Wabi-Sabi

"Broadly, it's the aesthetic that finds beauty in imperfection and transcience: on buildings beaten by wind and rain, in rough-hewn objects that hint at their inevitable decay, on the asymmetrical chipped, off-kilter pottery used in the Japanese tea ceremony."

- Oliver Burkeman, This Column Will Change Your Life: The Beauty in Imperfection. Read the full article here.

Now, isn't that a wonderful concept?

[http://www.thisbutterflymind.blogspot.com]

A question of attribution?

This weekend, Oliver Burkeman's column in the Weekend Guardian 'This Column Will Change Your Life' covered an interesting concept, fundamental attribution error (FAE).

This means we fall into bias by overvaluing personality-based explanations - he was rude to me because he's a rude person - and undervaluing situational ones - he was rude because he's stressed about work. And we happily accept that our own personalities are a spectrum of emotions depending on the current (temporary) situation, but are unwilling or unable to attribute this to others. Apparently, FAE is less common in collectivist cultures ...

Interesting stuff. Perhaps more curious, how to address it in the hypocritical, hyper-critical snap judgements we casually make every day? Never judge a book by it's cover, I guess?