society

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...