While discussing the two characters, Angie Bachmann and Brian Thomas, Charles Duhigg explores their habits, if they are held accountable and why.
Angie, the gambler, was aware of the habits taking place either before or after she sunk into her impulsive streaks. She knew she would give in if the casino called and offered her a free stay, yet she kept answering the phone. This is what makes her responsible. The habit it’s self does not lay the groundwork for blame, yet the actions you take to prevent the habit from reoccurring.
Brian Thomas, the murderer, was in the middle of a sleep terror when he committed his crime. In other words, had absolutely no control over his body, and was completely unaware of what was happening. There was no way to prevent the incident due to his sleepwalking condition. He is innocent because he was simply unaware.
Duhigg is expressing through an extreme example, murder, that you are held responsible for your habits. As I read through the pages of the last chapter I found it interesting that the author compared an excessive gambler and a, for lack of a better term, murderer.
Duhigg is genius for doing so. He takes something very extreme and compares it to something less extreme in hopes that you will understand the importance of acknowledging and changings habits. The gambler is held in higher blame then the murderer because she could not get a handle on her habit. This will shock the reader and make the idea stick. Repeating a bad habit you’ve recognized is worse then murder.
First he proposes the question of whether or not Brian Thomas should have been found guilty,
“Brian Thomas murdered his wife, Angie Bachmann squandered her inheritance. Is there a difference in how society should assign responsibility?” (268)
And then he brings it all back to habits, how you approach them, how you change them. Brian could not change his, Angie could.
Charles Duhigg devotes this section of the text, and the book as a whole, to conveying this exact thought to the readers. He does this to explain in the most explicit terms possible why it is you are responsible for your actions.
You do something bad; you know it’s bad, yet you do it again. That is the problem. Once you make a mistake you must learn from it.
We all need to learn from our bad behaviors and find ways to make them better instead of living in a world of self-pity and loathing. Every human is capable of change in one-way or another.
No one else can help you become the better person you want to be. If you are unhappy with an aspect of your life it is up to you to change it. The first step is to recognize it, and you must not be afraid to do that. Angie did everything besides address the problem at hand. She even moved to a different state to avoid casinos, yet her phone number was still on their calling list.
Angie felt victim to her own habits and that was the problem. You are not the victim. This is what Charles Duhigg was trying to prove in The Power of Habit.