of the system but also on their interconnections and interactions. Demography, production processes, government, economy, and environment cannot be seen in isolation from one another. There are feedback loops that are as important for studying social structure and change as are the various components themselves.

An introduction to macrosociology and how modern societies operate.

An abridged, ten-minute version read by John Lithgow can be watched here.

We Buddhists must recognize the complexity of contemporary issues and call on our compatriots to resist simplistic and emotional responses to events and situations. It means we must call on our leaders to consider issues in their full context and not seek politically expedient solutions.

By exposing the ways that different societies have reacted to crises over their lifetime, this framework can help identify the factors and complex social-ecological interactions that either bolster or undermine resilience to contemporary climate shocks.

The lack of the capacity to understand and act on [legal] justice problems plays a key role in creating [social] inequalities.

In 2023, only 407 people donated a kidney to a stranger. The End Kidney Deaths Act would aim to increase that number nearly thirtyfold.

Also read part two here responding to a few, common counterarguments.

At whatever time, monastics, there are dishonest kings, […] the gods become agitated.

When the rulers of society are dishonest, that is a time of climate change

Why is there not more public outcry in the face of rising income inequality? Although public choice models predict that rising inequality will spur public demand for redistribution, evidence often fails to support this view.

rising inequality can activate the very processes that stifle outcry, causing people to be blind to the true extent of inequality, to legitimize rising disparities, and to reject redistribution

A child came up to me in the park
and asked for a cigarette.
Her eyes were startled cats…

The real point of FDR’s New Deal was to save democracy.

poverty and hunger, racism and sexism, drug use and violence, and climate change, to name just a few: Why do these problems exist? What are their effects? What can be done about them?

Now over a decade old and mostly from the U.S. perspective, the text is still an adequate introduction to various problems in modern society and the ways that sociologists tend to think about them.

If a real democracy is going to thrive, if the real values of human nature are to flourish, it’s an absolute necessity that groups form in which people can join together, share their concerns, articulate their hopes, and discover what they think, what their values really are. This can’t be imposed on you from above: you have to discover it yourself

Part two can be seen here.

“Weapons of Math Destruction” have three properties: (1) they are widespread and important, (2) they are mysterious in their scoring mechanism, and (3) they are destructive.

Man is born free but everywhere he is in chains.

Rousseau thought that it was polite society that made people evil and that a sufficiently enlightened social order could bring out people’s inherent virtues.

How this 18th century philosopher’s ideas came to dominate modern political thought.

going back in time and trying to find the origin of some of the foundational institutions of society, from democracy to the legal system, and at the heart of the origin of those institutions, I always found water.

The Mekong region presents a record incidence of cholangiocarcinoma (bile duct cancer). Scientists identify correlations between the development of this aggressive disease and the consumption of raw fish in local dishes. While made aware of these correlations by comprehensive health campaigns, some villagers in Thailand’s notoriously neglected Northeast refuse to cook the fish before consumption

Based on ethnographic data, this paper suggests that practices surrounding the consumption of raw food in the area have become taboo. Rather than disappearing, they now play a key role in bonding rituals where rural masculinities are expressed via spectacles of risk taking that transgress normative ideals of manhood as epitomised by urban men and Buddhist monks.

This four-minute clip from the podcast captures its most important insight. For the full interview, see Writ Large on the NBN.

Anchored in sociological and political theory, this comprehensive volume provides hard data and empirical research that traces the power and influence of the fossil fuel industry through economics, politics, media, and higher education. Contributors demonstrate how corporations secure popular consent, and coopt, disorganize, or marginalize dissenting perspectives to position the fossil fuel industry as a national public good.

The formal study of human cultural evolution began in the 1970s and has matured to the point of deriving practical applications. We provide an overview of these developments and examples for the topic areas of complex systems science and engineering, economics and business, mental health and well-being, and global change efforts.

During the Syrian crisis, the media formed part of what officials describe as constant pressure from many actors to respond, which they say led to policy failures. Syria’s conflict is a cautionary tale.

Many people in Silicon Valley and around the world now call themselves ‘Effective Altruists.’ Is there any way they might become ‘Responsible Adults?’

This is the story of the deadliest infectious disease of all time…

I do not exist and yet I am everything. You know what I am. I am History. Now make me good.

… and Bhutan’s famous Gross National Happiness, which uses thirty-three metrics to measure the titular quality in quantitative terms.

All these indexes are attempts to portray civilization in our time using the terms of the hegemonic discourse, which is to say economics, often in the attempt to make a judo-like transformation of the discipline of economics itself, altering it to make it more human, more adjusted to the biosphere, and so on. Not a bad impulse!

But it’s important also to take this whole question back out of the realm of quantification, sometimes, to the realm of the human and the social. To ask what it all means, what it’s all for. To consider the axioms we are agreeing to live by. To acknowledge the reality of other people, and of the planet itself. To see other people’s faces. To walk outdoors and look around.

A novel attempting to imagine civilization coming through climate change stronger for it.

It turns out however that I was deeply
Mistaken about the end of the world…

… Mistaken for a child running to tell of a bomb
That did not knock before it entered
In Gaza with its glad tidings of abundant joy…

Without the pressure of a life cut short, Keith Haring’s art might never have been as deep as it was. Yet that would have been a good trade.

On recognizing that “the nobility of suffering has always been a coping mechanism.”

When those seven days have passed, having emerged from their hiding places and embraced each other, they will come together and cry in one voice, ‘Fantastic, dear foe, you live!’

In illustration of his dictum that one should rely on oneself, the Buddha gives a detailed account of the fall of a kingly lineage of the past, and the subsequent degeneration of society. This process, however, is not over, as the Buddha predicts that eventually society will fall into utter chaos. But far in the far future, another Buddha, Metteyya, will arise in a time of peace and plenty.

… because Cura first fashioned the being, let her possess it as long as it lives.

This existential insecurity is the kind that comes from being dependent on others for survival; from being vulnerable to physical and psychological illness or wounding; and, of course, from being mortal. It’s the insecurity of randomness and risk, of a future that is impossible to control or to know. It is a kind of insecurity we can never wholly escape or armour ourselves against, try as we might to mitigate potential harms.

Yet however unknowable the future may be, there is no doubt our fortunes will remain interlinked. Risks proliferate, time passes, and things fall apart. But even amid the rubble, we can always reimagine, repair, and rebuild. Accepting our fundamental insecurity—the gift we all share—is the first step toward escaping our fear-filled burrows and ensuring our collective freedom, safety, and well-being.

In World War II, Britain invented the electronic computer. By the 1970s, its computing industry had collapsed—thanks to a labor shortage produced by sexism.

Rather than “primitive” hill tribes being attracted to the glamour and stability of valley settlements, hill cultures are formed by people running away from civilization.

Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.

We are brothers in what we share.

Humans have cooperative sentiments usually assumed to be absent in rational choice theories. On the other hand, the slow rate at which cooperative institutions evolve suggests that considerable friction will afflict our ability to grow up commons management institutions where they do not already exist and to readapt existing institutions to rapid technological and economic change.

An answer to the question of how selfish genes produced cooperative people.

… municipalities of Spain with a history of a stronger inquisitorial presence show lower economic performance, educational attainment, and trust today. The effects persist after controlling for historical indicators of religiosity and wealth

King Pasenadi of Kosala had returned from the war front, victorious in battle, his purpose having been achieved. Then King Pasenadi of Kosala set out for the park.

Fresh from battle, King Pasenadi declares his love and devotion to the Buddha.

… seven principles that prevent decline

… though money is an idea, basically, it represents stuff, and stuff is made of carbon

An interview with the woman spearheading the new discipline explaining how human social structures impact the environment.

Perhaps the most important consequence of high-tech modernism for the contemporary moral political economy is how it weaves hierarchy and data-gathering into the warp and woof of everyday life, replacing visible feedback loops with invisible ones, and suggesting that highly mediated outcomes are in fact the unmediated expression of people’s own true wishes.

… the kind of tragedy that befell Tierney and her daughter can be averted if we appeal to the better parts of human nature

all those bodies in Departures
are naked under clothes and scarred

[Hunter-gatherers] considered themselves affluent and enjoyed a degree of affluence as a result of that. Yet we seem to be trapped in this cycle of ever pursuing more and greater growth, greater wealth, greater anything. It seems that our aspirations now grow endlessly.

A conversation on how consumerism is making us unhappy and what a different culture might look like.

Back in the 1930s, Alan Lomax traveled the country recording obscure musicians of all stripes for the Library of Congress. Lomax believed that the culture of poor Americans was important, and worthy of saving. And it was these same beliefs that led to an investigation by the FBI.

… human beings reset themselves to something altruistic, communitarian, resourceful, and imaginative after a disaster. We revert to something we already know how to do. The possibility of paradise is already within us as a default setting.

Disasters reveal, in their failure, how social hierarchies are a product of state violence, not “human nature.”

In truth, it’s the cynic who’s out of touch. In truth, we’re living on Planet A, where people are deeply inclined to be good to one another. So be realistic. Be courageous. Be true to your nature.

Cindy: not her real name. I met her
in prison, and people in prison I give
the fake names. I taught her Shakespeare…

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert….

… they voted unanimously, every person there, that they would not provide labor to allow any drilling or mining to go ahead. These were men who would’ve made money, it might have been years of work for them if oil drilling and mining had gone ahead, but they didn’t want to spoil what many of them—having been to The Great Barrier Reef—knew was at risk

A brief history of the United Nations’ efforts to promote cultural tolerance in the aftermath of World War II.

Menocchio was certain that at death man reverted to the elements of which he was composed. But an irresistible yearning drove him to picture some sort of survival after death.

A riveting reconstruction of the thought-world of a particular, early-modern, Italian peasant who had fashioned for himself an unpopular popular cosmology.

The victory of written over oral culture has been, principally, the victory of the abstract over the empirical.

As with language, culture offers to the individual a horizon of latent possibilities—a flexible and invisible cage in which he can exercise his own, conditional, liberty.

A two-pound chicken tastes better with friends
A two-pound chicken tastes better with two
And I know where to find you
So, listen to the words I say!

A spirited defense of socialism for dark times.

We must stay hopeful;
We must stay patient –
because when they excavate the modern day
they’ll find us: the Brand New Ancients

An epic poem about inglorious Brits, a morality tale with a potty mouth, and a crafty myth without artifice, Brand New Ancients attempts to tell the story of human life through a series of interwoven vignettes.

… the majority of philosophy is based on assumptions about the basic cognitive endowments of average individuals that totally disregard what is known about human development

A critique of the Western assumption of the rational citizen and a full-throated defense of education as activism.

… there is no viable future for civilisation that does not include a radical change in the nature of our educational systems

Aśoka (c. 268-232 BCE) and Jayavarman VII (1182-1220?), two of the greatest rulers of India and Southeast Asia, were Buddhists by any definition. However, the puzzling problem is that their deaths were followed by an inexorable decay of their erstwhile great empires.

This YouTube Video is in Vietnamese but has English language captions which you can turn on via the “CC” button.

What should have been a difficult few months turned into 30 years of bloodshed and mayhem in Northern Ireland.

Those in power keep authority through the fair, impartial, and sympathetic application of justice. Where there is no justice, there is no legitimacy. Where there is no legitimacy, there will be no peace.

We’re already geo-engineering the planet, we’re just doing it accidentally and badly

Ezra Klein has a wide-ranging conversation with novelist Kim Stanley Robinson (of Mars Trilogy fame) about his “cli-fi” book, Ministry of the Future, and how strange our society is.

… there will be resistance to giving the thing rights until it can be seen and valued for itself; yet, it is hard to see it and value it for itself until we can bring ourselves to give it rights — which is almost inevitably going to sound inconceivable

On the history, and future, of how we define property and rights.

A cautionary tale about how hard it is to rise from the bottom to the top–and why the American school system, despite its best efforts, continues to leave an extraordinary amount of talent on the table.

For part two of this miniseries, see Food Fight.

… poets do not [normally] get this kind of attention

The story of an unusual fence in New York City and its bold rejection of cynicism.

I give you back 1948.

A poem about what time can do to a person.

The shift from hunting-gathering to farming began only about 11,000 years ago; the first metal tools were produced only about 7,000 years ago; and the first state government and the first writing arose only around 5,400 years ago. “Modern” conditions have prevailed, even just locally, for only a tiny fraction of human history

Paints a vivid picture of what traditional life was like (is still like in some places) in prehistoric human societies and contrasts this with how most humans (especially in the West) live today. Jared Diamond himself lived this way for some time and brings a unique and earnest voice to the subject which I found affective and memorable.

One thing we can be certain of is that capitalism will end.

Frase imagines a two-by-two matrix of possible post-capital economies and leaves us to imagine which future we want to work toward.

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.

A classic collection of essays on the relationship between ideas and society which draws heavily on Huxley’s engagements with Buddhist philosophy.

The product of a bygone era, Ends and Means diagnoses modernity without the despair or self-promotion characteristic of later engagements. One instead feels the vitality and honesty that animated Huxley’s life and continue to inspire readers nearly a century later.