How To Break Anything

Thoughts and insights on culture and human behavior, living blissfully at the intersection of rationality and irrationality (but mostly irrationality)

I sometimes wish we could freeze a person and examine - in a very comprehensive way - how any one person's thoughts and experiences have led them to see the world in the very specific way they perceive it. Why any one person is exactly where they are, making the decisions they believe they are making, when they could be in an infinite number of other places, thinking and deciding an infinite number of other things.

This site exists because I've come to believe that we learn something from everything we experience. It's not always big. It's not always what we expect it to be. We might think it's contrary to what we already know. Or believe. But it's always something. And it always has a greater impact on our choices and experiences than we ever realize.

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Kyle Cameron Studstill

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worry

May 26, 2010

From the PlayReport, an IKEA-sponsored survey on child development and play

[Dr. Clark, co-author of Playreport]: We live in a cash-rich, time-poor society. What’s really interesting is that parents today spend four times more time with their children than they did in 1975. So actually we’re spending more time with our children, but we’re feeling more guilty than ever.

via psfk.com

I'm fascinated by the impact of sociocultural forces on entire emotions. This was something covered in a conversation with Monica Narula of the Absolution Exchange project, which looked at how to turn guilt into a social resource. My question of Monica was for her take on why guilt has developed into such a big part of our lives over the last century; her answer: Freud.