The Rev. Joshua Mason Pawelek
Unitarian Universalist Society: East
Manchester, CT
May 17, 20009
“Through the roar, through the rush, through the throng, through the crush, do you hear in the hush of your soul, of your soul? Hear the cry fear won’t still, hear the heart’s call to will, hear a sigh’s startling trill in your soul, in your soul?”1 I wonder if the stranger who helped Rabbi Kushner’s student’s great aunt escape the notice of Nazi troops who were searching for Jews on a bus in Munich—I wonder if he—through the roar, the rush, the throng, the crush—heard something—a cry fear wouldn’t still, the heart’s call to will. What possessed him, inspired him, called him to risk his own life to protect a complete stranger? What did he hear? Where did he find the nerve, the resolve, the will to respond in the moment, with barely a chance to think about the situation?
Or consider Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea, whose story our children have been studying these past five weeks through the Pennies for Peace curriculum. It’s an extraordinary story about his efforts to build schools, primarily for girls, in some of the most challenging and dangerous regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan—challenging and dangerous due to their geographical remoteness, their proximity to war and conflict, or the presence of organized religious extremism. What possessed him to think he could succeed? What voice called to him? Where did he find the nerve, the resolve, the will to respond to such a massive and desperate need?
Consider the countless civil rights activists of the 1950s and 60s who risked violence—some who lost their lives—working for social and racial justice. Consider corporate whistleblowers reporting crimes despite threats of backlash from their peers, their bosses. Where do they find the will to do what they do? What inspires people to act heroically when heroism is needed? How do we cultivate heroic imagination, so that when we find ourselves in a situation that calls for heroism, we are ready to act?
I love this question and I want to thank Linda Duncan for suggesting I preach about it. Linda was the third person who bought a sermon at last year’s good and services auction. “How do we cultivate heroic imagination?” is her question.
Linda’s thoughts on heroism actually begin on the opposite end of the spectrum, with Phil Zimbardo, whose book, The Lucifer Effect, examines the psychological conditions that enable ordinary people to commit acts of evil. The Lucifer Effect tells the story of the Stanford Prison Experiment, a now-classic study he conducted in 1971. “In that study,” he writes, “normal college students were randomly assigned to play the role of guard or inmate for two weeks in a simulated prison, yet the guards quickly became so brutal that the experiment had to be shut down after only six days. How and why” he asks, “did this transformation take place…? Equally important, what does it say about the ‘nature of human nature?’”2
What was so compelling to Linda about the Stanford Prison Experiment is actually not what it says about human nature, not what it says about a human capacity for evil and violence that arises easily under the right circumstances, but how the experiment came to be shut down. The participants—all college students with no past record of criminality—had very quickly become abusive and dehumanizing towards one another once the experiment began. Zimbardo was fascinated. His grad students were fascinated. Other experts who came to watch—a public defender, a priest who had served as a prison chaplain—were fascinated. Even parents of the participants who came for ‘parent's night’ were fascinated at the atrocities their children were committing against one another. But it never occurred to anyone that the experiment had gotten completely out of control, that participants were being hurt—even tortured—that the experiment, despite the data it was producing, was ethically flawed, morally reprehensible.
Then Zimbardo’s girlfriend, Christina Maslach, came to observe. She was horrified. She told him so. He later wrote: “That was like a slap in the face. She was saying that I had been transformed. I was looking at the same thing she was looking at, and saw it as interesting human behavior under the experimental microscope; whereas she was looking at young boys being dehumanized and tormented in my dungeon prison.”3 He very quickly saw what she saw, and they shut the experiment down. He says her action sparked his interest in heroism. I think he didn’t expect a woman he was dating to challenge him in this way, and just as importantly she was a junior colleague in the same field, which meant he had a certain degree of power over her career. In his eyes, what she did in speaking her truth was heroic.
In a 2007 article Zimbardo references a similar though much more dramatic example of heroism: Joe Darby, the army reservist serving in the 372nd Military Police Company, who handed the photos of prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq over to authorities. Once he came across the pictures, as Darby tells it, “I couldn’t stop thinking about [them]. After about three days, I made a decision to turn the pictures in. You have to understand: I’m not the kind of guy to rat somebody out. I’ve kept a lot of secrets for soldiers. In the heat of the moment, in a war, things happen. You do things you regret. I have exceeded the proper use of force myself a couple times. But this crossed the line to me. I had the choice between what I knew was morally right and my loyalty to other soldiers. I couldn’t have it both ways.”4 In 2005 Darby received the John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage award for his actions. He has received a number of awards, but not as many awards as death threats. He became a pariah among his fellow soldiers and in his hometown in western Maryland. He and his family were eventually taken into military protective custody and relocated to another part of the country.
Zimbardo has become fascinated with this type of heroism: John Darby’s heroism, Christina Maslach’s heroism; the heroism of the stranger on the bus; the heroism of essentially ordinary, unassuming people who “find themselves in a particular situation—one in which other people are looking the other way or continuing to perpetrate an evil behavior—and who, for some reason…take heroic action. They do something to stop it—blow the whistle or otherwise challenge it in a direct way. That action,” he says, “is ‘heroic,’ even if the people are ‘ordinary.’”5 I suppose this kind of heroism differs from that of firefighters who are trained to enter burning buildings and save lives; and I suppose it differs from the heroism of US Airways pilot, Chelsey B. “Sully” Sullenberger, III who crash-landed his jet on the Hudson River without any fatalities back on January 15th. Zimbardo is speaking more about the kind of heroism that arises out of moral clarity, often on the spur of the moment, to confront evil and injustice.
He talks about the “banality of heroism,” which is a reference to philosopher Hannah Arendt’s analysis of evil in response to the Nuremburg trials. She coined the phrase, “the banality of evil,” to explain how seemingly ordinary, down-to-earth, even decent people could commit unspeakable acts of violence under certain conditions. Zimbardo says psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, historians and theologians have studied evil. Very few people have studied heroism. He is now engaged I such study, seeking to understand the psychological conditions that lead ordinary people to respond to the world heroically. Why do some respond while so many others look away? How do we cultivate heroic imagination?
He has some preliminary thoughts and it’s actually very simple. It has to do with our self-conception, how we think about ourselves. He says, “first, [think] of yourself as an active person rather than a passive person: [think] of yourself as somebody willing to get involved; to move off the safety spot of minding your own business; to take a decisive action when the world around you looks the other way. Second, [think] less about yourself, less about your ego, your reputation, less…about looking foolish, making a mistake, upsetting someone’ s apple cart, and [become] socio-centric—more concerned for the well-being of others or upholding a moral imperative. Perhaps it also entails a dash of optimism, so that you believe you have the power to change something bad by your actions.”6 It sounds simple, but I’m not sure it is.
Friday night and Saturday I co-led an anti-racism workshop at the Community Church of New York City. At one point during the course of Friday evening we were talking about what it takes emotionally and spiritually for white people to confront other white people and white institutions on issues of institutional racism and white privilege. We acknowledged a tension between, on one hand, wanting to stay comfortable, wanting to stay safe, wanting to avoid conflict and, on the other hand, wanting to be truthful, wanting to be honest, wanting to authentically articulate a profound and pervasive social condition for which the white community needs to take responsibility. Raising those kinds of issues makes people angry. Raising those kinds of issues, especially with people who don’t want to hear them, causes rifts between family members, friends, co-workers.
It struck me that we were identifying the same tension Phil Zimbardo identifies. When his girlfriend confronted him about the Stanford Prison Experiment, regardless of how easy it was for her, she crossed over the line between comfort and truth. When Joe Darby turned in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse photos, he crossed over the line between comfort and truth. When the stranger on the bus resolved to pretend the terrified, paperless Jewish woman sitting next to him was his wife, while SS guards were bearing down on them, he crossed the line between comfort and truth. When Greg Mortenson resolved to build schools for girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan, he crossed over the line between comfort and truth.
That is what the hero does. In a specific moment, they cross over the line between comfort and truth. Phil Zimbardo says we have to start thinking of ourselves as people who can make a difference; we have to start thinking less about ourselves and more about others. That’s how we cultivate heroic imagination. What he doesn’t speak to—at least as far as I’ve read—and what has been confounding me ever since I started studying for this sermon—is what happens in that moment when one crosses over the line between comfort and truth. What propels us across that line? What pushes us across that line? What carries us across that line?
Not thought. The hero may have the chance to think about it ahead of time: Joe Darby took three days before making his decision—or they may not: the stranger on the bus had no time to think. Either way, the actual crossing of the line—the actual handing over of the photos—does not require thought. It requires will. It requires action. It requires courage.
That moment of crossing the line is a profoundly spiritual moment—a moment of transformation. I suspect that as we approach such moments in our lives there is a call. Perhaps it rises up from within, rises up from the wells of our own sense of truth, our own sense of right and wrong, our own moral intelligence. Perhaps it enters us from some source beyond us, from God, from Goddess, from Spirit. Perhaps the call from within and the call from without are one and the same. The question is, “Do we hear it?” As the hymn says, do we hear the cry fear won’t still? Do we hear the heart’s call to will? Do we hear a sigh’s startling trill in our souls, in our souls? Do we comprehend that if we respond our lives may never be the same?
There are many forces that will lead us to resist hearing such a call. The impulse to stay comfortable is strong in us. The impulse to protect the status quo, to preserve our privileges, to keep our friends, to keep our jobs, to turn away from injustice, to not notice the suffering stranger, to not make eye contact with the homeless person, to mind our own business, to rationalize inaction because ‘I’m just too busy,’ to forget the demands of our principles; to reframe torture as enhanced interrogation; to reframe war-making as peace-seeking; to accept things as they are, and not work for what ought to be—all these impulses are strong in us. All these impulses lead us to resist the call to cross over the line between comfort and truth. All these impulses lead us away from what is true and right and good. All these impulses lead us to render ourselves spiritually impotent in a world that needs us to be spiritually powerful.
The things that are true and right and good in this world don’t take shape unless human beings are willing to cross that line and give them shape. The things that are true and right and good in this world don’t have voice unless human beings are willing to cross that line and give them voice. The things that are true and right and good in this world don’t have power unless human beings are willing to exercise power on their behalf. The things that are true and right and good in this world will not come into existence if human beings fail to cultivate heroic imagination.
I leave you with this simple hope, this simple prayer that we are becoming, that we may be people who possess the courage and the will to act for the sake of truth; that we are becoming, that we may be heroes when we are called to heroic.
Amen and Blessed Be.
1 Thorn, Emily, “Do You Hear?” (second verse) in Singing the Living Tradition (Boston: Beacon Press and the Unitarian Universalist Association, 1993) #112.
2 http://www.lucifereffect.com/
3 See “The Heroic Imagination: A Talk with Phil Zimbardo” at Edge: The Third Culture at: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/zimbardo07/zimbardo07_index.html.
4 See “Prisoner of Conscience” at http://men.style.com/gq/features/full?id=content_4785&pageNum=3
5 See “The Heroic Imagination: A Talk with Phil Zimbardo” at Edge: The Third Culture at: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/zimbardo07/zimbardo07_index.html.
6 See “The Heroic Imagination: A Talk with Phil Zimbardo” at Edge: The Third Culture at: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/zimbardo07/zimbardo07_index.html.
