Society

Society articles offer in-depth analysis and opinion on social policy, ethics, entertainment, philosophy, and broader cultural dynamics — exploring their impacts on individual liberty, community, family, faith, human dignity, open dialogue, and everyday social life.

We critically examine pressing issues like the erosion of intellectual courage and dissidence, betrayal by institutions (including churches), declining quality in entertainment and movies, harms from lockdown policies exceeding pandemic effects, rising totalitarianism as an assault on the soul, dangers of universal basic income as modern control, autism societal understanding, fear-based societal nightmares, and pathways to reclaim human nature through community support, personal freedoms, and nobler alternatives to past ideologies. Brownstone provides alternative perspectives on restoring truth, dignity, and healthy society amid institutional failures and technocratic threats.

All society articles from Brownstone Institute are translated into multiple languages to reach a global audience, encourage international discussion, and inspire readers worldwide to defend cultural values, ethical principles, and human connections.

A Manual for Post-Pandemic Germophobia Therapy

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that living in the modern world has left most people, including journalists, politicians, physicians, and even many scientists, with little or no appreciation of how important their relationship with microbes is to their overall health. Not just bacteria and fungi, but also viruses, too.

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A Letter to Send to Venues that Exclude the Unvaccinated

Vaccination is effective at preventing the vaccinated from suffering serious consequences from Covid. (And children naturally are at virtually no risk from Covid.) Therefore, those of your patrons who choose not to be vaccinated personally bear the costs of their choice without imposing any costs on those of your patrons who are vaccinated. So your requirement of vaccination is pointless.

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Seven Theories of Why the Lockdowns Happened

The combination of mass hysteria, self-interest, authoritarian politics, and an unacknowledged purity cult brings many, many unfortunate outcomes. Most obvious is the multipronged assault on humanity, the prohibition of or restrictions on many important human activities, from worship and shopping to educating the young and visiting the ill. There is also subtler damage to healthcare, social trust, social unity, trust in the media, and whatever was left of constitutional democracy.

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How Covid Panic Destroyed Communities: Our Church and My Story

Shutting down everything couldn’t last indefinitely, and people couldn’t avoid being in personal proximity indefinitely without serious consequences. The virus was going to spread no matter what we did. With too much separation and fear of one another, we would cease to function as a community and couldn’t help others.

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The Medical Objectification of the Human Person

The pandemic has turbocharged this process of medical objectification. We are no longer individuals, with unique desires, responses, wishes and drives, but rather are primarily considered by policy makers to be infection risks. Once we are primarily objects, rather than diverse human beings, it then becomes legitimate for medical procedures to be mandated, mask wearing to be forced, or our movements to be tracked and traced.

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