I have recently read an article by a famous journalist. Unfortunately I do not remember its title but I got really interested in the story. The journalist has decided to make an experiment when he left home and went to live on the streets to explore life of homeless people.

I prefer leaving out all the details of his life with street people and all the hardships he had faced. I only want to stress the most important conclusions he had come to. He is a very educated and intelligent man, but even he was struck by sudden results of his experiment. He writes that he was surprised how much he had changed during the period of being homeless. He says he has grown to be greedy, and even more severe. The anger you feel when you are hungry is incomparable to any negative emotion you feel in usual situations. It is amazing what you feel when you realize that the last and the only piece of food is about to be taken away by someone else. That’s when you start feeling mad and your negative emotion is out of control. He was surprised how fast he had started talking the same slang those homeless used. He never expected himself to struggle for minimal welfare with such strong desire; it seemed to him that he had never been so dependent on material things and welfare. Eventually he has come to a conclusion that the society you are in is very influential.

No matter who you were before and what you did if you get into a different surrounding you will grow to be just like its representatives, eventually you start acting like them and accept their values, attitudes and behavior. This is the way human nature is. It is hard to stay careless to the world around you, because it has an incredible impact on you whether you want it or not. This is when you start losing your personality. Of course, one may argue this saying that if you have strong personality and values you will never change under influence. But in case when you constantly experience such communication and see that manners and behavior are acceptable in this community and its people are actually satisfied with the lifestyle they have, one starts reevaluating his moral principles and attitudes in a new way. This means that this person will most likely change under the influence of the people around and situations he gets in. It is the same with the contrary situation. For example, when someone, even with a criminal past, gets into deeply religious society with high moral standards, he starts changing in a ‘better’ way, and often regrets about his past and tries to start a new ‘moral’ life with new values of kindness and love. Especially it works with people who are not satisfied with their life or present situation. When they see that some particular lifestyle makes majority of people happy, those unsatisfied start striving to that ‘happy’ going.

This is why I believe people should pay more attention to the initial education of children; teachers, as well as parents, must be more responsible and also well educated. We should all teach children and each other only love and care; we should all unite under one single motto promoting peace and tolerance. Though sometimes these ideas seem to be utopian to me, I keep believing in them.