Philip Zimbardo's TED Talks

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As shown in the 1994 documentary, Freedom on My Mind, the story of Freedom Summer resonates today in many ways, but especially in its horrifying portrayal of evil. Many people would like to think that evil is separate from themselves, that it is inconceivable that they could take part in the atrocities of the past. However, the events of that summer in 1964 display the insidious nature of evil and how it can creep into even the most level-headed of humans’ mentality. Mercifully, the story of this summer doesn’t only depict evil, it depicts good as well. It depicts what humanity needs to avoid and to constantly be striving for.
When studying the outrages that white people committed against black people during that summer, it is as easy to dehumanize the ones who took part in it as it was for them to …show more content…

Simply, it is easy to forget that most of the people who enforced oppression in the most degrading of ways were just the same as everyone else. The nature of evil does not work in such a simple, black-and-white way as society believes. To prove this psychologists have done social experiments to determine the ability of every human to perform evil acts. For example, Philip Zimbardo, in his TED Talks presentation, The Psychology of Evil, speaks of an experiment, done by Stanley Milgram, which sought to answer the query of whether another event like the Holocaust could happen in today’s society. As Zimbardo explains, “what he did was he tested 1,000 ordinary people,” and gave them the role of a teacher in what they believed to be a memory research experiment (Zimbardo). As the teacher, they would be led by an authority

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