Essentially, we humans live well enough and long enough, and are smart enough, to generate all sorts of stressful events purely in our heads.

What happened in the milliseconds before a behavior to cause it? That's in the neurobiological realm.

We live well enough to have the luxury to get ourselves sick with purely social, psychological stress.

The most important point of [Susan] Fiske's work is that it provides a taxonomy for our differing feelings about different Thems - sometimes fear, sometimes ridicule, sometimes contemptuous pity, sometimes savagery.

...I might continue to believe that there is no god even if it were proved that there is. A religious friend of mine once remarked that the concept of god is useful, because you can berate god during the bad times. But it is clear to me that I don't need to believe there is a god in order to berate him.

Hormones influencing the sensitivity of the person to environmental stimuli.

Get it wrong, and we call it a cult. Get it right, in the right time and the right place, and maybe, for the next few millennia, people won't have to go to work on your birthday.