How Do You Know When to Stop?

The endurance of habit is as supportive as it is trapping. At the level of social structures, habits provide the cohesion that maintains forms of life. At the same time, they can institutionalize destructive tendencies, which become naturalized through their persistence. This conversation seeks to find the points at which these habits relinquish moments of decision: when the choice arises when to continue, when to move forward, and when to stop.

From the perspective of the human experience of being bound to time, psychosocial theorist Lisa Baraitser points to the relationship of temporality with states of depression. What can be learned from such states with respect to the ability to and desire for change, both individually and socially? Sociologist Bronislaw Szerszynski explores how different societies use cultural devices to establish and domesticate relations between the time of human life and the superhuman time of gods, heroes, and natural processes.