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So people tell me I'm a nice person ...

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to the point where it's part
of my personal and professional identity

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that I'm so nice
and able to get along with anyone,

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even my most fierce opponents.

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It's like my "thing,"
it's what I'm known for.

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(Laughter)

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But what no one knows ...

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is that I was a bully.

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Honestly, I didn't think
about it much myself.

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I buried the memories for years,

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and even still, a lot of it's really hazy.

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Denial, by the way, apparently
is also one of my things.

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(Laughter)

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But the more people started to praise me

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for being a liberal who could
get along with conservatives,

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and the more I wrote articles
about being nice

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and gave talks about being nice,

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the more I felt this hypocrisy
creeping up inside me.

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What if I was actually really mean?

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When I was 10 years old,

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there was a girl in my class
at school named Vicky.

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(Sigh)

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And I tormented her ...

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mercilessly.

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I mean, everyone did.

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Even the teachers picked on her.

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It doesn't make it any better, does it?

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Vicky was clearly a troubled kid.

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She would hit herself
and give herself bloody noses

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and she had hygiene problems --

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she had big hygiene problems.

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But instead of helping this girl,

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who was plainly suffering
from hardships in her life ...

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we called her "Sticky Vicky."

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I called her "Sticky Vicky."

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My clearest memory
is standing in the empty hallway

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outside the fifth grade classrooms

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waiting for Vicky
to come out of the bathroom,

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and I have a clipboard and a pen
and a survey I've made up,

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asking about shampoo preferences,

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like I'm doing a study
for science class or something.

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And when Vicky comes out of the bathroom,

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I pounce on her and I ask her
what shampoo she uses.

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Now, to put this in perspective,

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I can't remember the names of my teachers,

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I can't remember the names
of any of the books I read that year,

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I pretty much can't remember
anything from fifth grade,

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but I remember that Vicky told me
she used White Rain shampoo.

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Clear as yesterday,

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like it just happened.

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And as classes let out,

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I ran down the hall shouting
at all the other kids,

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"Sticky Vicky uses White Rain shampoo.

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Don't use White Rain shampoo

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or you'll smell like Sticky Vicky."

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I forgot about this memory
for a long time.

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When I finally started remembering it,

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I immediately needed to know more.

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I reached out to friends
and eventually social media,

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and I did everything I could
to try to find Vicky.

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I needed to know that she was OK,

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and that I hadn't ruined her life.

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(Sigh)

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But what I quickly realized

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was I wasn't just trying to figure out
what happened to Vicky.

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I was trying to figure out
what happened to me.

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When I was 10 years old,

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I treated another human being
like some worthless other ...

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like I was better than her,

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and she was garbage.

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What kind of a nice person does that?

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I mean, I know I was only a kid,

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but not all kids do that.

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Most kids don't do that, right?

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So, what if I wasn't nice after all?

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I was really just a hateful monster.

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Then I started to notice myself
having these mean impulses,

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thinking mean thoughts

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and wanting to say them.

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Admittedly, most of my mean thoughts
were about conservatives.

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(Laughter)

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But not just conservatives.

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I also caught myself thinking mean things
about mushy, centrist liberals

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and greedy Wall Street bankers

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and Islamophobes

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and slow drivers,

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because I really hate slow drivers.

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(Laughter)

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And as I'd catch myself
in these moments of hypocrisy,

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either I was just noticing them
or they were getting worse,

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especially in the last few years.

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And as I felt more hateful --

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rageful, really --

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I noticed the world around me
seemed to be getting more hateful, too.

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Like there was this steady
undercurrent of hate

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bubbling up all around us

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and increasingly overflowing.

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So the plus side, I guess,

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is that I realized that hate
was not just my problem,

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which is like, the most
selfish plus side ever --

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(Laughter)

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because now instead of just my own hate
and cruelty to try to figure out,

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I had a whole world of hate
I wanted to unravel

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and understand and fix.

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So I did what all overly intellectual
people do when they have a problem

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that they want to understand,

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and I wrote a book.

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(Laughter)

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I wrote a book about hate.

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Spoiler alert:

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I'm against it.

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(Laughter)

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Now at this point,
you might be thinking to yourself,

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"Why are y'all worried about hate?

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You didn't hate Vicky.

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Bullying isn't hate."

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Isn't it?

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Gordon Allport,

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the psychologist who pioneered
the study of hate in the early 1900s,

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developed what he called
a "scale of prejudice."

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At one end are things like genocide
and other bias-motivated violence.

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But at the other end

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are things like believing
that your in-group

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is inherently superior to some out-group,

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or avoiding social interaction
with those others.

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Isn't that all hate?

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I mean, it wasn't an accident

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that I was a rich kid
picking on a poor kid,

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or that Vicky, it turns out,
would eventually end up being gay.

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Poor kids and gay kids
are more likely to be bullied,

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even by kids who also end up being gay.

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I know there was a lot going on
in my little 10-year-old mind.

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I'm not saying hate was the only
reason I picked on Vicky

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or even that I was consciously
hateful or anything,

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but the fact is,

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the people we discriminate against
in our public policies and in our culture

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are also the groups of people
most likely to be bullied in school.

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That is not just a coincidence.

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That's hate.

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I am defining hate in a broad way

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because I think we have a big problem.

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And we need to solve all of it,
not just the most extremes.

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So for instance,

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we probably all agree
that marching down the street,

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chanting about you should take away
rights from some group of people

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because of their skin color
or their gender,

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we'd all agree that's hate, right? OK.

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What if you believe
that group of people is inferior,

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but you don't say it?

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Is that hate?

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Or what if you believe
that group of people is inferior

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but you aren't aware
that you believe it --

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what's known as implicit bias.

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Is that hate?

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I mean they all have
the same roots, don't they?

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In the historic patterns
of racism and sexism

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that have shaped our history
and still infect our society today.

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Isn't it all hate?

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I'm not saying they're the same thing,

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just like I am not saying

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that being a bully
is as bad as being a Nazi,

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just like I'm not saying that being a Nazi
is the same thing as punching a Nazi ...

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(Laughter)

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But hating a Nazi is still hate, right?

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What about hating someone
who isn't as enlightened as you?

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See, what I learned

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is that we all are against hate

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and we all think hate is a problem.

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We think it's their problem,

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not our problem.

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They're hateful.

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I mean, if I think the people
who didn't vote like me

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are stupid racist monsters who don't
deserve to call themselves Americans,

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alright, fine, I'm not being nice,

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I get it.

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(Laughter)

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I'm not hateful, I'm just right, right?

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(Laughter)

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Wrong.

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We all hate.

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And I do not mean that
in some abstract, generic sense.

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I mean all of us ...

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me and you.

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That sanctimonious pedestal of superiority
on which we all place ourselves,

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that they are hateful and we are not,

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is a manifestation
of the essential root of hate:

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that we are fundamentally good
and they are not,

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which is what needs to change.

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So in trying to understand and solve hate,

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I read every book
and every research study I could find,

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but I also went and talked
to some former Nazis

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and some former terrorists

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and some former genocidal killers,

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because I figured if they could
figure out how to escape hate,

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surely the rest of us could.

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Let me give you just one example
of the former terrorist I spent time with

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in the West Bank.

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When Bassam Aramin was 16 years old,

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he tried to blow up an Israeli
military convoy with a grenade.

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He failed, fortunately,

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but he was still sentenced
to seven years in prison.

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When he was in prison,
they showed a film about the Holocaust.

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Up until that point,

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Bassam had thought the Holocaust
was mostly a myth.

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He went to go watch the film

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because he thought he would enjoy
seeing Jews get killed.

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But when he saw what really happened,
he broke down crying.

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And eventually, after prison,

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Bassam went on to get
a master's degree in Holocaust studies

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and he founded an organization
where former Palestinian combatants

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and Israeli combatants come together,

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work together, try to find common ground.

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By his own account,
Bassam used to hate Israelis,

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but through knowing Israelis
and learning their stories

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and working together for peace,

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he overcame his hate.

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Bassam says he still
doesn't hate Israelis,

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even after the Israeli military --

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shot and killed his [10]-year-old
daughter, Abir,

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while she was walking to school.

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(Sigh)

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Bassam even forgave the soldier
who killed his daughter.

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That soldier, he taught me,

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was just a product
of the same hateful system as he was.

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If a former terrorist ...

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if a terrorist can learn to stop hating

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and still not hate
when their child is killed,

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surely the rest of us can stop our habits

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of demeaning and dehumanizing each other.

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And I will tell you there are stories
like Bassam's all over the world,

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plus study after study after study

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that says, no, we are neither designed
nor destined as human beings to hate,

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but rather taught to hate
by the world around us.

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I promise you,

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none of us pops out of the womb
hating black people or Republicans.

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There is nothing in our DNA
that makes us hate Muslims or Mexicans.

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For better or for worse,

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we are all a product
of the culture around us.

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And the good news is,

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we're also the ones
who shape that culture,

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which means we can change it.

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The first step is starting to recognize
the hate inside ourselves.

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We need to catch ourselves

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and our hateful thoughts
in all their forms

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in all of us ...

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and work to challenge
our ideas and assumptions.

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That doesn't happen overnight,

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I am telling you right here,

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it is a lifelong journey,
but it's one we all need to take.

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And then second:

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if we want to challenge
the hate in our societies,

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we need to promote policies
and institutions and practices

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that connect us as communities.

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Literally, like integrated
neighborhoods and schools.

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That by the way is the reason
to support integration.

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Not just because
it's the right thing to do,

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but because integration
systematically combats hate.

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There are studies
that teenagers who participate

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in racially integrated classes
and activities reduce their racial bias.

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And when little kids go to racially
integrated kindergartens

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and elementary schools --

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they develop less bias to begin with.

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But the fact is in so many ways
and in so many places around our world,

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we are separated from each other.

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In the United States, for instance,

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three-quarters of white people
don't have any non-white friends.

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So in addition to promoting
those proactive solutions,

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the other thing we need to do
is upend the hate in our institutions

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and our policies

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that perpetuate dehumanization
and difference

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and otherizing and hate,

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like systems of sexual harassment
and sexual assault in the workplace,

00:14:14.565 --> 00:14:18.730
or our deeply racially imbalanced

00:14:18.754 --> 00:14:22.125
and deeply racially biased
criminal "justice" system.

00:14:22.814 --> 00:14:24.470
We need to change that.

00:14:24.494 --> 00:14:26.360
Again, it will not happen overnight.

00:14:26.384 --> 00:14:28.334
It needs to happen.

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:29.763 --> 00:14:30.913
And then ...

00:14:32.123 --> 00:14:33.615
when we connect together

00:14:34.885 --> 00:14:37.607
in these connection spaces,

00:14:38.518 --> 00:14:41.319
facilitated by connection systems,

00:14:42.591 --> 00:14:45.374
we need to change the way
we talk to each other

00:14:46.992 --> 00:14:48.470
and connect with one another

00:14:48.494 --> 00:14:53.843
and relate with generosity
and open-mindedness

00:14:53.867 --> 00:14:55.272
and kindness and compassion

00:14:55.296 --> 00:14:56.479
and not hate.

00:14:57.837 --> 00:14:59.252
And that's it.

00:14:59.276 --> 00:15:00.427
That's it.

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:00.451 --> 00:15:04.713
(Applause)

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:04.737 --> 00:15:06.832
I have solved it all, right?

00:15:06.856 --> 00:15:08.007
That's it.

00:15:08.031 --> 00:15:09.190
That is pretty much --

00:15:09.214 --> 00:15:10.381
there's a few details --

00:15:10.405 --> 00:15:12.359
but that's pretty much all we have to do.

00:15:12.383 --> 00:15:14.106
It's not that complicated, right?

00:15:15.556 --> 00:15:16.843
But it's hard.

00:15:18.279 --> 00:15:22.739
The hate that we feel
towards certain groups of people

00:15:23.814 --> 00:15:26.662
because of who they are
or what they believe

00:15:26.686 --> 00:15:30.098
is so ingrained in our minds
and in our society

00:15:30.122 --> 00:15:31.661
that it can feel inevitable

00:15:33.031 --> 00:15:34.477
and impossible to change.

00:15:37.393 --> 00:15:38.677
Change is possible.

00:15:41.148 --> 00:15:45.735
Just look at the terrorist
who became a peace activist.

00:15:47.483 --> 00:15:52.515
Or look at the bully who learned
to apologize to her victim.

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:55.338 --> 00:16:00.490
The entire time I was traveling
around the Middle East and Rwanda

00:16:00.514 --> 00:16:01.897
and across the United States,

00:16:01.921 --> 00:16:06.006
hearing these unbelievable stories
of people in communities

00:16:06.030 --> 00:16:08.713
who had left entire histories
of hate behind,

00:16:08.737 --> 00:16:10.194
I was still looking for Vicky.

00:16:11.024 --> 00:16:13.810
It was so hard find her that I hired
a private investigator

00:16:13.834 --> 00:16:15.272
and he found her.

00:16:15.296 --> 00:16:17.194
I mean, he sort of found her.

00:16:17.218 --> 00:16:21.523
The truth is, it became clear
that the person I'm calling Vicky

00:16:21.547 --> 00:16:26.339
had gone to extraordinary lengths
to hide her identity.

00:16:28.564 --> 00:16:32.429
But anyway, a year after
I began my journey,

00:16:34.556 --> 00:16:36.052
I wrote Vicky an apology.

00:16:38.199 --> 00:16:39.461
And a few months later,

00:16:40.600 --> 00:16:41.750
she wrote back.

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:42.667 --> 00:16:44.730
(Sigh)

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:45.090 --> 00:16:46.958
I'm not going to lie,

00:16:46.982 --> 00:16:48.684
I wanted to be forgiven.

00:16:53.018 --> 00:16:54.168
I wasn't.

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:54.192 --> 00:16:55.342
(Sigh)

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:55.815 --> 00:16:58.744
She offered me sort of
conditional forgiveness.

00:16:58.768 --> 00:17:00.021
What she wrote was ...

00:17:01.158 --> 00:17:05.825
"Messages such as yours
cannot absolve you of your past actions.

00:17:06.914 --> 00:17:10.257
The only way to do that
is to improve the world,

00:17:10.281 --> 00:17:12.596
prevent others
from behaving in similar ways

00:17:14.093 --> 00:17:15.602
and foster compassion."

00:17:17.880 --> 00:17:19.402
And Vicky's right.

00:17:21.529 --> 00:17:22.879
Which is why I'm here.

NOTE Paragraph

00:17:23.601 --> 00:17:24.752
Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

00:17:24.776 --> 00:17:31.776
(Applause)