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Psychologists call it "learned helplessness". People just call it "it is what it is". Both terms describe the same phenomenon: the exhaustion that comes from trying to maintain the belief that their efforts matter.

Recently, my wife and I got hooked on a TV show. We’d wait in anticipation for the latest episode each week. The show was Old people’s home for 4-year-olds. The basic premise? Take a class of cheeky, energetic, curious four-year-olds (some of who lacked a filter) and have them spend a significant amount of time with the elderly residents of an aged-care facility.

Before I started looking for the meaning of life, I thought I had already found it. Or, that it had been given to me. In the world I came from, the road was clearly laid out. My life's major events were all mapped out, and precious little was negotiable.

Compromise is always present in relationships. It may pull us down, but it can also be a good reconciliation exercise when there are differences that cannot be resolved in any other way.

After Jesus was born—that is, in the era we call Anno Domini (AD)—the history of mankind was different from that of Christianity. As it is known, the latter was not the history of a triumphant march of Christianity towards its universalization and the unification of the human race. On the contrary, this history can rather be characterised as a manifestation of “the great...

Dr Peter Landless presents a fascinating history of transformation within his native South Africa, a transformation which has impacted the world.

Ancient Greek athletes consumed large amounts of meat, believing that their performance was due to the animal protein it contained. This idea was later strongly supported in the 19th century by the chemist and physiologist Justus von Liebig, who proposed that protein is the main substance for building muscle.

“I condemn Christianity; I bring against the Christian church the most terrible of all the accusations that an accuser has ever had in his mouth... The Christian church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and every integrity into baseness of soul... the cross as the distinguishing mark of the...

Interpreting Scripture is a book published by the Biblical Research Institute in the USA. It is aimed at people who want to understand the Bible better.

“Mister Watson, come here, I want to see you.” With this message, Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant, Thomas Watson, launched the telephone. The door had opened to distant, personal and instant contact.

At the beginning of the 15th century, the threat of the Ottoman Empire to Eastern Europe was a painful certainty. The last Byzantines, aware of the ensuing disaster, called on Western aid, seeking political union with the Roman Catholic Church.

Earthquakes have always struck fear into the hearts of people who didn't know why the earth was shaking but who saw how easily their possessions or loved ones could be lost to such tremors.

Do you remember the man who was supposed to marry Rose in Titanic? He dressed exceptionally well, had slick brown hair and was from a family of great wealth. His character was based on the life of a man named Caledon Hockey. He survived the shipwreck but not the Wall Street Crash. When the stock market fell in 1929, Cal’s money and everyone else’s plummeted...

Over 30 years ago, Bruce Farrer, a teacher at Bert Fox Community High School in Saskatchewan, set his Year 9 students a special assignment and made them a promise. Many years later, his former students were in for an extraordinary surprise when their teacher kept his promise to the letter.

Should we be optimistic or pessimistic about our future? This is a question even specialists are concerned with, and it cannot be answered easily. It is difficult to predict what the future holds.