This past week I had the pleasure of meeting with approximately 20 like minded individuals in Houston, Texas as part of Hero Camp. The theme of the camp was "Changing the World... One Hero At A Time." We met to develop a curriculum for schools that would nurture the "Everyday Hero" in each of us.
HeroCamp was inspired by the Zimbardo talk given at TED 2008 by Dr. Phillip Zimbardo, the academic behind the Stanford Prison Experiments, on his new book The Lucifer Effect. Through his years of research, Phil has come up with the thesis that there is good and evil in all of us and it is bad barrels, not individual bad apples, that lead to evil acts. That is, most people will act according to the accepted norms around them. If it is acceptable to act racist, people will act racist, and so forth.
More on Hero Camp in subsequent blogs.