The global struggle for gender equality is not only about justice. Women’s equality is an essential precondition for the reduction of violence and greed in our world.
The debate on women’s rights is about to change radically. Continue reading
I’m just back from the MatchPoints Seminar on ‘The Culture of Politics, Economics and International Relations’, in Aarhus, Denmark, where I gave a presentation on ‘Culture as Defence against Pathological Elites’. A number of interesting questions came up again and again over the four days of the conference. Is progress inevitable? Are human rights a western invention? Does modernisation have to mean westernisation? Continue reading
The biggest danger to our rights today is not from government acting against the will of the majority but from government which has become the mere instrument of this majority…. Wrong will be done as much by an all-powerful people as by an all-powerful prince.
James Madison
When psychopaths and people with other dangerous personality disorders hold power, the result is political tyranny. Continue reading
War appears to be old as mankind, but peace is a modern invention.
Henry Maine
The Most Peaceful Era in History
The New York Times review of Steven Pinker’s most recent book The Better Angels of Our Nature praises Pinker for addressing some of the biggest questions we can ask: Are human beings essentially good or bad? Continue reading
“…re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem…”
Walt Whitman
Science was my first passion – and for a reason. I was born in Northern Ireland, into a society torn apart by violence. Continue reading
disorderedworld 