Y’all.
It has been a mind-blowing week of classes for me. I won’t even begin to tell you about my Conflict Resolution class and how it has completely revolutionized the way I think about peace and violence. I need to focus right now on my history class, one that, admittedly, I complained about at first because it only addresses the uses of history in the Soviet Union and Russia. But I tell you, this is the kind of class that STICKS with you all week. I admit, my knowledge on USSR history was … a bit … thin. Kinda sorta knew about the October Revolution, about this bad guy Stalin, that he had killed lotsa people, etc etc. But today, we watched a documentary called “Enemy of the People,” which captured firsthand testimonies of Armenians who suffered under Stalin’s purges and who were sent off to the gulag labor camps. Let me tell you, Stalin was no joke. Upwards of 20-25 million people were sent to camps and/or died under his regime. Think about that. That’s like all of Manhattan dropping dead … TWENTY. times. over.
We heard stories of how neighbors informed on neighbors, how the Party brainwashed children to turn against parents, watched an old man take his shovel to a large spot of land in Armenia and without much trouble, dug up human bones. That was in 1992.
And, as my mind does whenever it’s confronted with such evil, it started pestering me with questions like “how can people be capable of this” and “what switch in a person’s brain suddenly says that this behavior is okay?” The answer, I discovered, partly lies with a man by the name of Philip Zimbardo. Mr. Zimbardo is the man behind the Stanford prison that some of you may know about. And he spoke earlier this year at the TED conference about something he’s called The Lucifer Effect. You must watch his 20-minute presentation on how easy it is for nice people to turn bad. He draws upon the example of Abu Ghraib — and I warn you, the pictures are waaaay intense.
I will also tell you that Mr. Zimbardo does end on a positive note, explaining his thoughts on how we combat the fall into evil … and I might add that despite the horrors that Stalin rained upon his people, there was amazing and incomprehensible resilience and humanity that somehow managed to survive. We all may have different ideas as to the source of the beauty of human souls, but it exists and it is just as real and as powerful as any evil that dares to overcome it.
