-
So people tell me I'm a nice person ...
-
to the point where it's part
of my personal and professional identity
-
that I'm so nice
and able to get along with anyone,
-
even my most fierce opponents.
-
It's like my "thing,"
it's what I'm known for.
-
(Laughter)
-
But what no one knows ...
-
is that I was a bully.
-
Honestly, I didn't think
about it much myself.
-
I buried the memories for years,
-
and even still, a lot of it's really hazy.
-
Denial, by the way, apparently
is also one of my things.
-
(Laughter)
-
But the more people started to praise me
-
for being a liberal who could
get along with conservatives,
-
and the more I wrote articles
about being nice
-
and gave talks about being nice,
-
the more I felt this hypocrisy
creeping up inside me.
-
What if I was actually really mean?
-
When I was 10 years old,
-
there was a girl in my class
at school named Vicky.
-
(Sigh)
-
And I tormented her ...
-
mercilessly.
-
I mean, everyone did.
-
Even the teachers picked on her.
-
It doesn't make it any better, does it?
-
Vicky was clearly a troubled kid.
-
She would hit herself
and give herself bloody noses
-
and she had hygiene problems --
-
she had big hygiene problems.
-
But instead of helping this girl,
-
who was plainly suffering
from hardships in her life ...
-
we called her "Sticky Vicky."
-
I called her "Sticky Vicky."
-
My clearest memory
is standing in the empty hallway
-
outside the fifth grade classrooms
-
waiting for Vicky
to come out of the bathroom,
-
and I have a clipboard and a pen
and a survey I've made up,
-
asking about shampoo preferences,
-
like I'm doing a study
for science class or something.
-
And when Vicky comes out of the bathroom,
-
I pounce on her and I ask her
what shampoo she uses.
-
Now, to put this in perspective,
-
I can't remember the names of my teachers,
-
I can't remember the names
of any of the books I read that year,
-
I pretty much can't remember
anything from fifth grade,
-
but I remember that Vicky told me
she used White Rain shampoo.
-
Clear as yesterday,
-
like it just happened.
-
And as classes let out,
-
I ran down the hall shouting
at all the other kids,
-
"Sticky Vicky uses White Rain shampoo.
-
Don't use White Rain shampoo
-
or you'll smell like Sticky Vicky."
-
I forgot about this memory
for a long time.
-
When I finally started remembering it,
-
I immediately needed to know more.
-
I reached out to friends
and eventually social media,
-
and I did everything I could
to try to find Vicky.
-
I needed to know that she was OK,
-
and that I hadn't ruined her life.
-
(Sigh)
-
But what I quickly realized
-
was I wasn't just trying to figure out
what happened to Vicky.
-
I was trying to figure out
what happened to me.
-
When I was 10 years old,
-
I treated another human being
like some worthless other ...
-
like I was better than her,
-
and she was garbage.
-
What kind of a nice person does that?
-
I mean, I know I was only a kid,
-
but not all kids do that.
-
Most kids don't do that, right?
-
So, what if I wasn't nice after all?
-
I was really just a hateful monster.
-
Then I started to notice myself
having these mean impulses,
-
thinking mean thoughts
-
and wanting to say them.
-
Admittedly, most of my mean thoughts
were about conservatives.
-
(Laughter)
-
But not just conservatives.
-
I also caught myself thinking mean things
about mushy, centrist liberals
-
and greedy Wall Street bankers
-
and Islamophobes
-
and slow drivers,
-
because I really hate slow drivers.
-
(Laughter)
-
And as I'd catch myself
in these moments of hypocrisy,
-
either I was just noticing them
or they were getting worse,
-
especially in the last few years.
-
And as I felt more hateful --
-
rageful, really --
-
I noticed the world around me
seemed to be getting more hateful, too.
-
Like there was this steady
undercurrent of hate
-
bubbling up all around us
-
and increasingly overflowing.
-
So the plus side, I guess,
-
is that I realized that hate
was not just my problem,
-
which is like, the most
selfish plus side ever --
-
(Laughter)
-
because now instead of just my own hate
and cruelty to try to figure out,
-
I had a whole world of hate
I wanted to unravel
-
and understand and fix.
-
So I did what all overly intellectual
people do when they have a problem
-
that they want to understand,
-
and I wrote a book.
-
(Laughter)
-
I wrote a book about hate.
-
Spoiler alert:
-
I'm against it.
-
(Laughter)
-
Now at this point,
you might be thinking to yourself,
-
"Why are y'all worried about hate?
-
You didn't hate Vicky.
-
Bullying isn't hate."
-
Isn't it?
-
Gordon Allport,
-
the psychologist who pioneered
the study of hate in the early 1900s,
-
developed what he called
a "scale of prejudice."
-
At one end are things like genocide
and other bias-motivated violence.
-
But at the other end
-
are things like believing
that your in-group
-
is inherently superior to some out-group,
-
or avoiding social interaction
with those others.
-
Isn't that all hate?
-
I mean, it wasn't an accident
-
that I was a rich kid
picking on a poor kid,
-
or that Vicky, it turns out,
would eventually end up being gay.
-
Poor kids and gay kids
are more likely to be bullied,
-
even by kids who also end up being gay.
-
I know there was a lot going on
in my little 10-year-old mind.
-
I'm not saying hate was the only
reason I picked on Vicky
-
or even that I was consciously
hateful or anything,
-
but the fact is,
-
the people we discriminate against
in our public policies and in our culture
-
are also the groups of people
most likely to be bullied in school.
-
That is not just a coincidence.
-
That's hate.
-
I am defining hate in a broad way
-
because I think we have a big problem.
-
And we need to solve all of it,
not just the most extremes.
-
So for instance,
-
we probably all agree
that marching down the street,
-
chanting about you should take away
rights from some group of people
-
because of their skin color
or their gender,
-
we'd all agree that's hate, right? OK.
-
What if you believe
that group of people is inferior,
-
but you don't say it?
-
Is that hate?
-
Or what if you believe
that group of people is inferior
-
but you aren't aware
that you believe it --
-
what's known as implicit bias.
-
Is that hate?
-
I mean they all have
the same roots, don't they?
-
In the historic patterns
of racism and sexism
-
that have shaped our history
and still infect our society today.
-
Isn't it all hate?
-
I'm not saying they're the same thing,
-
just like I am not saying
-
that being a bully
is as bad as being a Nazi,
-
just like I'm not saying that being a Nazi
is the same thing as punching a Nazi ...
-
(Laughter)
-
But hating a Nazi is still hate, right?
-
What about hating someone
who isn't as enlightened as you?
-
See, what I learned
-
is that we all are against hate
-
and we all think hate is a problem.
-
We think it's their problem,
-
not our problem.
-
They're hateful.
-
I mean, if I think the people
who didn't vote like me
-
are stupid racist monsters who don't
deserve to call themselves Americans,
-
alright, fine, I'm not being nice,
-
I get it.
-
(Laughter)
-
I'm not hateful, I'm just right, right?
-
(Laughter)
-
Wrong.
-
We all hate.
-
And I do not mean that
in some abstract, generic sense.
-
I mean all of us ...
-
me and you.
-
That sanctimonious pedestal of superiority
on which we all place ourselves,
-
that they are hateful and we are not,
-
is a manifestation
of the essential root of hate:
-
that we are fundamentally good
and they are not,
-
which is what needs to change.
-
So in trying to understand and solve hate,
-
I read every book
and every research study I could find,
-
but I also went and talked
to some former Nazis
-
and some former terrorists
-
and some former genocidal killers,
-
because I figured if they could
figure out how to escape hate,
-
surely the rest of us could.
-
Let me give you just one example
of the former terrorist I spent time with
-
in the West Bank.
-
When Bassam Aramin was 16 years old,
-
he tried to blow up an Israeli
military convoy with a grenade.
-
He failed, fortunately,
-
but he was still sentenced
to seven years in prison.
-
When he was in prison,
they showed a film about the Holocaust.
-
Up until that point,
-
Bassam had thought the Holocaust
was mostly a myth.
-
He went to go watch the film
-
because he thought he would enjoy
seeing Jews get killed.
-
But when he saw what really happened,
he broke down crying.
-
And eventually, after prison,
-
Bassam went on to get
a master's degree in Holocaust studies
-
and he founded an organization
where former Palestinian combatants
-
and Israeli combatants come together,
-
work together, try to find common ground.
-
By his own account,
Bassam used to hate Israelis,
-
but through knowing Israelis
and learning their stories
-
and working together for peace,
-
he overcame his hate.
-
Bassam says he still
doesn't hate Israelis,
-
even after the Israeli military --
-
shot and killed his [10]-year-old
daughter, Abir,
-
while she was walking to school.
-
(Sigh)
-
Bassam even forgave the soldier
who killed his daughter.
-
That soldier, he taught me,
-
was just a product
of the same hateful system as he was.
-
If a former terrorist ...
-
if a terrorist can learn to stop hating
-
and still not hate
when their child is killed,
-
surely the rest of us can stop our habits
-
of demeaning and dehumanizing each other.
-
And I will tell you there are stories
like Bassam's all over the world,
-
plus study after study after study
-
that says, no, we are neither designed
nor destined as human beings to hate,
-
but rather taught to hate
by the world around us.
-
I promise you,
-
none of us pops out of the womb
hating black people or Republicans.
-
There is nothing in our DNA
that makes us hate Muslims or Mexicans.
-
For better or for worse,
-
we are all a product
of the culture around us.
-
And the good news is,
-
we're also the ones
who shape that culture,
-
which means we can change it.
-
The first step is starting to recognize
the hate inside ourselves.
-
We need to catch ourselves
-
and our hateful thoughts
in all their forms
-
in all of us ...
-
and work to challenge
our ideas and assumptions.
-
That doesn't happen overnight,
-
I am telling you right here,
-
it is a lifelong journey,
but it's one we all need to take.
-
And then second:
-
if we want to challenge
the hate in our societies,
-
we need to promote policies
and institutions and practices
-
that connect us as communities.
-
Literally, like integrated
neighborhoods and schools.
-
That by the way is the reason
to support integration.
-
Not just because
it's the right thing to do,
-
but because integration
systematically combats hate.
-
There are studies
that teenagers who participate
-
in racially integrated classes
and activities reduce their racial bias.
-
And when little kids go to racially
integrated kindergartens
-
and elementary schools --
-
they develop less bias to begin with.
-
But the fact is in so many ways
and in so many places around our world,
-
we are separated from each other.
-
In the United States, for instance,
-
three-quarters of white people
don't have any non-white friends.
-
So in addition to promoting
those proactive solutions,
-
the other thing we need to do
is upend the hate in our institutions
-
and our policies
-
that perpetuate dehumanization
and difference
-
and otherizing and hate,
-
like systems of sexual harassment
and sexual assault in the workplace,
-
or our deeply racially imbalanced
-
and deeply racially biased
criminal "justice" system.
-
We need to change that.
-
Again, it will not happen overnight.
-
It needs to happen.
-
And then ...
-
when we connect together
-
in these connection spaces,
-
facilitated by connection systems,
-
we need to change the way
we talk to each other
-
and connect with one another
-
and relate with generosity
and open-mindedness
-
and kindness and compassion
-
and not hate.
-
And that's it.
-
That's it.
-
(Applause)
-
I have solved it all, right?
-
That's it.
-
That is pretty much --
-
there's a few details --
-
but that's pretty much all we have to do.
-
It's not that complicated, right?
-
But it's hard.
-
The hate that we feel
towards certain groups of people
-
because of who they are
or what they believe
-
is so ingrained in our minds
and in our society
-
that it can feel inevitable
-
and impossible to change.
-
Change is possible.
-
Just look at the terrorist
who became a peace activist.
-
Or look at the bully who learned
to apologize to her victim.
-
The entire time I was traveling
around the Middle East and Rwanda
-
and across the United States,
-
hearing these unbelievable stories
of people in communities
-
who had left entire histories
of hate behind,
-
I was still looking for Vicky.
-
It was so hard find her that I hired
a private investigator
-
and he found her.
-
I mean, he sort of found her.
-
The truth is, it became clear
that the person I'm calling Vicky
-
had gone to extraordinary lengths
to hide her identity.
-
But anyway, a year after
I began my journey,
-
I wrote Vicky an apology.
-
And a few months later,
-
she wrote back.
-
(Sigh)
-
I'm not going to lie,
-
I wanted to be forgiven.
-
I wasn't.
-
(Sigh)
-
She offered me sort of
conditional forgiveness.
-
What she wrote was ...
-
"Messages such as yours
cannot absolve you of your past actions.
-
The only way to do that
is to improve the world,
-
prevent others
from behaving in similar ways
-
and foster compassion."
-
And Vicky's right.
-
Which is why I'm here.
-
Thank you.
-
(Applause)