Emmy van Deurzen observes that psychological frameworks make judgement easy. They supply definitions—of sanity and its absence, of healthy development and its arrest, of the parent who went wrong and the psyche that bears the consequence. The definitions arrive pre-formed. The practitioner applies them. The person being assessed is seen through them.
[Read more]I reported a food safety issue to a company whose product I had purchased. The issue was specific, the report was clear, and the company acknowledged it. They escalated the matter internally and initiated whatever process such reports require. They thanked me for bringing it to their attention. The email was courteous and the tone appropriate to the situation.
[Read more]The phrase “Domestic Violence and Coercive Behaviour” suggests reach. It implies a system that sees into ordinary rooms, private routines, quiet control. But definition limits everything. “Domestic”, in the legislation, means romantic or de facto partnership.
Violence that occurs elsewhere is renamed disagreement. Control between flatmates or colleagues is not domestic. Dependency is measured by affection.
[Read more]I spend several thousand dollars a year at local independent businesses. Not as a matter of habit or proximity but as a deliberate choice. Small businesses in my neighbourhood are struggling.
[Read more]Conservatism, as a word, is used to describe a political position. It is also used to describe a temperament, a disposition toward the familiar, a preference for the known over the unknown that has nothing necessarily to do with any political programme.
[Read more]The archive does not begin with the present. It begins with what accumulated before the present existed, layer upon layer of previous arrangements, each one added to address a problem the layer beneath it created or failed to solve, each one carrying forward the assumptions of the layer it was placed on top of.
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