I will agree "strength" is probably not the right descriptor there. I almost didn't play it because I wasn't entirely sure.
I'm not perfect, far from it, but I try to fail graciously before I choose to stray from doing the right thing.
That said, I absolutely do recognize that that is a luxury that not everyone has given their situation. However, I do think that some use that to justify not having to do the right thing in cases where that isn't actually true, and that at least striving to always do right, but sometimes failing to do the right thing due to circumstances is a better approach in the long term versus minmaxing immediate returns because doing the right thing is inconvenient.
I think it depends a lot on the thing involved. If it's just, oh hey, there's a norm of being kind of an asshole, then, fine, maybe it's not ideal, but go with it if that's what you have to do to be effective. (And I think that's the situation we were talking about originally, w/r/t "civility" in language.)
On the other hand, if it's something like "hey we're gassing the jews" or "we're bombing schoolbusses full of children," then hopefully you're doing everything you can to fight against it (though, emperically, most of us will just go along).
I'm not perfect, far from it, but I try to fail graciously before I choose to stray from doing the right thing.
That said, I absolutely do recognize that that is a luxury that not everyone has given their situation. However, I do think that some use that to justify not having to do the right thing in cases where that isn't actually true, and that at least striving to always do right, but sometimes failing to do the right thing due to circumstances is a better approach in the long term versus minmaxing immediate returns because doing the right thing is inconvenient.
Or I'm hopelessly naive.
Or somewhere between those.