Page 110 - The Power to Change Anything

Make the Undesirable Desirable 99

tant but real values to their current behavior can overcome the
most addictive of habits—cocaine, heroine, pornography, gam-
bling, you name it.
At Delancey, Mimi Silbert follows Peele’s advice by help-
ing residents connect behaviors to values every single day. As
we suggest earlier, when residents first arrive at Delancey,
they’re told that everyone must challenge everyone. New resi-
dents view this action as “ratting out their buddy.” Ratting is
morally despicable. It’s disloyal. No decent person would do it.
So no one does it—certainly no one from their previous life.
Should a friend head out Delancey’s front gate in search of a
fix, residents’ old credo would tell them to be loyal and clam
up. And they’ll continue to act this way unless they can recast
the behavior of “ratting” into more positive moral terms. Then
residents will challenge every wrong action according to the
code.
Sure enough, Silbert helps them do just that. She reframes
the habit of reporting violations to the authorities as a vital
behavior, even a mission, that carries with it profoundly moral
meaning. She doesn’t merely hint at the morality of the code;
she fully embraces it. In her own words:

Our approach here is kind of an odd one. We talk morals
all the time. Although I studied criminology and psychol-
ogy, I approach these issues as if I have no idea what
causes criminal behavior. We just say, “This is our fam-
ily and this is our home. And in our home, here’s what
we believe. Here’s what we do. Here’s why. If you turn oth-
ers in, it helps them. We do it because we must help each
other if we want to succeed.” We develop a community
based on simple moral ideas and then make the norms
so strong that the community sustains them.
Silbert believes that if people can make their behavior part of
a broader and more important moral mission, they can do almost
anything, including giving up crime, drugs, and violence.