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Evolutionary Perspectives on Religion and Violence

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Candace Alcorta

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“The ability of ritual to evoke both positive and negative affect is, of course, not specific to religion. Secular dances, concerts, and -raves- induce feelings of happiness and joy, and military boot camp elicits pain, shock, and awe. Such secular experiences have strong emotional impacts on participants also, particularly during adolescence.”

ReligionViolenceGroupsSocietyEvolutionHomo SapiensCohesionTribe
Book:Evolutionary Perspectives on Religion and Violence
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“The persistence of superannuated institutions in striving to perpetuate themselves is like the obstinacy of a rancid odour clinging to the hair; the pretension of spoiled fish that insists on being eaten, the tenacious folly of a child's garment trying to clothe a man, or the tenderness of a corpse returning to embrace the living. "Ingrates!" exclaims the garment. "I shielded you in weakness. Why do you reject me now?" "I come from the depths of the sea," says the fish; "I was once a rose," cries the odour; "I loved you," murmurs the corpse; "I civilized you," says the convent. To this there is but one reply; "In the past." To dream of the indefinite prolongation of things dead and the government of mankind by embalming; to restore dilapidated dogmas, regild the shrines, replaster the cloisters, reconsecrate the reliquaries, revamp old superstitions, replenish fading fanaticism, put new handles in worn-out sprinkling brushes, reconstitute monasticism; to believe in the salvation of society by the multiplication of parasites; to foist the past upon the present, all this seems strange. There are, however, advocates for such theories as these. These theorists, men of mind too, in other things, have a very simple process; they apply to the past a coating of what they term divine right, respect for our forefathers, time-honored authority, sacred tradition, legitimacy; and they go about, shouting, "Here! take this, good people!" This logic was familiar to the ancients; their soothsayers practised it. Rubbing over a black heifer with chalk, they would exclaim, "She is white" Bos cretatus. As for ourselves, we distribute our respect, here and there, and spare the past entirely, provided it will but consent to be dead. But, if it insists upon being alive, we attack it and endeavor to kill it. Superstitions, bigotries, hypocrisies, prejudices, these phantoms, phantoms though they are, are tenacious of life; they have teeth and nails in their shadowy substance, and we must grapple with them, body to body, and make war upon them and that, too, without cessation; for it is one of the fatalities of humanity to be condemned to eternal struggle with phantoms. A shadow is hard to seize by the throat and dash upon the ground.”

PhilosophyReligionSocietyExtremismAntiquityDeconstructionIsolationismReligious Fanaticism
Book:Les Misérables
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“She suddenly thought one afternoon, when looking in the glass at her fairness, that there was yet another date, of greater importance to her than those; that of her own death, when all these charms would have disappeared; a day which lay sly and unseen among all the other days of the year, giving no sign or sound when she annually passed over it; but not the less surely there. When was it? Why did she not feel the chill of each yearly encounter with such a cold relation? She had Jeremy Taylor's thought that some time in the future those who had known her would say, 'It is the -th, the day that poor Tess Durbeyfield died'; and there would be nothing singular to their minds in the statement. Of that day, doomed to be her terminus in time through all the ages, she did not know the place in month, week, season, or year.”

DeathMortalityTess Of The D Urbervilles
Book:Tess of the D’Urbervilles
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“Society has failed women, men, children, fathers , mothers. We have created standards, rules, norms, behavior, trends, lifestyle that destroy us rather than building us. That degrade us rather uplifting us. That oppresses us rather than liberating us. That depresses us rather than cheering us. The sad part is we individually are the society. We are contributing to life by everything we do or say or don’t do or say it .”

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Author:De philosopher DJ Kyos
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“আমরা, এই আধুনিক মানুষেরা, বিজ্ঞানমনস্করা কি বুকে হাত দিয়ে বলতে পারি যে, আমাদের পূর্বপুরুষদের থেকে আমরা সত্যিই উন্নত হয়েছি ? বেশি সুখে আছি ? এই তথাকথিত জীবনযুদ্ধে আমরা কি প্রত্যেকেই অবসাদগ্রস্ত ছিন্নভিন্ন নই? যা আমরা পেয়েছি, আমাদের সভ্যতার, আধুনিকতার পরিবর্তে শুধুমাত্র এই কি প্রার্থিত ছিলো ? যে গন্তব্যে আমরা এসে পৌঁছেছি এবং অদূর ভবিষ্যতে পৌঁছবো তাই কি আমাদের প্রার্থিত ছিলো ? মানুষ হিসেবে, মনুষ্যত্বর বিচারে, ভালোত্বর বিচারে, আমরা কি অনেকই ছোট, লোভী, স্বার্থপর, বিবেকরহিত, অপরিণামদর্শী হয়ে যাইনি ? ঈশ্বর আমাদের কাছে উপহাসের বস্তুও। কেন? তা তলিয়ে ভাবার সময়, অবকাশ এবং গভীরতা আমাদের বেশীরভাগেরই নেই। ঈশ্বরবোধ যে আমাদের ভেতরের শুভ, সত্য এবং শাশ্বত বোধগুলিকে জাগরূকই করে, আমাদের পাশববৃত্তিগুলিকে শাসন করতে উদ্বুদ্ধ করে, আমাদের এক সুন্দর প্রার্থিত নিষ্কলুষ জীবনের দিকে ধাবিত করায়, তা কি আমরা মনে রেখেছি ?”

LifeSocietyCivilization
Book:ইলমোরাণ্‌দের দেশে
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