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Contagious Monks |
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Goleman, Daniel (1995)
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| "It was early in the Vietnam war and an American platoon was hunkered down in some rice paddies in the heat of a firefight with the Vietcong. Suddenly six monks came walking along the elevated berms that separated paddy from paddy. Perfectly calm and poised, the monks walked directly towards the line of fire. |
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"They didn't look right, they didn't look left. They walked straight through," recalls one of the American soldiers. "It was really strange because nobody shot at 'em. And after they walked over the berm, suddenly all the fight was out of me. It just didn't feel like I wanted to do this anymore, at least not that day. It must have been that way for everybody, because everybody quit. We just stopped fighting." |
The power of the monks' quietly courageous calm to pacify soldiers in the heat of battle illustrates a basic principle of social life: emotions are contagious.
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