Thought Tweet #861 Balancing the strange comfort in ‘standing by’ against the positive change that follows ‘stepping up’.

The Thinking Behind The Tweet

When you must place a bet favouring either People or Situations, place your bet on Situations. That's what some social psychologists are teaching.

Why?

Why would social psychologists recommend we bet on the situation influencing the person rather than bet on the person influencing the situation?

Because there is much evidence illustrating how people are prepared to 'stand by' and do nothing in situations involving bad things ranging from workplace incivility and poor work ethics to pollution and its impact on Mother Nature to school bullying and public muggings to fundamentalism, bigotry, and genocidal atrocities.

All that said, in every such 'bad' situation each of us has a choice: we can 'stand by' or we can 'step up'.

The ancient wisdom…

If not me who?

If not now when?