society

Americans like to think that they live in the freest country in the world. While it is not even close to being the case, as I've explained here, there is one thing for which the US may be the freest country in the world and that is freedom of speech. I found this video that explains the...

Another very interesting video. What is your opinion of gated communities? I can understand their popularity around Los Angeles where a lot of celebrities live and want to keep away from potential stalkers. But this is a much wider phenomenon. About 15 million Americans now live in gated...

Here is another great video by Ashton. She has an MA and a PhD in human geography, environmental studies, urban planning and architecture, so this is exactly her field of specialisation and it shows.

One of the things I've heard the most times from the mouths of Americans about their country is that they live in the freest country in the world. That may have been true when the US became independent in 1776, but that is no longer the case. For example the Freedom in the World Index for 2024...

Most of the news coming from the UK in the last few years has been rather depressing. Obviously the countries suffering from Brexit, but not only. Brexit has exacerbated all previous underlying problems, like the lack of housing and the inefficient NHS. The UK now looks like the sick man of...

It may sound like a strange question. Many Westerners still have an image of Sub-Saharan Africa as an underdeveloped place where people live in huts and hunt with spears like in the early 20th century. But even if some tribes of hunter-gatherers survive in isolated parts of the continent, this...

About 9% of global greenhouse gas emissions are caused by the methane emitted from cattle flatulence. Additionally, large swathes of the Amazon rainforest are being destroyed (usually burned) to expand cattle ranching. Tropical deforestation itself is responsible for 10% of global warming, and...

It may be due to the Covid-19 effect or just the economy catching up, but in only two years many countries have seen their percentage of Internet users rise quite a lot, as can be seen on the two maps below. If data is correct, the share of Internet users dropped in a few countries though...

I have just updated the map of modern slavery based on the Global Slavery Index. There are some interesting evolutions. In 2018, slavery was almost completely absent from Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland and Austria. However in 2023, that was only the case of Norway. The other...

As everyone knows France sucks. It's a horrible country that nobody wants to visit except for 90 million tourists per year. :kidding: And of course people from neighbouring countries know that well and try to avoid setting foot in France if they can help it. For example official statistics show...

When comparing countries and cultures, few people think of the fact that the frequency of basic emotions can vary widely depending on the society where one lives. Using Gallup's State of the Global Workplace: 2022 Report I created maps showing the percentage of respondents that felt anger...

I have been re-reading Bill Bryson's Notes from a Big Country. Bill Bryson is an American (from Iowa) who moved to the UK. After 20 years of living in England with his English wife (and 4 kids) he moved with his family to New Hampshire for a few years. This book is a collection of articles he...

I have recently come across the concept of spiral dynamics, a model of eight levels of increasingly complex human value systems (or vMemes) consisting of sets of world views, preferences, and purposes. Each level represent a new evolution in the way people interact within a society. The...

I have come across this brilliant summary of the book The Inner Level in The Economist. The authors suggest that social inequality causes stress and anxiety, which results in mental illnesses such as narcissism, psychosis and schizophrenia. They explain for example that 10% of Japanese and...

A new survey by the Pew Research Center analyses the percentages of practising and non-practising Christians and unaffiliated people across West European countries. Here are a few infographics to illustrate the findings. The Benelux and Nordic countries have the least practising Christians...

I am currently reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, a hugely thought-provoking book that I warmly recommend. In chapter seven, he explains: "The large societies found in some other species, such as ants and bees, are stable and resilient because most of the...

Atheism and agnosticism have been gaining a lot of grounds in Western countries over the last decade thanks to the Internet. USA According to this chart (source), the percentage of unaffiliated in the USA started soaring from 1995, which is the year the Internet really took off. Most of the...

Seven years ago I analysed the UNICEF report on children well-being in rich countries. Here is a new report for 2013, which has eight additional countries. The Netherlands still tops the ranking, followed by Scandinavian countries like before, except Denmark which fell from 3rd to 11th...

The BBC's Great British Class Survey found that there were seven identifiable social classes in the UK. The new classes bear little resemblance to the traditional divisions in upper, upper-middle, middle, lower-middle and working classes. The new social classes are described like this: Elite...

Do you believe in the concept of equality in human society? I would argue no. The fundamental reason being for humans to exist in a truly equal society we would cease to be human. As soon as we create definition we create value. As soon as you create value you create hierarchy. With...