This morning I read an article by Jeffrey S. Kaye, Ph.D who resigned from the American Psychological association after two years attempting to reform the position of the APA on psychologist participation in the interogations of "detainees" at Guantanamo.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/78909/
The BBC has recently replicated a 40 year old experiment on sensory deprivation which had to be halted after 48 hours although it was originally planned to continue longer. The subjects in the new experiment knew it would be ending after two days, but they lost their minds in less time than that.
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/?p=209
The psychological "experiment" which is Guantanamo has broken the minds of both inmates and guards.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/07/11/050711fa_fact4?currentPage=1
Perhaps the most interesting result of this experimentation is that it illustrates once again how easily "good" people can turn into "bad" people. Even professional psychologists get sucked into this process. It would be interesting to have research on techniques that might be used by individuals to protect themselves from this risk. What is it that has made some members of the APA realize the horror of what they are participating in while the majority have no problem with it How do some people avoid becoming "good Nazis?"
Linda
In surfing from the message and video Fred posted, I came to this link entitled Misbehaviour of Behaviourists. The author is an autistic woman scholar who writes here on the abuse of autistics by people with benign motives.
http://www.sentex.net/~nexus23/naa_aba.html
Here is a quotation:
The researchers' concern that clinicians routinely applying severe aversives to autistics would suffer for this proved groundless. They found that those applying severe aversives were happiest and reported less job-related stress and greater personal accomplishment. In fact, the longer they had been at it, the more personally accomplished they reported being. The study design could not answer the question why, but the authors made the behaviourist assumption that strong aversives applied to autistics produce the most satisfying results. This would be from the staff point of view. And the authors conclude that "allowing staff to use a wide range of interventions including strong aversives may diminish job stress and enhance one's sense of personal efficacy."
The guards at Guantanamo think they are doing good work. So do the CIA operatives who believe they need waterboarding in order to protect innocent people. All of these delusions--which include the malpractice of medical professionals--flourish among humans who are still asleep.
My question in my first posting still stands. Why do some wake up? This week there are Congressional hearings for those who call themselves Winter Soldiers who are testifying in public about atrocities they committed in Iraq. We need a social scientist to crunch the data to find what made these soldiers different from those who either continue to torture and enjoy feelings of "personal accomplishment" or quietly kill themselves.
Hi Linda,
Your question, "What is it that has made some members of the APA realize the horror of what they are participating in while the majority have no problem with it. How do some people avoid becoming "good Nazis?" made me think of Julian Huxley, famous biologist and brother of Aldous Huxley, author of "Brave New World". Julian believed wholeheartedly that science had proven, once and for all time, there is no God and all of nature is no more than a random generator of energy that, given enough time, will produce organic life from star stuff. This must have made the time he spent studying eugenics no problem at all for his conscience because if everything is random, there is no need to adhere to someone's silly notion of morality. I wonder how fast he would have changed his mind if he had been the recipient of some of the experiments he was conducting? Anyway, I think Julian is a prime example of how we can talk ourselves in to just about anything, as long as it isn't happening to me/us. I am free to play with nature because nature made me by accident - I, on the other hand, am conducting experiments that are designed to further the overall goals and survival of my accidental species, therefore I HAVE BECOME GOD after a fashion. I'm sure the list of rationale for cruelty is long and tedious. This is really only half the answer though, because many have been tempted by this kind of rationale, but did not succumb to it. Some people just need it to happen to them before they can begin to understand.
Chris
That is a very interesting idea, Chris. "Some people just need it to happen to them before they can begin to understand." What if you did the Stanford Prison Experiment with the subjects told in advance that after x number of days, the roles will reverse: the guards will become prisoners and the prisoners will become guards.
Now all we need is an ambitious psychology Ph.D. student to set this up. I imagine that with this setup both prisoners and guards would play their roles in a harmonious way. All participants would seek to maximize the comfort of all, and at the end of the experiment--both groups taking both roles--they would collect their money and go out drinking together.
I think people are malleable when they have no foundation. Although I rebelled and was a free spirit from a young age, I have often thought it's a good thing I had that kind of old-fashioned upbringing, at least in the beginning. I remember having moral debates with my former wife, a devout atheist. She considers herself a moral person, and in fact we agree on the "right or wrong" of many things - but my question to her would be "Why?" I myself am not an absolutist, but if there are no absolutes, what gets measured by what? And what do phrases like the "highest good" even mean? These are deep questions, pondered by many great minds. The PS2-and-text-message generation is not much different from the joust-and-mead generation or the gladiators-and-public-baths generation in terms of curiosity about deeper reality. But that's not to say they don't have the potential. Roman centurions, feudal lords, Bedouin chiefs and Mayan priests, all have surely seen their cultures as the pinnacle of history. I don't find it surprising that good people can become the agents of evil. And I don't know what makes some of them wake up. I'm just glad they do, and I think more and more of that starts to happen as decline begins to be part of the definition of a culture.
8-D
It's not what happens to you but how you respond to it.
I think it's in people's belief systems. If you've grown up and developed an internal rule book that supports aggression, you're going to see/feel nothing wrong with it for a long time. If, however, you've been luck enough to grow up with and assimilate a different rule about aggression, you are more ready to see through it.
There are those with blue-tinted glasses on and those with green-tinted ones - and they can't agree about the colour of the white wall!
with love and light
Marian
http://www.thestillpoint.co.uk
http://www.marianmills.blog.co.uk
Great clarifying analogy Marian!
Chris
What was scary about the Stanford Prison Experiment was that people who had grown up decent, with good moral values, very rapidly turned into torturers. In the Milgram experiment very, very few people balked at obeying orders and no one reported the experiment to university authorities as an ethical outrage. It would help to know what was special about the "very, very few."
I remember during World War II when I was small and had learned to be a "good girl" that I was afraid that if I had been born in Germany I would be a "good Nazi." I tried to talk to grownups about this and they didn't understand.
All of us are the guards and all of us are the prisoners. No one is free of the guilt of collective humanity, especially not someone who has not faced the temptation. Except for not being in rebellion against my own government (ok--that is a big except) I believe I am not a war criminal. But I often think that but for the grace of God and being born some decades older, I could have become a Condi Rice.
Hey Linda,
I wrote a little commentary about Richard Perle last weekend, but have been unsure where it fits - it fits here in relation to the point you are making so well in the post above. Alan Weisman was on C-Span2 Sunday morning sharing his new book, "Prince of Darkness: Richard Perle" and his discourse was a bit of an epiphany for me. It has been my contention that people like Richard Perle are not blind, but consciously doing wrong. After listening to Alan Weisman, I think it may be a bit more complicated than that. Perle's story shows the reader how easily an adopted agenda can be developed, nurtured and adhered to, even by people who come from different philosophical underpinnings. Perle says that he is not a student of Leo Strauss (Godfather of the NeoCons) teachings, but he still blends in perfect with all the Bill Kristols who openly do subscribe to the teachings of Strauss. Perle says, "Don't group me with Woodrow Wilson - I am not an admirer of Wilson" "If you want to tie me in with someone, that would be Winston Churchill." Perle, being so blinded by (what he calls) his iron-clad idealistic argument for why we are in Iraq, may very well end up another Woodrow Wilson. A very remorseful and duped WW's parting words were, "I have ruined my Government!". There appears to be a naivete' in many in the halls of geopolitical power that reinforces their blind idealism which makes them useful to the real "behind the scenes" masters of geopolitical goals until they (like so many before them) are discarded and replaced by new up-and-coming naive idealists with delusions of grandeur. New dupes the masters can mold and bring along (like WJ Clinton).
It is obviously in the nature of man to faithfully and blindly adhere to what they have invested much rationale and emotion into, regardless of what is really right or wrong. This works well (for a time) for the faceless puppet masters who are left with the light work of watering and a little weeding. (Human) nature tends to take care of the rest - much like the CIA and psyops - most of what they do is in cooperation with how the brain already works.
Conclusion: Conspiracies work quite naturally. I do not say all this in defense of Richard Perle, but to say how easy it is for despotic men of great power and wealth to garner unassuming cooperation from idealistic pawns who appear to never be in short supply. Once the momentum picks up, their hidden agenda takes on a life of its own while they remain safe in the psychological realm of plausible deniability. One can only imagine how strong is the illusion of wealth and power for these faceless controllers who get together from time to time to carve up the world in their own image.
Chris
It has been my contention that people like Richard Perle are not blind, but consciously doing wrong. After listening to Alan Weisman, I think it may be a bit more complicated than that.
You make an excellent point. Very, very few people - approaching none, I believe - make an actual conscious choice to follow evil. They may be so blind or selfish that they truly don't care, but those who get sucked in eventually realize they've been duped. Sadly, the majority of these seem to fold, compromise and deny, and when they do, they die inside.
8-D
It is obviously in the nature of man to faithfully and blindly adhere
to what they have invested much rationale and emotion into, regardless
of what is really right or wrong.
Again, I'd say this is a function of the core beliefs we hold. There is nothing so powerful as our own inner rule book, which we consult all the time to work out how to respond to every situation, whether major or minor.
We only need to look at how much value is seemingly placed on people who have a direction and follow it, regardless of the consequences. What our definitions of 'success' tell us about the core beliefs of our society group at this time. I wonder how many times each of us was encouraged to persevere with something and to ignore our inner voice that said, "I don't feel comfortable with this" - whether it be finishing some homework, meeting friends because we'd promised, eating everything on our plate, continuing to study and take exams just because that's what's expected.
It's a very rare few who are actually encouraged to question and who can hold the paradoxes of 'right and wrong' (that wonderful story about what's wrong turning right and vice versa). That needs good roots and a strong sense of security in oneself that, unfortunately, few of us have the nurturing to develop early in life.
However, it seems old dogs can learn new tricks - isn't that what we're all here for?
Is there anything intrinsically 'wrong' or 'evil' inside people? I don't believe so, but some people have chosen a harder path to reclaiming their love than others, and why? who knows! It'll all become clear in the great Cosmic Wash ...... at least I hope it will, cos I do love a mystery with an answer
with love and light
Marian
http://www.thestillpoint.co.uk
http://www.marianmills.blog.co.uk
To continue the description of my thesis, read Wilson's story or watch "The Money Masters". He began with the very confident thought he was doing the absolute right thing by handing the money powers over to a handful of rich bankers, just what his parents and peers would have and did expect from him. He sincerely thought he had done his homework in grand style and got an "A+". Same thing happened to DD Eisenhower. He felt he was on the right track the whole time as he went from Colonel to four star general inside two years, only to tell us in the end "beware of the military industrial complex". His parting words were not quite as remorseful as W Wilson's, but I believe he was very remorseful all the same. FDR was also one of these men being used by the "puppet masters" money houses to forward the goals of war for the sake of huge profits to be made by the Rothechilds, Schiffs, Morgans and Rockefellers types. FDR has since been memorialized so we wont teach our children the mistakes of the past so that these men of wealth can repeat history. None of these pawns were bad men. They were simply caught up in the moment and thought they were doing God's good work. That is why this works so well, over and over again. Christopher Hitchens is also a very interesting case in point. He wrote "the stupidity of Ronald Reagan in 2004 for Slate, but get him talking about our geopolitical disaster over in the middle east/central Asia and you'd think he was drinking Jim Jones' special grape kool aid! How can people who are as intelligent as Hitchens has shown himself to be so many times prior to the "Rebuilding America's Defenses/Clean Break/Full Spectrum Dominance/Joint Vision 2020 agendas turn so quickly toward insanity and be so proud to be there? It is an amazing phenomenon and has been one of the most interesting facets of this non-fiction book called "KrazyLand" they have been writing the past 30+ years. You have to admit, it is going to be one of the more exciting history lessons for children to study in school, even for those who thought they didn't like history and social studies...
In Confident and Inviolate Hope,
Chris
Your last sentence tickles me, Chris, since I am a retired history professor. And saying you like mysteries reminds me of my new book "In Search of Molly Pitcher" which combines a mystery story with a history lesson. You can read the first two chapters at www.lulu.com/content/1636745
Right now I am very glad to be retired, but if they ever get "KrazyLand" published as a text, I might be tempted to go back into the classroom.
Hi Linda,
I agree! A history book called "Krazyland" might just spontaneously raise the bar on the quality of teaching and learning. Oh, and it was Marian that mentioned love of a good mystery, but I doth love a good mystery too. Krazyland would be less of a mystery and more of a historical case study of mass insanity, ignorance and pride. The mystery would be the search for the mysterious spiritual virus that infected so many worldwide at the same time. My first clue of this viral spreading was when Dennis Miller (the comedian) went from left wing to "red tie". Another was Ron Silvers (the actor). And then there was the overwhelming evidence for this virus when Christopher Hitchens went insane. It was and is an amazing thing to witness these past so many years.
Chris
It seems that the man who ran the Stanford Prison Experiment had the same question I did and he is now researching it.
http://www.alternet.org/stories/79540/?page=entire
EXCERPT from "Is There a Dark Side in All of Us"
The pressure to go along with the escalation of abuse is huge, says Zimbardo, and would claim most of us. "We all have this egocentric bias to say, 'I would be the hero, I would blow the whistle,'" he says. "But other things being equal, you would do what they did. Though there are always a few who resist. And that is the hope of humankind."
Usually the whistleblower is an outsider, who views the situation with fresh eyes. In his experiment it was Christina. At Abu Ghraib it was 24-year-old reservist Joe Darby, who was shown images of the abuses by a fellow soldier.
At first he thought they were "pretty funny", but found he "could not stop thinking about it". He said that what was happening "violated everything I believed personally". After three agonizing days of feeling torn between loyalty to his friends and to his moral conscience, Darby blew the whistle.
Zimbardo is now researching heroes such as Darby, "ordinary people who do extraordinary things when other people are doing bad or doing nothing". His findings so far indicate that there is nothing in background, belief or personality that would predict who these people will be. The only certain thing, he says, is that "heroes are always deviants": they always question authority. "We just did a study in Italy, where we put people in a situation when authority makes you do something bad, to see who defied. Nothing we measured before would have predicted the outcome. All the people who defied could say is that they were more concerned about this other person than about the experiment or the authority. They showed an ability to empathize."
Most of us live in happy denial; we are never tested. I wonder how it must feel to have been tested as Zimbardo was, and to have been found wanting. He got caught up in the Stanford experiment; enmeshed in the values of the false system he had created, manipulative in protecting it, seemingly impervious to the suffering in front of him.
You may have nailed it with, "They showed an ability to empathize." How many times have we all seen people just plain oblivious to anything that goes past their own skin? And then others who find it impossible to avoid what they are feeling/thinking/realizing about some situation? Another one of my favorite whistleblowers is Sibel Edmonds (Turkish descent - lived back and forth between Turkey and Iran), former translator for the FBI.
As I was reading your post, it made me think of the story of the Roman Centurian whom Jesus had some very good things to say about concerning the man's built-in qualities he possessed without any religious training. No religious training? Maybe that is why he had the favored qualities! HaHa
Below is a few passages from a link Berry provided on another forum.
The openheartedness of the Dodecahedron requires the internal
support of a trinity of personal commitments — impeccability, self-
responsibility, and integrity — in order to transcend into the
Stellated Dodecahedron or Christ Grid. It takes the integrity and
responsibility of honest self-observation and Zen Buddhist-type
mindfulness to remain active and aware of whether one is in the bliss
state or in the struggle of 3D reality. The Stellated Dodecahedron is
about adding conscious awareness — impeccability, self-responsibility,
and integrity — to the open heart to create Christ Consciousness
realization.
Without commitment to the higher qualities stated above, unity
becomes a transitory experience that is dependant upon a leader,
instead of being a natural, unfolding process from the individual
level. We have all frequently observed open-hearted people who have the
best of intentions falling prey to the agendas of other people or to
those of their own ego.
If individuals do not commit themselves to impeccability in their
behavior, they fall prey to the ego agendas of themselves or others.
Openheartedness without conscious mindfulness is an expression of
Dodeca consciousness. The Stellated Dodeca is the consciousness of a
self-realized being, and that is why it is referred to as the Christ
Consciousness Grid.
Christ, or any other Master of this level, exhibits this self-aware
consciousness: an exceptionally high level of personal refinement that
is practical and attainable for all humans who sincerely discipline
themselves to attain it. It is so much more than chasing bliss. This is
what is truly expressed in Christ's teachings. He didn't want anyone to
follow him. He wanted us to become as he became, a self-aware,
enlightened being. The Christ Consciousness Grid exists as a reminder
of our true nature and encourages us to attain it.
Overwhelmed with childlike excitement for the safe place we all really are,
Chris