Author: Роман Петров — 786
Stop First
The culture of heroism demands that in a crisis you act instantly and do not panic. The advice does little for a person who is already panicking; a short procedure…
Free Is Not Cheap
Market culture is good at noticing things with a price tag and worse at noticing things that only become visible once they are gone. Air, trust, language, safety and time…
Jealousy and Envy
Jealousy mixes several experiences: fear of loss, suspicion, wounded dignity, a wish to control, and a real breach of an agreement. Simply forbidding yourself to be jealous is hard and…
Curiosity with a screwdriver
The world gets clearer once things stop being black boxes. Why does a fridge move heat outwards while staying cold inside? How does water get to the top floor? Why…
What Is Marriage For?
No one calls a good thing a defect — in Russian the word for marriage does double duty. — Folk irony When marriage joined fields, debts and kin groups, the…
The Rules Were Written by Other People’s Mistakes
Overconfidence likes to treat instructions as redundant: they are written for the careless, and an experienced person can get by on common sense. In practice many rules are a short…
Money Is Not the Last Reason
The morality of vocation likes to set money against real work: a decent person picks meaning, and only someone with nothing to be proud of thinks about the pay. This…
Judge After You Reconstruct
Collective judgment likes ready-made motives: lazy, selfish, ungrateful, irresponsible. Someone else’s act is visible from the outside; their circumstances, knowledge and constraints are often not. Before condemning, it helps to…
Consent and Pace
Haste is good only when catching fleas. — Folk wisdom Two people enter an apartment voluntarily. One agrees to a kiss. Then to being touched. A minute later the responses…
The Strong Side
Self-improvement culture often tells you to start with your weaknesses, as if a person were a list of defects awaiting repair. Meanwhile we usually like what works out, and what…
Unfinished Work Has to Be Safe Too
Everyday culture judges safety by the moment of active work: the tool is switched off, so the danger is over. But an unfinished structure, an open container or a removed…
A “no” does not need an autopsy
Negotiation culture treats a refusal as an objection that has simply not been handled correctly yet. But a “no” is sometimes not an obstacle on the way to a deal…
Truth without a cult of candour
Public morality offers a simple ideal: an honest person always tells the whole truth. That formula fails to distinguish lying, privacy, confidentiality, tact and protection from danger. You have to…
Why Trust Accumulates Slowly
Trust, but verify. — A Russian proverb In the first round, a person repays a debt on time. That may mean reliability. It may mean wanting a second, larger loan.…
Homework
School folklore in families counts as a good parent the one who saves the child from a bad mark. As a result the homework improves the adult’s skills, while the…
School Is Not a Monopoly
The education system necessarily behaves as if knowledge fits inside a syllabus and ends on the last page of the textbook. A textbook does set a useful minimum route, but…
Work Begins Before the Work
Before starting, prepare not only the tool but also the space around it. Worth checking: whether there is enough room; whether there is light and ventilation; where the material will…
A Conversation with a Purpose
Before an important conversation it helps to work out what it is for. In “Getting to Yes,” Roger Fisher and William Ury proposed separating people from the problem, interests from…
A Cat in a Bag: People Under Incomplete Information
Man is a mystery. — F. M. Dostoevsky The seller of a used car knows what happened to the gearbox last winter. The buyer sees a clean body and hears…
“That’s Subtle”
Honesty does not oblige you to report every opinion, especially one that will help nobody. Someone shows you a new haircut, a painting, their child at the school concert or…