If people want to compete for leadership of a religious group, they can compete in piety. A chilling thought. Or funny.

Mormons... are so strong, they can handle wealth, they are confident. I think it is because they are not bogged down by rules for equality, but have a firmly defined system of relative status and responsible command.

Institutions have the pathetic megalomania of the computer whose whole vision of the world is its own program.

Where there is dirt there is system. Dirt is the byproduct of a systematic ordering and classification of matter.

I have increasingly, over the years, felt that religion today does our civilization more harm than good.

If we can abstract pathogenicity and hygiene from our notion of dirt, we are left with the old definition of dirt as matter out of place. This is a very suggestive approach. It implies two conditions: a set of ordered relations and a contrevention of that order. Dirt then, is never a unique, isolated event. Where there is dirt there is a system. Dirt is the by-product of a systematic ordering and classification of matter, in so far as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate elements.

I am sure it must be true that people opt out of the mainstream society because they feel that there are going to be no rewards for them, if they stay.