"The 19th-century character model was based on an expansive understanding of free will. Today, we know that free will is bounded. People can change their lives, but ordering change is not simple because many things, even within ourselves, are beyond our direct control.
Much of our behavior, for example, is guided by unconscious habits."
Brooks concludes:
"As the Victorians understood (and the folks at Alcoholics Anonymous understand), if you want to change your life, don’t just look for a clever trigger. Commit to some larger global belief."
Commit to some larger global belief? My larger global belief, as the slaughter in Syria goes unchecked and Iran continues to build its first nuclear weapon, is that the world is not getting better and that I am almost powerless to effect change.
But wait! Although churches and synagogues today might have a harder time instilling values, a new habit-changing force has emerged from cyberspace: Google. Consider the following story from France (http://www.heraldsun.com.au/technology/peeing-frenchman-sues-google-for-making-him-laughing-stock/story-fn7celvh-1226286940524):
"A FRENCHMAN is suing Google for making him the laughing stock of his village after the firm's Street View service put on the internet a picture of him urinating in his garden, his lawyer said overnight.
'He discovered the existence of this photo after noticing that he had become an object of ridicule,' lawyer Jean-Noel Bouillaud told AFP, asking for the name of the village not be published.
. . . .
'My client lives in a tiny hamlet where everyone recognised him,' said Mr Bouillaud, adding that his client was on his own property and the gate to his garden was closed at the time the photo was taken."
Thanks, Google. I'm certainly not going to urinate in my garden anytime soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment