:53
And it happens when you're in a new or unfamiliar situation. Your habitual response patterns don't work. Your personality and morality are disengaged. "Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing more difficult than understanding him," Dostoyevksy tells us. Understanding is not excusing. Psychology is not excuse-iology.
17:11
So social and psychological research reveals how ordinary, good people can be transformed without the drugs. You don't need it. You just need the social-psychological processes. Real world parallels? Compare this with this. James Schlesinger -- and I'm going to have to end with this -- says, "Psychologists have attempted to understand how and why individuals and groups who usually act humanely can sometimes act otherwise in certain circumstances." That's the Lucifer effect. And he goes on to say, "The landmark Stanford study provides a cautionary tale for all military operations." If you give people power without oversight, it's a prescription for abuse. They knew that, and let that happen.
17:49
So another report, an investigative report by General Fay, says the system is guilty. And in this report, he says it was the environment that created Abu Ghraib, by leadership failures that contributed to the occurrence of such abuse, and the fact that it remained undiscovered by higher authorities for a long period of time. Those abuses went on for three months. Who was watching the store? The answer is nobody, and, I think, nobody on purpose. He gave the guards permission to do those things, and they knew nobody was ever going to come down to that dungeon.
18:17
So you need a paradigm shift in all of these areas. The shift is away from the medical model that focuses only on the individual. The shift is toward a public health model that recognizes situational and systemic vectors of disease. Bullying is a disease. Prejudice is a disease. Violence is a disease. And since the Inquisition, we've been dealing with problems at the individual level. And you know what? It doesn't work. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn says, "The line between good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being." That means that line is not out there. That's a decision that you have to make. That's a personal thing.
18:49
So I want to end very quickly on a positive note. Heroism as the antidote to evil, by promoting the heroic imagination, especially in our kids, in our educational system. We want kids to think, I'm the hero in waiting, waiting for the right situation to come along, and I will act heroically. My whole life is now going to focus away from evil -- that I've been in since I was a kid -- to understanding heroes.
19:10
Banality of heroism is, it's ordinary people who do heroic deeds. It's the counterpoint to Hannah Arendt's "Banality of Evil." Our traditional societal heroes are wrong, because they are the exceptions. They organize their whole life around this. That's why we know their names. And our kids' heroes are also wrong models for them, because they have supernatural talents. We want our kids to realize most heroes are everyday people, and the heroic act is unusual. This is Joe Darby. He was the one that stopped those abuses you saw, because when he saw those images, he turned them over to a senior investigating officer. He was a low-level private, and that stopped it. Was he a hero? No. They had to put him in hiding, because people wanted to kill him, and then his mother and his wife. For three years, they were in hiding.
19:52
This is the woman who stopped the Stanford Prison Study. When I said it got out of control, I was the prison superintendent. I didn't know it was out of control. I was totally indifferent. She came down, saw that madhouse and said, "You know what, it's terrible what you're doing to those boys. They're not prisoners, they're not guards, they're boys, and you are responsible." And I ended the study the next day. The good news is I married her the next year. (Laughter) (Applause) I just came to my senses, obviously.
20:26
So situations have the power to do, through -- but the point is, this is the same situation that can inflame the hostile imagination in some of us, that makes us perpetrators of evil, can inspire the heroic imagination in others. It's the same situation. And you're on one side or the other. Most people are guilty of the evil of inaction, because your mother said, "Don't get involved. Mind your own business." And you have to say, "Mama, humanity is my business.