Sociology

The 20th century was a bloody one, full of armed clashes which destroyed Europe, withered an entire generation’s hope of European-level peace. After the Versailles Treaty, the famous economist John Maynard Keynes uttered this prophecy: ”With such a peace treaty, you’ll be at war again within 20 years”. John Maxwell Coetzee, an important South-African novelist, called the 20th century “Satan’s century”. A tough statement yet extremely true unfortunately. Besides war, the past one hundred years also witnessed terrible totalitarian regimes occur, (...) such as the Nazi and fascism. The hardness of those regimes at least equaled the suffering caused by the world wars. One wouldn’t be wrong to call such regimes state terrorism: a leader suppressing his own citizens just to satisfy his own fantasy. The hugeness of their deeds goes beyond human imagination according to the number of victims. A classical word of wisdom describes terrorism as follows: ”It kills a few, but terrifies more”. (shrink)

the study of ants and insects com understand human behaviour and discourse, his politics and ways do keep alive some dreams that can come true.

Between medieval sapienza and the duty of silence...because it can be harmfull for other, takes care to transmit and inform in a cultural way.

Society or individuals? WHat must be saved? There's any hope to social and virtual violence or It is Just the way It Is?

The Loss of Criteria: essay on the pathological reverie of non-being and not-willing to know. Pathological essay on Being and Not Being Universal Dualism about Contextualism.

Body and Soul, the infinite dualism of existenz.

Portuguese Discoveries and Erasure's theme "Ship of Fouls", navigating in an age of loneliness and excelera

Anthropology in Social Sciences

Cognitive Sciences, Misc in Cognitive Sciences

Neuroscience in Cognitive Sciences

Philosophy, General Works

Political Science in Social Sciences

Psychiatry and Psychotherapy in Cognitive Sciences

Psychology in Cognitive Sciences

Sociology in Social Sciences

Remove from this list   Direct download  

 

Export citation  

 

Bookmark   6 citations  

This paper proposes that the resurgence of geographic factors in the study of uneven development is not due simply to the recurrent nature of intellectual fashions, nor necessarily because arguments that rely on geographic factors are less simplistic than before, nor because they avoid racialist, imperialistic, and deterministic forms they sometimes took in the past. Rather, this paper argues that geographic factors have been turned to once again because they are an indispensable part of explanation, playing a special role that (...) has not been properly understood, a role especially crucial for the explanation of the inherently spatial questions that development studies seek to address. The paper is made up of two sections and an appendix. The first section discusses why geographic factors are necessary for explanations of uneven development with a brief example from the ‘institutions versus geography’ debate. The second section discusses why the reflexive rejection by social scientists of geographic and environmental factors is misguided, with a separate note on geography and geographers. The ideas in this paper were in part arrived at inductively while surveying instances where social scientists in some way attempt to account for real-world locations/distributions of social phenomena (as opposed to discussing a social theory or process aspatially or with its distribution taken as a starting point). A number of these are included with discussion as an appendix. (shrink)

DRAFT The prestige of an academic institution may be determined as a function of affiliations with other academic institutions. Using digital tools to data-scrape, data-mine, and perform network analysis on university websites, an approximation of numbers of academic affiliations may be measured. Especially observing the alma mater institutions of the faculty of employed institutions, these numbers show the relative employment of alumni and a proxy metric for the relative prestige of their degree-granting institutions. These affiliations can be charted and graphed (...) to determine the distributions of affiliations throughout an academic ecosystem from which we might draw conclusions about that system’s hierarchies and inequalities. Here we use anglophone PhD-granting philosophy departments as a case study for this methodology with tentative conclusions. (shrink)

We extend the Universal Grammar of Inversion (UGI), the structural law of Rise, Permanence and Meta previously proposed at the level of individual discourse, into the domain of collective behavior. We argue that groups, from dyads to entire societies, exhibit emergent symbolic dynamics that parallel and amplify the UGI cycle. Through this extension, the study introduces a framework for understanding how interpersonal relationships, families, institutions and nations generate their own forms of collective disruption, stabilization and framing. The analysis shows that (...) Rise signals become contagious within groups, Permanence functions become institutionalized as shared norms or bureaucratic structures and Meta layers emerge as group identities, founding narratives and civilizational myths. These multi-agent configurations produce distinctive group-level inversion patterns, including co-provocative escalation, hierarchical stabilization, coherence-field formation and phase misalignment across subgroups. We also show the role of emotion in decision-making and how is difficult to maintain coherence in large groups. By formalizing these dynamics, the paper provides a structural vocabulary for interpreting social cycles, organizational behavior, political polarization and the stability or fragility of collective meaning systems. The goal is not to derive new conclusions about society, but to formulate a general structural model capable of capturing how groups metabolize disruption and maintain coherence through shared symbolic operations. (shrink)

This paper re-evaluates the traditional theories of the "resource curse" and modernization, arguing that the true peril of natural resources lies not in their physical attributes, but in a "lazy governance logic" born of resource abundance. Simultaneously, the paper critiques the limitations of the binary narratives surrounding Chile's modernization process—whether the Chicago School mythologizing it as a "free-market paradise" or structuralism and dependency theory dismissing it as a tragic victim of resources—both of which fail to adequately explain its complex social (...) structures and crisis-response capacities. Building upon these insights, this paper constructs a four-quadrant national survival paradigm matrix based on physical endowments and macro-governance logic, precisely positioning Chile as a Quadrant III "High-Pressure Actuary." Confronted with a lack of broad material endowments and the painful collective traumas of historical hyperinflation and resource bubble bursts, Chile has enforced rigorous institutional self-discipline through structural fiscal surplus rules, sovereign wealth funds, consumer price index (CPI)-linked accounting units (UF), and mandatory individual savings (such as the AFP pension system). These mechanisms shift macro-survival risks downward level by level, forcing society into comprehensive self-defense and actuarial calculation while exerting a powerful "clearance siphon effect" during global supply shocks. Ultimately, Chile is neither a market utopia naturally drifting toward prosperity nor a sacrifice completely crushed by resources; rather, it is a "surviving entity" that maintains a precarious balance amidst storms through an exceptionally rigorous set of institutional disciplines under extremely narrow physical and globalization constraints. Finally, the paper highlights the limitations of pure financial governance and proposes an evolution from a single "financial actuarial model" to a "physical-financial dual-track reserve" system. By channeling strategic capital into domestic basic physical production, nations can alleviate the survival anxiety of the younger generation and reconcile real societal dignity with absolute survival baselines across generations. (shrink)

This study provides a political-economic and thermodynamic critique of the global generative artificial intelligence (AI) and Large Language Model (LLM) adventure. Driven by financial capital and geopolitical anxiety, the LLM frenzy has been widely hailed as the engine of a "fourth industrial revolution". However, grounded in the first law of thermodynamics and the reality that probability-based token prediction faces insurmountable "hallucinations" before reaching the zero-tolerance, high-precision demands of real-world physical manufacturing, this study constructs a "Silicon Ledger" and "Carbon Ledger" analytical (...) framework. -/- Through an "Energy Matryoshka" model, the research evaluates the asymmetric resource consumption and development trajectories of the United States and China between 2023 and 2026. The findings reveal that: -/- The U.S. Model (Capital-Silicon Heavy Industry): Dominated by machine computing power consumption (accounting for 68% of its total energy), the U.S. relies on elite-driven R&D and massive hardware clusters. Its primary losses are financial and capital-based, facing hundreds of billions of dollars in fixed-asset write-downs and short-term hardware depreciation if the productivity myth collapses. -/- The China Model (Engineer-Carbon Intensive Collaboration): Constrained by semiconductor blockades, China mobilized a "people's war" model featuring 200,000 core engineers and millions of support personnel, where human and social logistics energy consumption accounts for 77% of its total ledger. Consequently, China’s total societal energy expenditure for the LLM ecosystem (approx. 44 billion kWh/year) surpasses that of the U.S. (approx. 36.6 billion kWh/year). China's losses are characterized by irreversible intellectual mismatch and opportunity costs, squandering a critical demographic window of top-tier talent on parameter-tweak involution. -/- Ultimately, the study argues that LLMs represent a pseudo-technology wave that has diverted both superpowers from foundational hard technologies. To mitigate these losses after the bubble's deflation, strategic course corrections are urgently required: shifting idle high-performance computing clusters toward zero-tolerance industrial domains (such as computational materials, chip EDA simulation, and smart grid control) and channeling carbon-based intellectual resources back into core operating systems, industrial software, and physical manufacturing hardware. (shrink)

Grounded in a hard-core perspective at the intersection of thermodynamics and information theory, this paper strips away the symbolic illusions of traditional political economy, redefining human society as an active, viscoelastic "colloidal fluid" dissipative structure driven by external energy throughput and the fundamental "time ledgers" of carbon-based individuals. Moving beyond monetary and financial fictions, the framework establishes the Dual Constraint Equations of Civilizational Survival: The Upper Limit Constraint Equation, which maps the physiological and physical time limits imposed on carbon-based components (...) by the combined demands of innovative labor, unmechanized repetitive labor, and exponential administrative/game-theoretic complexity overhead ; and The Lower Limit Maintenance Equation, which dictates the non-negotiable minimum energy baseline required to prevent system disintegration. Using this apparatus, the work diagnoses two terminal pathologies plaguing modern advanced societies: Mechanization Blockade Disease (where stalled technological evolution forces human flesh to brute-force unmechanized repetitive labor, triggering population cliffs) and Complexity Parasitism (where skyrocketing administrative and defensive friction devours society's scarce innovative brainpower). The classical scholar Gu Yanwu once distinguished between the "fall of a state" (wangguo) and the "collapse of all-under-heaven" (wang tianxia)—the former representing the mere succession of ruling algorithms, and the latter the disintegration of a civilization's high-order negative entropy system. Examining the present, the global sphere is deeply mired in the quagmire of AI algorithm bubbles and capital centralization; from Asia, Africa, and Latin America to Europe and the Americas, state will is reasserting comprehensive control over physical resources. History and the laws of physics indicate that even though technological bubbles will ultimately burst, and even though centralized control will cause internal friction and complexity overhead to expand exponentially, we must still hope that this represents merely a transient system damping in the long river of history. For the Second Law of Thermodynamics has long delivered its ultimate verdict: without free physical sampling and distributed trial-and-error, human civilization will inevitably descend into absolute information dead silence. This theory may well transcend its era. Humanity remains trapped in the illusions of gold and fiat currency vouchers, unable as yet to embrace a true "Entropy Standard." Yet, a day will come when civilization is anchored upon the physical ledger of entropy-based accounting, and humanity will no longer rely on crude "combustion and explosions" to enact its achievements, but will instead drive grand phase transitions via minute energy leaps. So long as civilization's informational genes are not swallowed by entropy increase, the myth will endure across the starry seas of the universe. (shrink)

This is related to the fact that culture is something that works upon human beings—upon their spirit, their rawness, their behavior, their thinking, and their very mode of being—and cultivates these dimensions. Culture thereby gives human beings the impression that their original state of being is something that must be refined and developed. In this respect, Kant likewise regards the discipline of human beings as something that enables the development and cultivation of their intellectual capacities to reach their full potential. (...) It must not be forgotten, however, that discipline is something that can only emerge through coercion. In this sense, it is possible to argue, following Kant, that the development of culture requires discipline. Punishment, cultivation, and self-overcoming are necessary components of this process. Individualists in particular may experience culture as constraining and reshaping their possibilities for action, their behavior, and their thinking in order to conform to prevailing requirements. -/- Culture, one might argue, constitutes a second nature that human beings have created as a lived reality through a process of dissociation. On the one hand, there is the human being as a natural being, characterized by a certain rawness (Thesis: human beings initially exist in the immediacy of their natural drives and needs). On the other hand, there is the product of culture (Antithesis: through cultural discipline and reflection, human beings dissociate themselves from this rawness and create a new, spiritual reality of life). Within the tension between these two extremes, human beings continually seek a position of equilibrium, sometimes leaning more toward one side and sometimes toward the other. They may long for their origins while simultaneously risking the failure to fully develop their inherent capacities. Ultimately, this tension may lead to a synthesis (Synthesis: human beings create a nature and an environment in which they can feel at home, for example through technological development and economic organization; at the same time, however, this process can also result in impoverishment and alienation). -/- From the perspective of an individualistic and independent person, culture may be experienced even more strongly as a form of “coercion” and “unfreedom,” since the individual is required to conform to rules, norms, and laws. The arts, for example, can illustrate this ambivalence, as they may consciously reject or distance themselves from established rules and conventions. Likewise, the weekly attendance at church has, particularly among younger generations today, lost much of its former appeal and significance. The worship of gods, especially in moments of prayer, can be understood as a cultural practice experienced as a dissociative experience. -/- At the same time, however, culture is a collective term for binding traditions and systems of values that provide human beings with orientation and enable them to belong to a social group and occupy a stable place within the world. In this sense, human beings construct their environment as an adapted reality that serves as their habitat. This habitat, however, constitutes a conglomeration of different perspectives, desires, and conceptions, which can potentially come into conflict with one another. Marginalized groups, in particular, may face greater difficulties in finding a place within the dominant cultural framework and may therefore be at greater risk of becoming isolated or of establishing a subculture of their own. -/- In this respect, the relationship between human beings and culture is particularly ambivalent whenever individuals are not provided with unconditional opportunities for participation and inclusion. (shrink)

The present world condition is marked by a persistent and troubling pattern: the recurrence of war, the intensification of ideological division, and a deepening sense of instability across nations and peoples. While the specific theatres of conflict shift and the actors change, the underlying dynamics remain strikingly consistent—fear, competition, separative identity, and the misuse of power. These forces, long embedded in human history, now operate within a globalised and technologically interconnected civilisation, amplifying their consequences and extending their reach. -/- In (...) such a climate, the question naturally arises: what principle or force is capable of counteracting these entrenched tendencies toward conflict and fragmentation? This paper advances the argument that goodwill—properly understood not as sentiment but as an active, intelligent, and directed energy—is an essential and practical foundation for the establishment of right human relations. Far from being an abstract moral ideal, goodwill represents the lowest effective expression of a higher spiritual will accessible to humanity, and its deliberate cultivation is both necessary and urgent in the present world crisis. (shrink)

O ameninţare uriaşă planează asupra uneia dintre cele mai dezvoltate ţări ale lumii. Miracol economic şi sociala al secolului XX Japonia se confruntă cu o problemă gravă, îmbătrânirea populaţiei şi scăderea natalităţii. Populaţia este un factor de putere extrem de important în istoria unui stat. Fără o populaţie numeroasă un stat nu poate fi bine dezvoltat. O populaţiei mare este mărirea capacităţii economice a unui stat, într-o primă instanţă. Ulterior dezvoltarea economică ţine de un cumul de diverşi factori cum ar (...) fi diversificarea producţiei, forţa agricolă dar şi altele. Acest „câlcâi a lui Ahile” afectează Japonia, îmbătrânirea provoacă diverse consecinţe precum încetinirea economică, dezechlibrul balanţei între sexe şi chiar extincţia totală a populaţiei într-un viitor îndepărtat. (shrink)

This paper addresses a puzzle some people have about immigration. We are told that the immigrants we are taking in are talented, but then why don’t their own societies keep them?

When Pierre Bourdieu addresses the problem of why people from certain discriminated groups are hardly present in some fields, he emphasizes the role of stylistic factors that cannot be captured in terms of rules. An alternative explanation refers to split systems, both of which can be captured by means of rules.

This is a draft and much shortened version of one of my most abstract and ambition works hitherto. It is deeply theoretical and extremely influenced by Wittgenstein. It is named after his Tractatus as a tribute. -/- In the parts of the work in this draft I attempt to map out the meanings of social propositions and how the social world and metasociology itself forms out of them. I also briefly introduce my Wittgensteinian Equivalence Theory in this work, but the (...) the version presented herein is simplified as it was applied only to the nature of social propositions. -/- Much of this work is liable to significant change in the future, and I do not expect to finish it until much later into my 20s. (shrink)

This analysis integrates two critical factors shaping the current Middle Eastern landscape: the evolving global power order influenced by China’s and India’s rise, and the intricate role of Israel within the internal politics of the United States.

The fight for fairness is a fight for human dignity, fulfilled by satisfying security. Current theories of collective action and democratic stability often neglect this relationship, treating security as a material endpoint rather than the condition in which dignity is experienced. This paper formalizes demoralization as a catalyst for transforming humiliation into dignity, a framework grounded in Weber's methodological individualism and Bandura's theory of collective agency. It traces how agentic individuals move from demoralization to empowerment: noticing differential treatment, awakening to (...) structural unfairness through Freire's conscientization, recognizing their own human dignity, and mobilizing through functional hope—agency paired with pathway and subjective belief. Hope is understood through Bloch's philosophical treatment, as an ontological drive, and Snyder's cognitive model. This framework extends both by arguing that hope activates action regardless of objective viability. Unity moderates the outcome: collective action enables sustainable nonviolent change, while isolated agentic individuals risk pursuing dignity through destruction. The framework distinguishes intrinsically motivated agentic individuals from non-agentic individuals who require extrinsic motivation through contagious hope or otherwise succumb to learned helplessness. The invariant goal is the restoration of security, multidimensional psychological well-being, and human dignity. Applied to macro-historical transitions such as China's rise after the Century of Humiliation, and micro-level divergences such as school shooters who pursue dignity through violent means rather than collective agency and action. Where traditional theories stop at security, this framework argues that genuine security is the condition in which human dignity is fully realized. The fight for fairness is not complete until security satisfies dignity. (shrink)

Before we can understand the way people live their lives, we must first understand the process that takes place in forming who they are. This is a chapter from a forthcoming book I will be releasing which explores why criminals seek out crime as an immortality project - as described in Denial of Death.

This paper develops Institutional Translation Theory, a framework for explaining how viable social variation becomes institutionally visible—or fails to. Existing theories largely explain how institutions select among already visible alternatives, but they less clearly specify the prior stage through which alternatives become intelligible, legitimate, and actionable in the first place. The theory addresses that missing stage by linking role differentiation, translation gates, participation thresholds, lock-in dynamics, and adaptive updating. It argues that stagnation may arise not from the absence of variation, (...) but from the repeated under-translation of viable variation before durable institutional incorporation occurs. (shrink)

Why do similar levels of crisis, dissatisfaction, or innovation produce radically different outcomes across societies? Existing theories usually explain either the input or the outcome, but often leave unclear the structured pathway in between. This paper calls that missing stage the domain of institutional translation. It argues that structural transformation depends on whether heterodox inputs can become intelligible, legitimate, institutionally processable, materially sustainable, and ultimately entrenched. Comparing China, Japanization, the Soviet collapse, and the Arab Spring, the paper develops a branching (...) account of change in which pressure alone is never enough: the same visible strain may be filtered into closure, partial reform, unstable opening, or divergent post-crisis trajectories. The result is a comparative framework that links variation and pressure to structural outcomes without reducing them to a single cause. (shrink)

Why do crises so often fail to produce durable reform—even when problems are widely recognized and change appears inevitable? -/- This paper develops a dynamic extension of Institutional Translation Theory to explain why structural transformation frequently fails after shock. While existing approaches emphasize disruption, crisis, or reform attempts, they often under-specify the intermediate mechanisms that connect instability to durable institutional change. -/- The central claim is that shock does not directly generate transformation. Instead, its effect depends on how it alters (...) the permeability of translation-gate structures that regulate whether heterodox inputs become intelligible, legitimate, and institutionally actionable. Reopening is therefore a necessary but insufficient condition for structural update. -/- The paper identifies four dimensions of gate reopening—cognitive, institutional, resource, and legitimacy—and argues that durable update requires their conjunctive alignment. When reopening is partial, misaligned, or excessive relative to system capacity, reform may fail, resulting in shallow absorption, implementation breakdown, or rapid reclosure. -/- Building on this mechanism, the paper proposes a nonlinear relationship between shock and transformation: insufficient disruption preserves inertia, moderate disruption enables adaptive updating, and excessive disruption produces failed transformation or renewed stagnation. -/- By specifying the dynamic conditions under which reform succeeds or fails, the framework explains why systems often exhibit repeated cycles of crisis without durable structural change, and why visible reform does not necessarily imply transformation. (shrink)

Why do societies with visible grievance, institutional failure, and crisis pressure so often fail to produce revolution? -/- This paper develops a third-stage extension of Institutional Translation Theory to explain why dissatisfaction does not automatically culminate in rupture. Existing approaches often emphasize grievance, deprivation, elite conflict, or crisis, but they tend to under-specify the intermediate mechanisms through which dissatisfaction becomes oppositional, mobilizable, and institutionally consequential. -/- The central claim is that revolution depends not on grievance alone, but on whether crisis (...) weakens incumbent normative cohesion enough to permit counter-norm adoption, translational passage, and self-reinforcing mobilization. The paper therefore introduces a two-layer constraint model. At the first layer, normative order shapes whether actors can defect from an incumbent order and adopt oppositional commitments. At the second layer, translation gates shape whether oppositional claims become socially intelligible, organizationally scalable, and institutionally passable. -/- This framework explains why similar levels of dissatisfaction may lead to very different outcomes, including re-stagnation, bounded reform, revolutionary rupture, or chaotic collapse. It also shows why revolutionary success does not necessarily resolve the underlying problem of closure: counter-norms may stabilize into a new orthodoxy, translational pathways may reclose, and renewed stagnation may re-emerge. -/- By specifying the missing middle between grievance and revolution, the paper provides a mechanism-centered account of revolutionary bifurcation and explains why visible crisis does not reliably produce structural rupture. (shrink)

Why do societies often fail to achieve durable structural change—even when innovation exists, crisis is visible, and reform is actively discussed? -/- This paper proposes a conceptual framework that addresses this puzzle by focusing on an earlier and often overlooked stage in the causal sequence of social change. While many existing theories explain how alternatives diffuse, compete, or disrupt equilibria once they become visible, they tend to under-specify how such alternatives become visible in the first place. -/- Institutional Translation Theory (...) introduces this missing stage by specifying the conditions under which heterodox variation survives normative pressure, becomes intelligible, and acquires institutional visibility through a set of translation gates. -/- The framework conceptualizes societal change as a multi-stage process involving variation, normative filtering, translation, and institutional selection. It further introduces the notion of update capacity as a structural property governing whether systems can convert potential alternatives into durable transformation. -/- Rather than replacing existing approaches, the framework integrates them by locating them at different stages of a broader causal sequence. This allows it to explain cases in which novelty persists and crisis is evident, yet structural updating fails to occur. -/- The model is intended as a conceptual architecture for organizing empirical inquiry rather than a fully specified predictive system, and it provides a basis for operationalization through observable proxies such as norm enforcement, heterodox persistence, and institutional accessibility. (shrink)

Modern debates about early marriage in Islamic history frequently collapse into moral anachronism, projecting contemporary psychological, legal, and institutional categories onto a premodern world structured by radically different conditions. This article develops a framework of contextual moral realism to explain why early adolescent marriage was morally intelligible—and often perceived as protective—in seventh-century Arabia, while being morally impermissible under modern conditions. Drawing on anthropology, moral philosophy, Islamic legal theory, historical demography, and comparative civilizational analysis, the study reconstructs the social ecology that (...) shaped premodern moral reasoning: extended kinship households, absence of state protection, high mortality, early economic integration, and collective guardianship. The article argues that Islamic law neither invented nor idealized early marriage, nor grounded its permissibility in individual autonomy or self-authorship. Rather, it regulated an inherited practice in accordance with enduring moral aims internal to the Sharīʿa—protection of the vulnerable, harm minimization, preservation of bodily integrity and lineage, and maintenance of social stability—applied within severe structural constraints. By tracing consistent patterns across domains such as marriage, slavery reform, and political crisis management, the study shows that Prophetic ethics exhibit remarkable coherence under non-ideal conditions. When modern institutions transform vulnerability, knowledge, and responsibility, the same Islamic moral principles require different applications. The resulting shift represents continuity of moral purpose rather than ethical contradiction, and does not depend on liberal conceptions of autonomy as the basis of moral judgment. (shrink)

This essay seeks to understand what it means for the human collective when AI technologies have become a predominant force in each of our lives through identifying three moral dilemmas (i.e., tragedy of the commons, tragedy of commonsense morality, tragedy of apathy) that shape human choices. In the first part, we articulate AI-driven versions of the three moral dilemmas. Then, in the second part, drawing from evolutionary psychology, existentialism, and East Asian philosophies, we argue that a deep appreciation of three (...) shades of human finitude can help us mitigate harmful effects of the AI-driven versions of the three tragedies and even transcend them. (shrink)

Philosophers of mind have long debated qualia — the felt character of experience — while paying little attention to the physical architecture that must bound it. The T4 bacteriophage — a mindless nanoscale machine whose structure executes functions mapping onto both empowering and disempowering strategies from Forde's framework of social dynamics —demonstrates that before evolution can select anything, a physically possible causal architecture must already exist for selection to exploit. The strategies mapped include security, knowledge, hope, fairness, unity, and dignity, (...) alongside their darker counterparts: nativism, hierarchy, misinformation, subjugation, dehumanization, and fear. Each concept is paired with a specific biological mechanism — virion stability, irreversible adsorption, superinfection exclusion, host genome degradation, among others — demonstrating that the mapping is grounded in observable structure, not metaphor. The paper proposes a conceptual framework, not a theory of viral cognition. It makes no claim that the virus possesses agency or qualia. It argues instead that strategy does not begin with a mind. It begins with architecture. Before qualia, strategic existence begin. (shrink)

Our research aimed to study the ongoing phenomena of cross-border displacement of the Ukrainian population resulting from the Russian aggression that started on the 24th of February 2022. In the first stage of this research, we managed to get the opinions of over 500 refugees with a focus on their needs, concerns, plans, and expectations. Collected data also allowed a reconstruction of social-demographic profiles of fleeing Ukrainian refugees. The preliminary outcomes are presented in the report.

The purpose of this paper aims to analyze and find the implementation of the Law for the Protection of Prisoners on parole for inmates certain crimes. This research is a normative legal research, the research includes the study of the principles of law, the systematic study of law, research on synchronization of law, legal history research and comparative law research. The results; (1) Legal Protection for Convicts to obtain parole in the human rights perspective, is given in the form of (...) Preventive Legal Protection and Legal Protection repressive. Preventive Legal protection granted by the government with the aim of preventing prior to the violation. (2) Implementation of parole for inmates of certain criminal acts, in essence, embodies the formulation remissions to the perpetrators of certain criminal offenses have been formulated differently from other criminal by Government Regulation No. 28 of 2006 juntco Government Regulation No. 32 of 1999. (3) Government Regulation No. 99 Year 2012 which discriminates against the Right to organize tightening remissions for prisoners certain crimes such as corruption, drugs and terrorism is violating the hierarchy of legislation. (shrink)

Social Innovation Europe: Country Summary: Polska. Innowacje społeczne w Polsce .

Linden Lab studies massive online game "Second Life" unexpectedly gained worldwide fame after a few years after release. To the surprise of many game has met with great interest, despite the lack of promotional campaigns. It can be assumed that the reason why "second life" reached a wider audience was a special type of offered entertainment. Network game proved to be no longer a game that was known so far, but an example of a mass media, whose central element is (...) a dynamic virtual world which is an extension of our "first" reality. "Second Life" has the potential, which is challenging the widely shared rules could shake the foundations of the social world. This program is currently the most advanced example of a virtual economy. Unlike many other massive online games and their predecessors, this game is entirely based on the principles of virtual property ownership, as well as rules of conduct virtual business and service, and finally also the consumption of goods. Users of the game, just like the person providing the data in the framework of social networking sites maintained in the mainstream of Web 2.0, user-generated content constituting the virtual world, which can trade content with others linden virtual dolars that can be exchanged to real U.S. dollars. The increase in popularity of "Second Life" brings to mind the vision of the possibility of creating a better place to live for many people. Closer analysis of this phenomenon does not allow for such statements. In the following instances will be presented: information about the growth of the global market for online games and its consequences, the distinguishing features of "Second Life" from traditional online games, virtual elements of the impact of economics on social life, the concept of entertainment as a job stream properties Games 2.0 and contentious issues, which produces "second life". ** Masowa gra on-line "Second Life" studia Linden Lab nieoczekiwanie zdobyła sławȩ na całym świecie po kilku latach od premiery. Ku zaskoczeniu wielu tytuł spotkał siȩ z ogromnym zainteresowaniem mimo braku akcji promocyjnych. Można przypuszczać, że powodem dla którego "drugie życie" dotarło do szerszego grona odbiorców był szczególny typ zaoferowanej formy rozrywki. Sieciowa gra okazała siȩ nie być już gr¸a} jak¸a} znano do tej pory, lecz przykładem środka masowego przekazu, którego centralnym elementem jest dynamiczny wirtualny świat stanowi¸a}cy przedłużenie naszej, "pierwszej", rzeczywistości. "Second Life" kryje w sobie potencjał, który podważaj¸a}c podzielane powszechnie reguły może wstrz¸a}sn¸a}ć posadami świata społecznego. Program ten jest obecnie najbardziej zaawansowanym przykładem wirtualnej gospodarki. W odróżnieniu od wielu innych masowych gier on-line i ich poprzedniczek pozycja ta w całości opiera siȩ na zasadach posiadania wirtualnej własności, jak też regułach prowadzenia wirtualnej działalności gospodarczej i usługowej, i wreszcie takiej też konsumpcji dóbr. Użytkownicy gry, podobnie jak osoby udostȩpniaj¸a}ce dane w ramach internetowych serwisów społecznościowych utrzymanych w nurcie Web 2.0, generuj¸a} treści tworz¸a}ce wirtualny świat, treści którymi mog¸a} handlować z innymi pobieraj¸a}c za nie opłaty w wirtualnych dolarach lindeńskich wymiennych na realne dolary amerykańskie. Wzrost popularności "Second Life" przywodzi na myśl wizjȩ możliwości stworzenia lepszego miejsca do życia dla wielu ludzi. Bliższa analiza tego zjawiska nie pozwala już na takie stwierdzenia. W dalszej czȩści wyst¸apienia przedstawione zostan¸a: informacje o wzroście globalnego rynku gier on-line i jego konsekwencjach, cechy odróżniaj¸ace "Second Life" od tradycyjnych gier sieciowych, elementy wpływu wirtualnej gospodarki na życie społeczne, pojȩcie rozrywki jako pracy, właściwości nurtu Games 2.0 oraz sporne kwestie, jakie wywołuje "drugie życie". (shrink)

Referat wygłoszony w ramach Koła Antropologii Obrazu przy Instytucie Socjologii Uniwersytetu w Białymstoku, Białystok, 03.2007. // Paper presented at the Koło Antropologii Obrazu at the Institute of Sociology, University of Bialystok, Bialystok, 03.2007.

The concepts of social capital are important in improving the quality of life. However, the effects of social capital accumulated in the economic, social and political spheres can be both positive and negative. Article brings the specificity of trust as a key variety of social capital and it's status among the Poles. Indicated are also differences between the suspicion, mistrust and functional substitutes for trust. The whole is complemented by breakdown of bottom-up methods of social capital building. ** Koncepcje kapitału (...) społecznego mają istotne znaczenie w podnoszeniu jakości życia. Niemniej skutki oddziaływania nagromadzonego kapitału społecznego w sferach ekonomicznej, społecznej i politycznej mogą być zarówno pozytywne, jak i negatywne. Artykuł przybliża specyfikę zaufania jako kluczowej odmiany kapitału społecznego i jego stan wśród Polaków. Wskazane zostają też różnice między nieufnością, brakiem zaufania i funkcjonalnymi substytutami zaufania. Całość uzupełnia zestawienie oddolnych metod budowania kapitału społecznego. (shrink)

A. Klimczuk, Żyjemy razem, czyli metody budowania kapitału społecznego, [in:] A.J. Kloza, Żyliśmy razem przez wieki, czyli Żydzi i Polacy w Białymstoku, Fundacja Edukacji i Twórczości w Białymstoku, Białystok 2009, p. 5-6.

For Vajrayana Buddhism, the now is an interval, a boundary, a point of tension and suspension with an atmosphere of uncertainty. It is a bifurcation point of variable length; its name is “bardo.” The bardo is immersed in the conventional, or “seeming” reality. It emerges from what is called the “unstained” ultimate or primordial emptiness or “basal clear light.” Further, the ultimate is not the sphere of cognition. Cognition, including cognition of time, belongs to conventional reality. Buddhahood, in contrast, is (...) a condition of uncompounded knowledge where basic mind blossoms without temporal or other cognitive distinctions, unmade, unfabricated, luminous and pristine. Cyclical existence involves both the ultimate and the conventional as it moves through six bardos—all of which are the effulgent of the basal clear light—until Buddhahood. The six are: the bardo of this life ; the bardo of dream; the bardo of meditation; the bardo of dying; the bardo of dharmata ; and the bardo of existence. Each realm is both ultimate and conventional, and has specific initiation-based yogas to investigate these differences. The process of transition from one to the next involves at least three bodies, one mind, and aspects of speech. In each bardo, the character of the now as embodiment and temporal knowing varies yet a complete and consistent cross-bardo yogic wisdom leads to its total cessation in the basal clear light; the now is extinguished. The author presents, from the viewpoint of a knowledgeable practitioner of over 30 years, an essay on Vajrayana Buddhist time, drawing implications for Fraser’s time typology. The essay will draw from English translations of significant older, tantric texts on dream yoga, deity yoga, the Chod, tantric time, the bardo of death, and empowerment. Useful practices that can be applied by the audience to test the tradition and author’s assertions will be suggested. (shrink)

Traditional political typologies (monarchy, republic, dictatorship) are often static or normative, failing to explain the dynamics of regime transitions and structural collapses. This article applies the "Identity Compass" model (Lamory, 2026) to political science, mapping regimes not as fixed points but as trajectories on a dynamic 16-meridian sphere. It posits that sociological entities emerge from universal identity functions (innate drives) and organize into three ontological zones: Synergy, Autonomy, and Blockage. A central innovation is the postulate of "pathological symbiosis": a Blockage (...) regime persists only if its diametrically opposing entity also inverts its nature, creating a mutual structural lock. The analysis demonstrates that dynamic equilibrium (Synergy) constitutes full functionality, while Blockage states are structural anomalies dependent on the corruption of the opposite. The model offers a formal, falsifiable ontology of political regimes, establishing strict criteria for invalidation based on the absence of such symbiotic corruption. By linking regimes to innate drives, the framework suggests political trajectories are mechanical responses to existential needs rather than historical accidents. (shrink)

Open science adoption among Generation Z students in a developing country, with distinct educational culture, presents a critical test of a wide range of technology acceptance frameworks. This study examines factors predicting open science resource utilization (measured through self-reported frequency of diverse uses in academic contexts) among 1,422 Vietnamese undergraduate students using Bayesian regression analysis, which enables probabilistic inference and robust model comparison, adding to the methodological rigor and novelty to the literature in this area. We tested a theoretical framework (...) integrating a multitude of factors such as capabilities, perceived benefits, institution-centered, value-alignment, etc., through progressive model building. Model comparison via WAIC identified the main effects model as optimal. Results revealed Technical Self-efficacy (β = 0.254) and Open Science Self-efficacy (β = 0.205) as strong predictors, with Institutional Support (β = 0.117) and Attitude (β = 0.119) showing moderate effects. Language Self-efficacy showed a weak but credible effect (β = 0.089). Contrary to Western technology acceptance models, Perceived Benefits showed uncertain influence (β = 0.054, 89% HPDI includes zero), and Value Alignment demonstrated no credible effect (β = 0.013). Hypothesized interaction effects between Technical Self-efficacy and Perceived Benefits were not supported by model comparison, suggesting additive rather than synergistic adoption mechanisms. These findings challenge the digital native assumption and reveal that Vietnamese students adopt open science for practical reasons, relying on skills and institutional support rather than ideology. Interventions in resource-constrained settings should therefore prioritize technical skill development and visible institutional support, rather than relying primarily on value-based or normative appeals. This pragmatic approach has implications for advancing open science in the age of AI. (shrink)

This paper examines the persistence of political dynasties within democratic systems through the lens of the Universal Balance-Feedback Framework (UBFF). UBFF proposes that all complex systems operate through four fundamental principles: (1) System Integrity, (2) Universal Balance, (3) Feedback Loop Mechanisms, and (4) Interconnected Nodes, formally expressed as Wr = ∫(Is · Bu · FL · IN) · Dc. According to this framework, democratic decline occurs when feedback mechanisms become distorted, causing institutions to enter states of self-reinforcing imbalance. The paper (...) introduces the concept of Self-Referential Ignorance (SRI), a condition in which political actors and institutions become progressively insulated from corrective feedback while maintaining confidence in the legitimacy and effectiveness of their existing structures. Political dynasties are interpreted not primarily as causes of democratic dysfunction but as symptoms of a deeper systemic feedback failure. The argument is grounded in cross-domain analogies drawn from biological homeostasis, ecological predator-prey dynamics, and market price signal theory, and is situated relative to established scholarship on polyarchy, competitive authoritarianism, and institutional sclerosis. (shrink)

Does globalization serve the same function as hellenization did in the 1st century? Is globalization a threat to religion? Is there a theological ground for understanding the leveling of barriers? How does Pentecost relate to Babel and the present phenomena of globalization? These are some questions explored in this paper.

(This is one of the essays to be included in a book examining the causes of day-to-day strife in the populations of modern democracies vying to live and assert the freedoms promised to them by systems of governance supposed and expected to represent them.) "The artisan of old, the artist, the researcher, the developer, and the scientist today have this in common, that in refining, perfecting and pushing the boundaries of their respective crafts, they cannot achieve satisfaction or adequately perform (...) without simultaneously and progressively adapting, re-configuring, developing, and continuously changing the techniques and approaches they employ together with the tools and parameters for gauging actual success within the realm that only rigorous acquaintance, imaginative freedom, cross-functional, multifaceted learning, and distributive interaction may allow.". (shrink)

In this article, I define a cultural epistemology as a set of socially reinforced assumptions about how knowledge and truth are produced. Unlike a philosophical epistemology, a cultural epistemology is largely the product of culture and largely invisible. As products of culture, cultural epistemology are relatively unquestioned and, in many cases, philosophically unsophisticated. There are three common types of cultural epistemologies, influenced by who holds power in a given society: an epistemological monarchy, an epistemological oligarchy and an epistemological democracy. A (...) given cultural epistemology subsequently influences the legitimacy of culture and government itself. I argue argue that Americans tend to hold an "epistemological democracy" with two distinct facets: a trust in consensus, linked to living in a democratic republic, and a trust in their own self-interest, linked to market economics and capitalism more generally. These two facets combine, interact, and even oppose each other to legitimize and challenge American culture and its political and economic systems. (shrink)

the struggle for status is more primitive of what we thing or tought about, it's very linked with the struggle for survavil, terretory, reproduction, pleasure....in a world more and more violent in some way and stupidly peacefful on other way and territories...

rails to total abstraction, to conjure a perfect social system, between fulfilment of individual and colective will.

Giving away of some kind of philosophy, to a new shore and horizons.

În ultimii ani, s-au dezvoltat rapid noi tehnologii informaționale și de comunicare, astfel încât în centrul dezbaterilor științifice, politice și economice din ultima perioadă a stat apariția și dezvoltarea Societății Informaționale, generatoare de noi oportunități de muncă dar și de schimbări esențiale în ceea ce privește natura muncii și modul de lucru, schimbări comparabile cu cele petrecute în revoluția industrială. În acest context, telelucrul (telemunca) a devenit domeniu strategic din punct de vedere teoretic și practic.