Strategies Topics

The most important distinction between aggression and assertion is its intent. During assertion, we move ourselves toward another; during aggression, we move ourselves against another. Assertion is vital within a relationship. Aggression is not.... The truth is, reports indicate that both men and women enjoy a partner who is assertive. Such a partner eliminates the need for second-guessing and mind-reading. Such a partner gives his or her mate implicit permission to be similarly assertive. Aggression, however, often evokes more aggression—thrusts, parries, and strategies for defense.
—Georgia Lanoil (b. 1940s)

Television and Disneyland operate similarly, by means of extraction, reduction, and recombination, to create an entirely new, antigeographical space. On TV, the endlessly bizarre juxtapositions of the daily broadcast schedule continuously erode traditional strategies of coherence. The quintessential experience of television, that continuous program-hopping zap from the remote control, creates path after unique path through the infinity of televised space. Likewise, Disneyland, with its channel-turning mingle of history and fantasy, reality and simulation, invents a way of encountering the physical world that increasingly characterizes daily life.
—Michael Sorkin (b. 1948)

The family environment in which your children are growing up is different from that in which you grew up. The decisions our parents made and the strategies they used were developed in a different context from what we face today, even if the “content” of the problem is the same. It is a mistake to think that our own experience as children and adolescents will give us all we need to help our children. The rules of the game have changed.
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)