Unauthorized Use of Force
There are so many statements that begin with “If there’s one thing you can’t control, it’s …”
Maybe one of the hardest things to do in day-to-day life: to attempt to do the best and right thing, with no control over reactions to those attempts.
If you tread too lightly, you lose your effectiveness because the threats of a negative response overwhelm your desire to take a pointed action.
If you forge ahead, you expose yourself to any reaction one might decide to produce. And you can’t just worry about the reasonable reaction to anticipate, you have to worry about the chosen reaction.
Because if there’s one thing we can control, it’s how we react to something. From Pavlov to Machiavelli, we all have our reasons.
When the activists go on and on about “fat cat” businessmen who warm a leather chair and make a mint, just remember how hard it is to avoid pissing someone off, and then imagine trying to make a few thousand someones actually do something for you.