Social

I was a young student looking for a good paying job to support my family and my studies. On that day, I found myself in the head nurse’s office at the nearby nursing home for the elderly.

Maria is 21 years old. She is in her third year at the Academy of Economic Studies and has been working and paying rent for a year. Ever since she reached economic independence, she started going out in the city and being very concerned about the way she looks.

When a closed window shade becomes an SOS sent by those used to living on their own but afraid of dying alone, something has fundamentally changed in a society that not long ago valued human relationships.

In 2004, Frank Warren, an American businessman, had "a crazy idea," as he himself describes it. He printed 3,000 postcards, wrote his address on them and a series of instructions, then left space on the back for the sender to write secrets they had never shared with anyone before.

Self-sacrifice—the ability of some people to put the lives of others above their own—is not at all easy to understand.

Henri Nouwen once wrote about some trapeze artists who became his friends, emphasising the perfect synchronicity between them and the total trust that the one who jumps has when he lets go of the trapeze and remains in the air for a second, waiting to be caught by his teammate. But what if, at the last moment, when it is too late to...

Nine years ago, as my then-fiancé and I were deep in the throes of folding paper flowers, painting glass bottles, and designing and making our own wedding stationery, the question popped up fairly regularly: Why don’t we just elope?

“If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone” (Romans 12:18).

The generation born with the tablet and the smartphone in its arms, but which ends up being exploited by big data cultivators and controlled by radicalization and polarization, can become the generation that implements anti-democratic movements.

Five decades ago, when the World Organization for Social Psychiatry was established, many thought it was a joke. Others, being more analytical, tried to prove that mental illness can only be an individual experience; that the problem always exists only in an individual and never in a group.

“We shrivel when we are not able to interact. We depend on the other in order for us to be fully who we are” (Desmond Tutu).

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone" (Blaise Pascal).

Education is essential for the survival of any social group, since a community ensures its existence and development only by passing on to the next generation the knowledge it has accumulated, the power it derives from it and its ideological aspirations.

"You? Fat? No way!" "With all due respect, officer, that wasn't a red light!" Every day, billions of lies leave the mouths of billions of people. Lying is a moral pollution that we declare harmful, but seem to believe is indispensable in life.

Before the age of two, most children think the world revolves around them. From their point of view, what they think and how they feel must be what others think and feel, too. They don’t have the concept that other people have different needs and perspectives. It’s why if they can’t see you when they’re playing hide-and-seek, they believe you surely can’t see...