The Scary Guy teaches unconditional love and acceptance across all divides. Death threats pushed him to travel the world challenging people's assumptions. He shares how he once laughed at racist and sexist jokes at work to fit in, and describes a participant who transformed from chronic anger to detachment through his program.
You know, quite frankly, I don't care what color your skin is. I don't care if it's white, black, yellow, green, or multicolored like mine. If you take my program and you boil it all the way down to the very bottom line, it's about love and acceptance of all people on the planet, regardless of race, color, creed, religion. Religion, religion. We got a lot of religious killing going on. Been going on a long time. Since I started to speak these words out of my mouth, Here's my life. I get death threats on the phone, death email. Can you imagine that? Death email? Can you imagine the people on the end of the computer, on the keyboard, typing a death email? I'm gonna kill him. I'm gonna kill him.
I just can't.
Return. I said, I'm gonna travel the world to help people see each other differently from the inside out. I knew what I had to do. That was my wake-up call to go forward. Not to sit there and just be this thing called The Scary Guy. How many of you have been called a rotten name? Raise your hands high. Look around the room. Put your hands down. How many of you have called other people rotten names before? Raise your hands high. Look around the room. Put your hands down. Check this one out. How many of you have actually hit another human being before? Raise your hands high. Look around the room. Man, I'll tell you what, I don't know if I'm very safe right here. I'm in a whole room full of name-calling hitters.
He can shock people into understanding how their assumptions about behavior, how language applies, and how judgment applies to everyday situations. And he shows people quickly how some of the assumptions that we make are wrong.
I was a computer salesman. Do I look like one to you? I thought back when I was a computer salesman, it was always men or guys in my life. We'd gather in the break room, getting our cup of coffee, waiting for the boss to come in the room. When the boss came in the room in a real in a real quiet, whispery hush tone so nobody heard what he said outside that door, he proceeded to tell me the most racist or sexist joke he heard from the day before. You know what I did? I laughed at every one of his jokes. I was afraid if I didn't laugh at his jokes, I might not be part of his team anymore. I even saw people get fired for not laughing. They didn't even know why.
Behaviors are relatively easy to change. We can pass laws. We can do things that punish people for things they do wrong. Attitudes are very hard to change. And I think One of the great magic things about Scary is he can change attitudes pretty much in a few moments of time, in a few words, in a few sentences. He can have a tremendous impact.
What do you think's the difference between you then and you now? What has happened?
Well, it's like I'm a completely different person now. Then I was angry all the time. I was— I hated a lot of people. I mean, it's a strong word to say, but I did. But now it's— I don't. It's like I say, well, instead of listening to what they were saying, I kind of just remembered what you were saying about negative energy and just think, oh well. It's their problem, not mine. And I did think that all the time then. And now I don't even need to think that. I just say, "Well, it's not my problem," and walk away.
This is today's newspapers. I'm sorry, but look, I'm trying to find out how it's going today, okay? There's one.
There's two.
Oh, and they found out about one of the bombers. He was full of anger. That's what it says. Surprise, huh? Law enforcement is no different. Excuse me, new police officers, you got something you got to wake up to right now. Do you think you're wearing a uniform, you're immune from the process of negative energy in the form of words and nonverbal communication? No! You're going to turn into the dudes you arrest because you're going to take on all that negative energy out there all day long and then have to go home and be good. No, you'll go to the pub and drink yourself to death. That's the hardest part for people being around me. This isn't about me and the way I look. It's about what are they going to find out about who they are.
We were looking for a way of launching emotional intelligence within the school. Pinder School has had a difficult past. It was the lowest-performing school in the region. Behaviour was quite challenging amongst the students. And what we felt we needed to do was first to get control of behaviour, and we did that. But what we want to give to the students is self-control. So we wanted a way of launching the whole idea. Well, I or my colleagues could stand up in assembly and explain what a good idea it is to the students to take control of their emotions, but we didn't think that would really cut it. So what we did is we came across The Scary Guy, we saw a flyer, we went on his website, and whilst he looked very intimidating, we thought he might be worth the risk. For the school, I think it's really important because when you look at issues like bullying, and violence, you need somebody pretty charismatic to challenge those strong figures who are coming through the media into the children's homes.
