How to Change the Criminal or Me

Perhaps one of the most important foundation theories that is applicable in almost every aspect of life is this: The situation dictates the action, and the action dictates the consequences. Situation and action for one particular instance have corners that enable them to fit together like matching puzzle pieces, binding them together. When they are combined in this way, they form the consequence. When building a puzzle, once you get a handful of pieces to fit together, you shift your focus to the other loose ones, and repeat this process until your puzzle is completed and you have made tangible sense out of bits and pieces of confusion. Your puzzle will stay together as one piece, as one whole, as one completely uniform picture and will dictate a lasting uniform consequence as long as all of those who took the time and energy to build it unanimously agree that it is better being in one piece than in a thousand pieces. For it takes hands to break as it takes hands to make.

However, if two pieces cannot fit together, what do we do? We can either accept it and move on to try other pieces, or we can be intent on making those two pieces fit together, dammit! and use tools like a pair of scissors to manually alter the edges of the pieces so that they do fit together perfectly. What is wrong with this picture? Everything. If two pieces do not match when they were loose, they will continue not to match when combined. We can build up a puzzle in this manner, making pieces fit when and where and how we want them to, and complete the entire puzzle, with all the pieces being forcefully made to fit together perfectly, but the final picture, the final consequence will be horribly, horribly wrong. Mutated beyond recognition.

There is no one-solution theory-fits-all for situations that need to be dealt with.

• Generic solution theory: If you get a cut, clean the wound, apply a band-aid, and in a few days’ time, the wound will be healed.
• Generic situation: The cut.
• Generic action: Clean the wound and apply a band-aid.
• Generic consequence: Is it recovery in all cases? We leave that to be seen.

 We are going to apply the same action – nothing more, nothing less – to two children who each get the exact same type of cut, and we are going to see what the consequences are.