Watching another uberfascinating TEDTalks, as I have come accustom to doing recently; I was left with degree of fear and hope, which I guess is often the case but this one especially so. Entitled, ‘how ordinary people become monsters…or heroes’ by Philip Zimbardo, is an insight in how fundamentally societal problems are often misjudged. In essence Zimbardo, likens Abu Ghraib to the famous prison experiment he carried out in the early 70′s, where in both situations ordinary people, are put in a situational context that where at a flip of a coin you can turn into evil or be the hero of the hour. It left me inspired and thoughtfall about the worlds problems. No solutions to them as yet, except that honesty, transparency and an acceptance by society not to blame the individual, rather, to look at the wider influences may help avoid extreme and sickening behaviour like Abu Ghraib.

I’m sure I will come back to this subject again soon… I’ll do some more reading around this matter and formulate some more ideas.