Heroes
From a TEDx talk
Psychologist Phil Zimbardo, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University gave a TEDx Youth talk in which he examined the basic principles of Everyday Heroism. In doing so, he investigated practical ways in which average people can enter into extraordinary good through small actions, and a little bit of courage. Here is an abridged version:
I grew up in poverty in the South Bronx ghetto. If you grow up in a city there's all kinds of temptation around you. I had lots of friends who were really good kids who did really bad things. You have to prevent the ugliness in the environment from coming into your spirit. It breeds hate and hopelessness and really what you want to live is a life is full of love and hope.
In that ghetto, there are agents of the devil - always there to seduce good kids to do bad things (see my book - The Lucifer Effect). I used education as the key to unlocking a new world beyond the limits and temptations of the ghetto and so now I'm a Professor from Stanford University. I was inspired by my elementary school teachers, my junior high school teachers to to make my life full with trying to understand how the world works, especially how the human mind works.
I'm the manager of a San Francisco Hero Factory. We are creating a new generation of everyday heroes.
Youth face challenges every day such as:
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Gossip
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Bullying. The world is made up of three people; bullies, the kid bullied, and the rest of us who look at it and and don't intervene. One of the things that heroes do is they challenge bullies in a wise way.
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Peer pressure. Your buddies pressure you to smoke, drink, take risk, join gangs, have unsafe sex. When you're a teenager what you want more than anything else is to be liked, to be accepted, to be respected, and you end up going along just to get along.
Youth make decisions all the time. Should I save money? Should I spend it? Should I eat healthy food or junk food? Should I bother applying to college? Should I have sex? But the more important thing is should you get involved or should you mind your own business? Should you take your friend's keys so he doesn't drive drunk and crash? Should you ruin somebody's reputation by spreading gossip or you stand up for them? Youth want to do the right thing but how? It's not easy.
It turns out that you can begin with very small steps and I call this, "being on the path to heroism". Somebody from my group interviewed President Obama before he was the president. We asked him what does it take to be a hero? Do you have to be a special kind of person? This is what he said, "What's remarkable about history is ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Last year Rosa Parks [whose actions started a bus boycott due to segregation in Alabama] passed away. I remember sitting on this stage with world leaders, Bill Clinton, senators and governors and thinking we were all paying homage to a seamstress who had transformed the country and helped transform the world. You know we never know how our actions are going to ripple over time but each of us can take some responsibility for making sure that we are pushing a little bit in the direction of justice, in the direction of equality, in the direction of tolerance. When we do that, we may surprise ourselves with the amount of influence that we have, just by standing up or speaking out."
So what Obama is telling us is that heroes are ordinary people. It's the heroic act that's extraordinary, that anybody can do it. What it means is simply, at some point, when you see injustice, when you see bullying, when you see corruption, fraud, you stand up and you speak out. You say that's wrong. You get involved. He has this wonderful statement that is, "What you do has a ripple effect." People observe you doing the good thing and you become a positive social model. People observe you doing bad stuff and you become a negative social model. They will follow you. So the question you have to ask yourself is, "What is your ripple effect going to be in your life?"
Everyday heroism, the power of one, be there first. If you don't act, who will? There's something called the bystander effect. The more people are around when there's an emergency, the less anybody helps. But as soon as the first person goes to the person to say, "Are you okay? Can I help?", immediately everybody joins in. So you should be the first one that calls, the first one to get involved.
I argue that we all have the potential for good and evil because we have this incredible brain that gives us infinite possibilities. Whether or not you do the good thing or the bad thing really is largely a function of the environment you're in, your surroundings. Heroes put their best self forward in service to humanity and I hope that could be you.
Watch the full 14 min talk here:
Could this talk be used as a discussion starter with youth in your community?
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From a TEDx talk, 17/12/2024