I have a problem with the idea of “the power of the situation”. I know I’ve been shown multiple examples arguing for it’s prevalence but I still can’t help but feel that it’s only a way for us to excuse undesired behavior. I believe that being influenced by a situation is more directly caused by a lack of reasonable engagement with the possible choices you can make, good or bad.

I know that situations have strong direct and unnoticed influences in our choices, but I don’t think that this is the only thing at play. Consequently I think we should be able to admit that poor choices we do often occur because we did not stop for a second and think about what we were doing.

I don’t believe that a lack of reasonable engagement about what we’re doing is necessarily reflectant of bad character traits, but only through acceptance that the bad choices we make were committed by us and not by some abstract “situation” can we expect to improve upon previous mistakes.