Social

Rape, torture, extrajudicial executions, and starvation are common practices in the North Korean prison system, dehumanising detainees to the point where they believe they deserve this treatment, according to a report published by a human rights monitoring body.

Love stories have a way of creeping into the foreground and convincing us that their effervescent debut is just the overture to a marriage that will always rekindle, in a different intensity, the same fireworks of beginnings.

Money is essential in our Western world. It allows us to purchase the necessities of life—food and shelter, for instance. It pays the bills for heating and cooling. There may even be enough for some luxuries.

The saying Spare the rod and spoil the child is deeply rooted in some cultures as saving discipline. Where does this idea come from and is it true that using the rod is next to godliness?

We walk into a room full of people and from the first second, we draw a conclusion about how we will feel in their company. And often what we intuited happens. How is this possible?

In the book, "Sisyphus: Or the Limits of Education," first published in German in 1925 by Siegfried Bemfeld, it is stated that education is limited by the personalities of the adults who take care of the children or students, the personalities of the educated, and the social environment in which the educational act takes place.

After 27 years of marriage, billionaire couple Bill and Melinda Gates publicly announced their divorce in May, sending shockwaves across the globe.

An argument with people who seem deaf to opposing views, instigating conflict, tribe against tribe, is probably a common experience for social media users. Some believe that it is so common that it should be the subject of a new field of research‒erisology, named after Eris, the goddess of discord in Greek mythology.

In a world of many predetermined things, friends are the family we choose for ourselves. Often, their presence is what keeps us going. In Vital Friends, Tom Rath says that many of those who end up on the streets, divorced, or addicted to overeating, struggle with inner demons precisely because they are alone. They feel excluded, abandoned, unloved.

At night, the main boulevard in Las Vegas is so crowded that in order to move forward you actually have to push your way through the motley crowd. People of all kinds fill the space already suffocated by the construction conglomerate, which is equally diverse.

Imagine yourself entering a shopping mall with your sunglasses on. Even though the lights are shining brightly, you cannot see them. Everything around you is dark and cold. But as soon as you remove your glasses, the world comes alive: the windows of the shops shine attractively, you see the brightly-coloured clothes, and the dazzling screen of the phone blinks with an incoming...

The inability of the mind to concentrate on what one is experiencing in a particular moment has the effect of overshadowing the joy of a day, even when the subject of the wandering thoughts is as pleasant as can be.

When I'm tired I can't love! Many times I have lived this reality and even assessed it as the exact end of love.

I just got back from the funeral of a fifty-four-year-old mother who left behind a grieving teenager. His father told how the boy wanted to ask his mother for forgiveness, on her deathbed, for all the stubbornness typical of a seventeen-year-old. He was already forgiven.

Couples do not break up because they fight, but because they do not know how to argue, relationship therapists say, underlining the functional components of the differences between partners.