Category: Life lessons — 218
Not guilty — but defend yourself
Public conversation about safety slides easily either into blaming the victim or into denying any personal precaution. These questions need to be kept apart: responsibility lies with the criminal, and…
The plot is doing something
School habit demands of a work of art a main idea that can be retold in one sentence. A good work does not always deliver a thesis: it can create…
A Breakup Without the Performance
Relationship culture likes two endings: a loud showdown with every accusation laid out, or a graceful disappearance without a word. Most close relationships are better served by a simpler kind…
A Useful Chunk
A big project rarely gets done in one move. There is not enough money, people, information, or any way to stop the current work until the new thing is finished.…
Blackmail and Threats
Blackmail works while keeping the secret seems more important than any demand. The first concession rarely closes the matter. It confirms that the lever works. After it the price usually…
Consuming and Creating
The culture of self-realisation sometimes looks at the viewer and the reader as passive consumers of someone else’s life. But a film, a game and a book give real experience;…
Taste Grows Both Ways
Cultural hierarchy likes to divide art into the complex, which develops you, and the simple, which only entertains. In fact complexity widens perception, but by itself it produces no value.…
Love Does Not Have to Be Earned
A romantic plot is often built around conquest: through the right deeds, patience and persistence the hero earns another person’s love. In real life, attention and closeness are not a…
The Frog or the Appetiser
Productivity culture offers two opposite rituals: swallow the most unpleasant task first, or warm up on the easiest one. Both pieces of advice sound universal, although they work in different…
Walk away before the fight
The culture of manhood still offers to prove your worth by a readiness to accept a physical challenge. The best outcome of a fight, however, is not finding out who…
Long Reading
Books train the ability to hold a long thought. Not because paper is morally superior to a screen. A book simply creates a space where an argument, a story or…
Character Under Load
An unusual or difficult setting shows sides of a person that are rarely visible across an ordinary table. Travel, working together, illness, lack of sleep and a delayed flight all…
The First Five Minutes
A big task is frightening for more than its size. It requires moving from a state where nothing is happening into a state of work. That transition is often more…
Alcohol and Other People’s Pressure
Holiday culture makes alcohol a sign of trust, adulthood and belonging to the group. So refusing a glass often has to be defended harder than the decision to drink. Which…
Risk Without Applause
A culture of bravery likes risk when it looks good; a culture of safety demands it be eliminated entirely. It is more sensible to distinguish risk taken for a result…
A person is not always more important than a book
Family morality is happy to declare any live conversation more important than any book, music, work or solitude. A person close to you may well be irreplaceable, but that does…
Friendship of Different Depths
The culture of friendship likes one lofty word for very different relationships, and then demands from every acquaintance complete loyalty, closeness and readiness to come to the rescue. Not every…
While the Task Is Young
A new task contains more information than it looks like it does. We still remember the conversation, we understand the context, we know where the materials are, and we can…
Insure the unbearable
Insurance is especially useful where an event is unlikely but its consequences cannot be paid for calmly. A house fire, heavy liability towards a third party or large medical bills…
The Information Diet
News, television and social networks do not contain “nothing important at all”. Through them people learn about wars, laws, epidemics, work, culture and the lives of their friends. The problem…