Psychologyspeaking topic
“To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable.”
— Erich Fromm, Man for Himself (1947)
practice with this topic
Set the timer (5-30 min), take 20 seconds of prep if you like, start talking. Jot your thoughts onto the sticky-note board.
similar topics
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- Nostalgia as a coping mechanism, retreating into remembered simpler times as an answer to climate anxiety and economic uncertainty.
- A text arrives saying 'I was just thinking about you', right as you were thinking of them, and you call it an incredible coincidence. But you never counted the thousands of times you thought of someone and no text came. Why does the mind tally the meaningful hits and ignore all the misses?
- Cognitive ease: why are we inclined to believe a sentence that reads smoothly? When a text feels familiar and frictionless, why does the brain stamp it 'trustworthy'?