e utopia Principles
Conditions, 2
The conditions that we either create or allow to exist in our communities determine to a great extent what kind of place we live in. Each of us has individual moral responsibility and free will. We can each try to be good people as individuals, but if we let our community fall apart it can’t be a Good Place. Some conditions encourage one type of behavior while discouraging others. If the place where we live continues to produce destructive behavior, then we need to investigate the conditions of our place and work to make it a better place. Over time, our chosen behaviors create the kinds of places we live in. Under any given set of circumstances any group of us will tend to act within a range of “normal” behavior for that particular set of circumstances. If you put a bunch of people out on a baseball field, outfit them in the uniforms of two different teams, give them bats, balls and gloves, put a crowd in the bleachers, sell hot dogs and then sing the national anthem, chances are pretty good that they will start playing baseball. Everybody pretty much knows the rules. They’ve seen people play baseball before. Even if people didn’t agree ahead of time to play, given these conditions, most likely a baseball game will start up. If we set up our communities so that kids don’t get any reinforcement at home for keeping up at school, adults aren’t around to direct their time after school, they don’t have anything to do all summer, but throughout the neighborhood different gangs offer something to belong to and offer kids something to do helping them to sell drugs, with pay, what do you think will happen? Is every kid going to recognize this as wrong and choose to exercise his or her free will to resist temptation? We know the answer.
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