REASONABLE RESOLUTIONS
The trouble with our “New Year Resolutions” is that they are too personal. We are always fussing about our little individual tempers and weaknesses and bad habits.
While we, Socially, behave as badly as we do, we individually can accomplish little.
Says the wiseacre—”Ah! but if each of us was individually perfect
Society would be perfect!”
Not at all! You can amass any number of perfect parts of a mechanism—or organism—but if they do not work together right the thing is no good.
And you can’t learn to work together by trying to be perfect separately.
Can you?
We need collective aims, collective efforts, collective attainments.
Let us collectively resolve:
That we will stop wasting our soil and our forests and our labor!
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That we will stop poisoning and clogging our rivers and harbors.
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That we will stop building combustible houses.
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That we will now—this year—begin in good earnest to prevent all preventable diseases.
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That we will do our duty by our children and young people, as a wise
Society should, and cut off the crop of criminals by not making them.
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That—; no; here are quite enough resolutions for one year.