All posts tagged: collective

Park Chan-wook, director of ‘No Other Choice,’ still believes in the power of collective values

Park Chan-wook, director of ‘No Other Choice,’ still believes in the power of collective values

Published by Sam Flores

Park Chan-wook at the Venice International Film Festival, August 29, 2025. ALESSANDRA TARANTINO/INVISION/AP “Tell us, what is your greatest weakness?” This question comes up during a job interview in No Other Choice, Park Chan-wook’s latest film. The protagonist, You Man-su, played by actor Lee Byung-hun, knows this moment is crucial. He stammers out a hesitant “I refuse,” leaving his interviewers dumbfounded. After an awkward pause and a glance at the sun, he finally adds, “is not part of my vocabulary.” The very next scene makes it clear that he will not get the job. When asked remotely about his own worst flaw, the 62-year-old director from South Korea did not hesitate. “I would say my inability to adapt to real life. For example, I don’t like driving and my wife often reproaches me for it. I’m also very bad at anything administrative, like going to the bank.” Fortunately, Park has other strengths. Chief among them is his ability to twist reality in his films to reveal its underlying impulses and darkness; he transcends everyday turmoil …

Why Kind People Join Cruel Crowds: Risk of Collective Sadism

Why Kind People Join Cruel Crowds: Risk of Collective Sadism

Published by Jenni Sidey

Sadists are those people who take pleasure in the pain others experience. Although sadism has been recognized as a behavioral concern for over 100 years (Krafft-Ebing, 1898), Millon (2011) identified four distinct expressions of sadism, each driven by different psychological needs. Understanding these forms helps us recognize how cruelty shows up in everyday life and in broader social movements. Spineless sadism is marked by insecurity, false bravado, and cowardice. Tyrannical sadism is driven by the desire to use and abuse power. Enforcing sadism is expressed by individuals who take pleasure enforcing punishment on those they feel “deserve” it. Explosive sadism shows up in people whose cruelty erupts in unpredictable ways, and their fury can spill over everyone in their vicinity. Is there a Normal Level of Sadism? Not every spectator at a paramilitary operation or UFC match is a sadist, but many people do possess mild sadistic tendencies. The “everyday sadist” exhibits a willingness to go to some effort to cause suffering for another (Buckels et al., 2013). They may make jokes at others’ expense, …

Guidance on collective worship to be reviewed, Government says

Guidance on collective worship to be reviewed, Government says

Published by Sam Flores

The National Secular Society has called for an end to the law requiring schools to hold daily acts of collective worship, after the Government said it will update guidance on this law. The law in England and Wales requires that children at all maintained schools “shall on each school day take part in an act of collective worship”. Even in schools with no religious character, the worship must be “wholly or mainly of a Christian character”. A Supreme Court ruling last year found collective worship in Northern Ireland, where the law is similar, breaches children’s and parent’s rights to freedom of religion or belief under the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), because it is not “objective, critical and pluralistic”. The court found that the right of parents to withdraw children from collective worship is insufficient, because doing so could place “undue burden” on the parents in the case by exposing their nonreligious beliefs to the school community or leading them to being viewed as “difficult or awkward”. The Department for Education told the NSS …

First NI teacher in at least a decade opted out of RE and Collective Worship – Humanists UK

First NI teacher in at least a decade opted out of RE and Collective Worship – Humanists UK

Published by Sam Flores

A Northern Ireland primary school teacher, Javed Love, has spoken out after using a little-known legal right to withdraw from delivering Religious Education (RE) and Collective Worship in a controlled school, solely on grounds of conscience. A Freedom of Information request he obtained suggests this is the first time in at least a decade the right has been used by a teacher in a controlled school, highlighting how poorly communicated it is. He was prompted to opt out in light of the recent Supreme Court judgment that ruled that Northern Ireland’s exclusively Christian RE and Collective Worship amounted to ‘indoctrination’, and warned that opt-out systems place an undue burden on parents – concerns Mr Love says apply equally to staff. Javed is now partnering with Northern Ireland Humanists to guide other teachers in how to do the same. As the FOI response to Mr Love confirmed, no requests for withdrawal from a teacher in a controlled school had been provided to the Education Authority by Boards of Governors over the past 10 years. Northern Ireland …

Iran in collective shock after bloody crackdown

Iran in collective shock after bloody crackdown

Published by Sam Flores

During the burial of Mohammad Mozafari at the Yengi Emam Cemetery, 25 kilometers from Karaj, Iran, January 14, 2026. ANONYMOUS PHOTOGRAPHER “Death dust everywhere.” This Persian expression is being constantly repeated by Iranians to describe the atmosphere that has prevailed across the country following the bloody crackdown on the latest wave of protests. It reflects a sense of depression and of suffocating heaviness, as if all life and vitality had been crushed. Internet access has remained cut off for the most part since January 8, the date of mass demonstrations against the Islamic Republic, which authorities responded to by firing live ammunition at protesters. Recently, however, technical glitches have enabled a growing number of Iranians to briefly connect to the internet using VPNs, which has allowed them to grasp the scale of the repression by the Iranian regime – which is entirely unmatched compared to previous waves. “I have absolutely no control over my psychological state. I have been doing very badly since I saw the photos and videos of the lifeless bodies in various …

Collective narcissism fueled the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” movement on Twitter

Collective narcissism fueled the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” movement on Twitter

Published by José Betancourt

Social media platforms witnessed a surge in intense political debate following the 2020 United States presidential election. New research indicates that a specific psychological trait known as collective narcissism played a primary role in fueling the “Stop the Steal” movement on Twitter. The study finds that messages expressing an exaggerated sense of group importance combined with victimhood were more likely to go viral. These findings regarding online political behavior appeared in the journal New Media & Society. Social psychologists describe collective narcissism as a belief system where individuals view their own group as exceptional. This belief is not merely about pride. It comes with a deep conviction that the group is not receiving the recognition or privilege it deserves from others. When the group faces a perceived threat, such as an election loss, this psychological trait can drive intense hostility toward outsiders. Liwei Shen, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, led the investigation into how this dynamic functions online. The research team included Yibing Sun, Luhang Sun, Yun-Shiuan Chuang, and Kaiping Chen. They sought …

Repeal outdated collective worship laws, NSS urges Government

Repeal outdated collective worship laws, NSS urges Government

Published by Sam Flores

The National Secular Society has urged the Government to abolish the statutory requirement for collective worship in publicly funded schools in England, following a landmark Supreme Court ruling which found collective worship in Northern Ireland breaches human rights. The law in England requires that children at all maintained schools “shall on each school day take part in an act of collective worship”. Even in schools with no religious character, the worship must be “wholly or mainly of a Christian character”. Similarly, Northern Ireland compels state-funded schools to “include collective worship whether in one or more than one assembly” every day. Writing to Secretary of State for Education Bridget Phillipson, the NSS said the Court’s ruling provides a “clear opportunity for principled reform”, with many of the fundamental human rights conflicts “equally present in England’s collective worship law”. The judgment clarified that education and school practices which are not delivered in an objective, critical and pluralistic manner amount to “pursuing the aim of indoctrination”, thereby breaching human rights law. Additionally, it found NI’s approach to religious …

Shaping Each Other’s Vision: Collective Intentionality and the Zohran Mamdani Campaign

Shaping Each Other’s Vision: Collective Intentionality and the Zohran Mamdani Campaign

Published by Jenni Sidey

This year began with Zohran Mamdani taking office as the Mayor of New York City, after having run what has been widely lauded as one of the most distinct and successful political campaigns of modern history. Mamdani’s campaign is unique and his success extraordinary in several respects: he went from polling at 1% to defeating his opponents by a landslide margin in just over one year; his campaign recruited over one hundred thousand volunteers, engaging first-time voters and immigrants typically overlooked or deliberately excluded from electoral politics; and his platform was centered on affordability—not only the most deeply felt issue for the vast majority of New Yorkers (and, increasingly, others around the country), but also something which requires Mamdani to challenge power directly, taking on the billionaires who have built well-entrenched and complex systems of profit designed to make themselves even wealthier. What, if anything, can contemporary analytic philosophy do to help us understand the phenomena at play in the Mamdani campaign? And likewise, how can political movements such as the Mamdani campaign better inform …

The Supreme Court has spoken. Now collective worship laws must go

The Supreme Court has spoken. Now collective worship laws must go

Published by Sam Flores

Every so often, a judgment comes along which resets the terms of a debate that has drifted on for decades. The UK Supreme Court’s ruling in JR87, concerning a Belfast primary school’s approach to religious education (RE) and collective worship, is one of them. Its implications extend beyond Northern Ireland. They speak directly to long-ignored human rights concerns around the rest of the UK’s collective worship laws – concerns ministers and legislators can’t simply shrug off any longer. At the centre of the case was a state school where RE followed a Christian-centric syllabus and collective worship was Bible-based, and a family who chose to challenge these long-standing arrangements in Northern Ireland. The family argued the arrangements were incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. The Supreme Court found the school’s setup breached Article 2 of Protocol 1 – the right to education, which includes respect for parents’ convictions – read alongside Article 9’s protections for freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. The Court agreed that what children experienced wasn’t “objective, critical and pluralistic” …

Welsh Government must urgently review collective worship laws in light of Supreme Court ruling – Humanists UK

Welsh Government must urgently review collective worship laws in light of Supreme Court ruling – Humanists UK

Published by Sam Flores

Today, a landmark decision by the Supreme Court has found that mandatory Christian collective worship in schools in Northern Ireland amounts to indoctrination. In view of this, Wales Humanists has said that the Welsh Government needs to immediately initiate a review of the statutory requirement for collective worship in Welsh schools. Wales has identical requirements around collective worship to Northern Ireland. The judgment found that the collective worship laws are not sufficiently ‘objective, critical, and pluralistic’. Parental withdrawal is not a sufficient solution to this, as it requires students to be pulled out of important communal activities such as other parts of school assemblies and often left with little alternative. The judges also found that it is stigmatising to such students. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has also previously called for the nations of the UK to allow students under the age of 16 to withdraw from collective worship without the need for parental consent. The laws on collective worship go back to 1944, when the country was much less diverse …