Author C.S. Lewis addressed university students in 1944 about how peer pressure can lead to destruction. It’s worth passing on to our children. “The choice of scoundrelism will come over a cup of coffee and sandwiched between two jokes from the lips of a man whom you would like to know better. Just at the moment when you are most anxious not to appear crude, his hinting will come. You will be drawn in not by desire for gain or ease, but simply, because at that moment, you cannot bear to be thrust out into the cold. Of all the passions, the passion for being a part of the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not a very bad man do very bad things. If you are drawn in, next week it will be something a little further from the rules, and next year something further still, but all in the jolliest, friendliest spirit. It may end in a crash, a scandal, and prison; it may end in millions of dollars and high recognition. But you will still be a scoundrel nonetheless.”
