Social

The wind is blowing and it is snowing at the Siret Customs Point. Refugee groups stream by, women with children clinging to them, and the words of a little girl from another war, concluded almost eight decades ago, keep running through my mind: “And this was imprinted in my mind, that when my father is not home, it is war.”

By 2030, epidemics will be eradicated; life, rejuvenated by injections, giving lifespans of 150 years; and cars almost obsolete with aeroplane ownership common. These were the 1930 predictions of FE Smith, a British politician and friend of Winston Churchill.

We often associate divorce with the unhappiness of adults who reprehensibly decide to go their separate ways. For under-age brides Noora and Nujood, however, divorce was their escape from a nightmare of domestic violence and abuse, into which they were thrown at a young age by their own families.

In young children, we know having inadequate sleep can affect their mood. As your child grows older, the effect of lack of sleep worsens to the point where they become at higher risk of mental health issues and academic problems. Not only that, a habit of staying up late can also negatively impact their health and wellbeing.

In times of anxiety and insecurity, the ways in which we are encouraged to care for our emotional and mental health can become mere trends that come and go in waves, taking with them our money, time, and hope—and sometimes leaving us in a state which is at least as bad as what we were in originally.

It is as surprising as it is real: negative characters like Dexter Morgan, from the eponymous Dexter, and Walter White, from Breaking Bad, have been cropping up in popular culture more and more often lately. Since when, how, and why have anti-heroes gained so much popularity?

In the age of the internet and the “global village,” an irrational fear taking hold in a small American town can easily go viral, reaching and affecting us all. Once online, news—whether true or false—can have a corrosive effect, leading us to feel cynical about the future and to hold low expectations for our leaders.

The fight against the new coronavirus is accompanied by several parallel fights, including the fight against fear, which can turn into panic—one of the most dangerous social phenomena.

On 17 March 2018, the world felt naked thanks to social media giant Facebook. It was confirmed that 87 million users’ personal information had been shared through an app developed by British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.

What do you do when things go wrong and everything around you seems to crumble? Do you keep your eyes forward and try to find a solution? Or do you fall into endless complaining?

The song, “People Get Ready” was inspired by Martin Luther King Jr’s march on Washington and his “I have a dream” speech. In writing it the following year (1964), Curtis Mayfield not only captured the spirit of the march but created a song that caught the mood of the times and injected hope: “There’s a train a-comin’… . You don’t need no ticket,...

For anyone who has spent any time in a church context or has encountered some form of Christianity, the significance of the story of Jesus is often assumed and then summarised in the single best-known Bible verse: “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but...

If the death of our parents is a blow which makes “the very fabric of life…buckle and cave in,” the ageing of our parents resembles a classroom where we learn to give more than we are used to receiving.

"Life is hard," my three-year-old niece says with conviction, while munching on a biscuit. "But it's beautiful," her mother quickly corrects her. "No, no, life is hard," the little girl insists. For parents, this is of course a funny scene to share with friends on Facebook. However, ironically, right under the posted video is a clip of a televised debate between an anti-vaccine...

"Man is born free but everywhere is in chains." (Jean-Jacques Rousseau)