With this category of regrets, something similar might be happening—a foundation attribution error. We attribute these failures, in ourselves and others, to personal choices when they’re often at least partly the result of circumstances we can’t control.[*] That means that the fix for foundation regrets, and a way to avoid them, is not only to change the person, but to reconfigure that person’s situation, setting, and environment. We must create the conditions at every level—society, community, and family—to improve individuals’ foundational choices.
