This assert seems not a simple idea but containing deep philosophic view about the truth of our behavior and what will determine our behavior.In my own philosophy, I partly agree with the speaker that in many cases human behavior is determined by extent forces, but I also regard force from our inner hart and society a great aspect to influence our behavior.
First, we should make clear that, from the point of philosophy, the whole world could be divided into two systems, one is scientific system and the other is social system. Each part could influence people' behavior differently. While scientific system, concerning about discover and research the nature and truth such as the galaxy and mathematics, will coerce people to accept the truth and follow the nature law, the other part, thus social system, concerning on satisfy human needs and relative between people, is dominated in our own. When we want to fly, we will invent airplane, and take research in aerodynamic and structure. These knowledge is truth and we cannot violet, otherwise will gain little or take pain in accidents. For example, if today we want to find a substance that travels faster than the light, which violet the physic law, it seems impossible. But solving social problems such as war and economic crisis, we are able to make choice our own. Because these problems derived from relationship between people, as an intelligent species, we can take subjective activity to conciliate conflicts thus the problems solved. We need law so manage the society, and the law is established by people. A country need a good leader, and it is largely depended on the leader's own personalities. So we can see that scientific system will force us to determine behavior while we can determine our own behavior in social system field.
Second, talking about the influence from our inner hart, I think our behavior is largely depend on our own. This is about our responsibility that force us to determine our own behavior. Responsibility could produce a potential press on us that we will fear the fail that brings penalty to us. If we lose it, we feel free to do anything, which may be also nothing to a person with good personal quality, but cause more mistakes and hazards to society if the person is poor in personal quality, and his work is relatively low quality.For example, in Chinese history about 1950's, government published a policy that all people working together and all harvest will distributed equally to each one, seems like communism policy. But problems come when people found that even they did nothing, they could get equal pay with others, so they motives has dropped that no one wanted to work, waiting for income. Eventually, the policy has been abandoned, government carried out the policy that every one gain in direct proportion to how many they have down.
In verse, if we have strong responsibility, thus we can determine our behavior on our own, it will be appreciated to contribute our own to society. When we have responsibility, we seems to pursue perfectionism in work to make masterpiece, thus make our work more quality and effect. Accumulating together, the productivity of the whole society will increase and the harvest will be outstanding, so does the development. What is more, the crime rate will decrease due to people who have more responsibility for what they do, they will feel shame and regret to rob.
In deed, the outside aspects is largely influencing how people behave, especially concerning about scientific aspects. But I disagree the asserts that exaggerated the absolute range of effect of influence from outside. When we deal with social problems, we will make decision from our own thought, and if we have strong responsibility, we will behave better in many condition thus inverse promote the behavior social and scientific fields.