“Most civilisation is based on cowardice.”
Frank Herbert, Heretics of Dune
When we are confronted with problematic behavior, there is an instinct to condemn and say, “I don’t want to be like that.” This is good—it creates boundaries around proper action and serves as a foundation for life.
However—if this “not like that” process is all that is done, we only have created an enclosure with nothing inside.
Therefore, once we’ve established the “nots” we need to work and find those positive principles to live by. It is easy to point fingers at what is wrong with the world, but far harder is to find what we want to fill our own walls with. But once we find those positive principles and figure out how to bring them into concrete actions, we take our walled-in enclosure and build ourselves a proper home.