Short abstract Human societies consistently develop complex, near-universal traditions that exhibit striking similarities. These “super-attractors” span magic and religion (e.g., shamanism, supernatural punishment beliefs), esthetics (e.g., heroic tales, dance songs), and social institutions (e.g., justice, corporate groups), and collectively constitute the “cultural manifold.” Here, I argue that the components of the cultural manifold develop primarily through “subjective selection,” or the production and selective retention of variants evaluated as useful for satisfying goals. Whereas previous explanations emphasize objective individual or group-level benefits, I highlight how subjective selection drives complex cultural convergences worldwide, attesting to the importance of subjective selection in shaping human culture. Long abstract Human societies reliably develop complex cultural traditions with striking similarities. These “super-attractors” span the domains of magic and religion (e.g., shamanism, supernatural punishment beliefs), esthetics (e.g., heroic tales, dance songs), and social institutions (e.g., justice, corporate groups) and collectively constitute what I call the “cultural manifold.” The cultural manifold represents a set of equilibrium states of social and cultural evolution: hypothetically cultureless humans placed in a novel and empty habitat will eventually produce most or all of these complex traditions. Although the study of the super-attractors has been characterized by explanatory pluralism, particularly an emphasis on processes that favor individual- or group-level benefits, I here argue that their development is primarily underlain by a process I call “subjective selection,” or the production and selective retention of variants that are evaluated as instrumentally useful for satisfying goals. Humans around the world are motivated toward similar ends, such as healing illness, explaining misfortune, calming infants, and inducing others to cooperate. As we shape, tweak, and preferentially adopt culture that appears most effective for achieving these ends, we drive the convergence of complex traditions worldwide. The predictable development of the cultural manifold reflects the capacity of humans to sculpt traditions that apparently provide them with what they want, attesting to the importance of subjective selection in shaping human culture.
Why does research on Neanderthals attract public attention far beyond its immediate scientific relevance? Such fascination may reflect more than intellectual curiosity; it may involve the activation of deep symbolic structures that Carl Jung termed the collective unconscious. Integrating evolutionary biology, genomics, paleoanthropology, and psychology, I address a question Jung did not explicitly pose: when, along the human evolution, did the collective unconscious originate? I argue that this structure emerged gradually rather than suddenly. Homo erectus established a cognitive floor characterized by basic schemas of fear, group cohesion, and hierarchy, without evidence of symbolic elaboration. Homo heidelbergensis, the common ancestor of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, is proposed as the strongest candidate for the emergence of proto-archetypal cognition, given its enlarged brain, social complexity, and possible forms of mortuary behavior. The symbolic system was operational in Neanderthals and archaic H. sapiens and became fully visible with the symbolic expression of the Upper Paleolithic. I further introduce the concept of the “incorporated other” to explain the distinctive psychological salience of Neanderthals and Denisovans. Unlike other extinct organisms, these archaic humans remain present in contemporary populations through genetic introgression, collapsing boundaries between self and other, past and present. I propose that this condition contributes to public fascination in ways not fully explained by resemblance, category ambiguity, intuitive essentialism, or the uncanny. The “incorporated other” predicts that genetic incorporation itself increases perceived self-relevance and engagement, even when similarity is held constant. Neanderthals are therefore psychologically salient because they are simultaneously extinct and biologically present.
Social psychology presents itself as liberal, yet its dominant narratives-obedience, cruelty, conformity, and bias-reflect a persistently pessimistic portrayal of human nature. Here I argue that this pattern is structurally produced. A two-level framework distinguishes the content level, in which pessimistic narratives circulate, from the structural level, in which incentive regimes in academic publishing, media, and pedagogy systematically select and stabilize that content. Two mechanisms are identified. A market-selection mechanism explains why attention economies favor dramatic, morally arousing findings. An institutional-stabilization mechanism explains why pessimistic narratives prove especially durable: They participate in the constitutive logic of the "psy-complex," in which psychological expertise gains authority by rendering human conduct legible as a problem requiring expert correction. Findings that portray ordinary people as biased, obedient, or morally fragile are apt to generate the remediation apparatus on which the field's social legitimacy depends. Archival evidence shows that classic studies were staged and selectively framed to produce pessimistic morals. The replication crisis retroactively identified much of this content as incentive-compatible rather than epistemically robust. Reform efforts (e.g., registered reports, open data, equity-oriented partnerships) can address the market-selection side; changing the institutional-stabilization dynamic requires reflexive attention to whose interests a deficit-focused discipline serves.
Jan-Erik Lönnqvist· Perspectives on Psychologica...· 0 citations
Social acceleration is not an accidental feature of contemporary societies but the organizing principle of a modernity that must continuously increase its rates of production, change, and innovation in order to sustain its own conditions of existence. This article examines whether qualitatively different temporalities can be produced within this structure, allowing for a relationship with time that is not reducible to the logic of optimization. The argument unfolds on three interconnected levels. First, acceleration is analyzed as a form of temporal domination that affects distinct social groups differently and colonizes the subjective experience of time in ways that go beyond mere scarcity. Second, the two most influential responses in contemporary theoretical debate, resonance theory and the theses of polar inertia and exhaustion, are examined with attention to both their specific contributions and the limitations they share. Third, religious and contemplative traditions are explored as systems of temporal organization that operate through mechanisms of decoupling from capitalist speed, and this dimension is articulated within the sociological perspective of plural temporalities. The article draws on the sociology of religion, Berger's concept of the sacred canopy, Taylor's account of secular modernity, Casanova's analysis of public religion, Hervieu-Leger's notion of religion as a chain of memory, and the phenomenology of religious experience developed by James and Otto, arguing that religious traditions do not persist in modernity despite acceleration but because they offer precisely what an accelerated society cannot produce from within its own logic: collective pause, structured silence, anxiety-free waiting, non-linear cycles, and transcendence as a horizon of meaning irreducible to utility. A critical account of religious formations compatible with or reinforcing acceleration, from prosperity theology to corporate mindfulness, is incorporated to qualify the argument and to specify the conditions under which temporal decoupling is genuine rather than compensatory.
C. de Angelis· International Journal of Soc...· 0 citations
The cosmological worldview of the Dayak communities has long been reflected in various cultural practices, yet studies examining the underlying symbolic structure that integrates these practices remain limited. This study aims to analyze the fourfold cosmological structure (serba empat) as the deep symbolic system underlying the culture of the Dayak communities along the Barito River, Central Kalimantan. Employing a qualitative ethnographic approach, the study utilizes field observations, in-depth interviews, documentation, and textual analysis of customary traditions. Data were analyzed using Claude Lévi-Strauss's structural anthropology through the processes of data reduction, categorization, structural interpretation, and verification. The findings reveal that the serba empat cosmology constitutes the underlying cultural structure that organizes ritual practices, traditional architecture, settlement patterns, agricultural activities, healing traditions, oral narratives, and customary institutions. Rather than functioning merely as a numerical concept or ritual convention, the fourfold principle serves as a symbolic framework that integrates relationships among humans, nature, ancestors, and the supernatural. The study further demonstrates that the continuity of Dayak culture is maintained through the persistence of this deep symbolic structure despite religious and social transformations. Theoretically, the findings extend Lévi-Strauss's structural anthropology beyond myth analysis by demonstrating that indigenous cosmology functions as an organizing framework connecting symbolic systems, indigenous knowledge, and cultural practices. This study contributes to the broader understanding of indigenous cosmology and provides a structural perspective for future comparative research on the cultural systems of indigenous societies in Southeast Asia.
Imam Qalyubi, Apni Ranti, Misrita Misrita et al.· International Journal of Pos...· 0 citations
This conceptual study examines how selected cultural and social theories explain human well-being, social order, and the search for meaning. Rather than attempting to rank all cultural theories empirically, the article evaluates the explanatory usefulness of perspectives that address social integration, motivation, alienation, self-realization, altruism, spirituality, and existential purpose. Using a qualitative interdisciplinary design, the study compares ideas associated with Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, Abraham Maslow, Viktor Frankl, Erich Fromm, Pitirim Sorokin, William James, Mircea Eliade, and related thinkers. A thought experiment concerning an individual separated from conventional institutions is used to distinguish needs that depend primarily on social structures from questions of purpose, identity, morality, and transcendence that may remain meaningful even in their absence. The synthesis identifies five recurrent dimensions of human flourishing: material security, social belonging, meaningful purpose, moral responsibility, and opportunities for self-transcendence. On this basis, the article proposes the 'Order of Life' as a heuristic integrative framework intended to balance individual freedom with responsibility, material well-being with inner development, and personal fulfillment with service to others. The framework is presented as a conceptual model rather than an empirically validated social system. The study concludes that cultural and social analysis is strengthened when human beings are treated not only as economic, political, or biological actors, but also as meaning-making persons whose relational, moral, intellectual, and spiritual capacities influence social harmony.
Elza Mammadova, Amal Huseynov· Porta Universorum· 0 citations
As so-called artificial intelligence diffuses throughout society, a growing body of critical texts contests its dominant sociotechnical imaginaries. To understand how these critiques are organized, this paper reconstructs the internal grammar of a corpus of 252 English-language critical texts. Each text is assigned a node, the domain its critique is rooted in (society, capital, technology, or the nation-state), and a critique mode, the strategy it argues through (immanent, reframing, or structural). What each mode can and cannot contest is then examined. Across the four nodes, these texts contest the dominant AI imaginary as a self-justifying financial trajectory (capital), an autonomous cognitive trajectory (technology), an irreversible social force (society), and a governable geopolitical technology (state). The findings also indicate strong correlations across the texts examined here. Capital-focused texts lean overwhelmingly toward structural critique, technology-focused texts tend toward immanent critique, state-focused texts favor reframing, and society-focused texts split between reframing and structural approaches. The analysis points toward an asymmetry, indicating that the deeper the challenge to the imaginary's conditions, the less it registers within the vocabulary the imaginary itself recognizes as valid. State institutions sustain this asymmetry by keeping structural claims out of policy, and market culture by recasting them as matters of preference.
Nurullah Karaca· İstanbul Üniversitesi Sosyol...· 0 citations
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