The Stanford Prison Experiment

[annabenedetti]

Challenging The Stanford Prison Experiment
(Part I of III)
http://www.swans.com/library/art17/barker82.html

Challenging The Stanford Prison Experiment
Undermining Prisoner Solidarity (Part II of III)
http://www.swans.com/library/art17/barker83.html

Challenging The Stanford Prison Experiment
Military Connections (Part III of III)
http://www.swans.com/library/art17/barker84.html

Who's Michael Barker? What are his credentials?

I am a member of the Socialist Party (England and Wales) which is related to the US-based Socialist Alternative.
I have been writing for alternative media outlets since 2006, and at present I am a regular contributor to Swans Commentary. My work has been published by the following media organizations: Captalism Nature Socialism, Ceasefire Magazine, Corporate Watch (UK), Countercurrents, CounterPunch, Dissident Voice, Fifth Estate Online, Green Left Weekly, Jacobin, Media-ocracy, Monthly Review Zine, New Community Quarterly, New Left Project, One Struggle, PULSE Media, Spinwatch, Socialist Project, State of Nature, Theory In Action, The Real News Network, Upside Down World, Variant, and in the past I was a regular contributor to Znet.
I have published various articles about local political struggles at Thoughts of a Leicester Socialist since 2012.
​

michaeljamesbarker.wordpress.com/about/






:chuckle:

 

[PureX]

Thanks Arthur, I'll have to watch it. It'll be interesting to set that against the recent version and the documentary, especially in light of German attitudes towards law, order, conformity. And thinking about how it's all but impossible to form a unified group without a leader, and how much some followers are willing to put aside their own identity in order to assume by proxy the identity of the leader. I've long been interested in how mob mentality forms - how, by some fleeting moment of converging circumstance, a group of individuals become of one mind and one purpose.

I think that's somewhat genetic. "Bloodlust", for example, is most likely biological. And can be spontaneously triggered in one person by it's presence in another. We can see it more easily in animals that hunt cooperatively. And some, like wolves, will kill indiscriminately once they get started.

If the psychology isn't complicated enough, I think we also have to consider that a lot of this behavior is a mixture of psychology and biology. It'll be a very difficult knot to untangle. But one well worth continuing to explore until we do.

 

[Traditio]

I would like to point out (though it may not be entirely "to the point," so to speak) that the conditions of the experiment don't reflect actual conditions for U.S. correctional officers and prisoner populations. Prisons don't just bring in people from the street, give them fancy tools and let them loose on the prisoners.

 

[kmoney]

I would like to point out (though it may not be entirely "to the point," so to speak) that the conditions of the experiment don't reflect actual conditions for U.S. correctional officers and prisoner populations. Prisons don't just bring in people from the street, give them fancy tools and let them loose on the prisoners.

They don't? :shocked:

 

[Traditio]

They don't? :shocked:

No. They receive training. There are procedures. There are appropriate ways to act and not to act. They're not trained just to beat prisoners randomly.

 

[aCultureWarrior]

Who's Michael Barker? What are his credentials?

I am a member of the Socialist Party (England and Wales) which is related to the US-based Socialist Alternative.

A socialist critiquing another socialist...go figure.

"Mysteries at the Museum" on the Travel Channel just happened to show an excerpt from The Stanford Prison Experiment this morning. I marveled how anyone could take a study seriously that lasted 6 whole days and had silver spoon fed liberals from one of California's indoctrination centers as the participants. None of the "prisons" grew up on the streets and knew what it was like to be around the criminal element, nor did any of the "guards" have any training when it came to working in a correctional facility.

I see that comrade Zimbardo represented one of the accused during the Abu Ghraib trials.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse
http://www.udel.edu/PR/UDaily/2006/dec/zimbardo120705.html

What exactly qualified comrade Zimbardo as an expert, a supposed study that failed after 6 days?

 

[Arthur Brain]

A socialist critiquing another socialist...go figure.

"Mysteries at the Museum" on the Travel Channel just happened to show an excerpt from The Stanford Prison Experiment this morning. I marveled how anyone could take a study seriously that lasted 6 whole days and had silver spoon fed liberals from one of California's indoctrination centers as the participants. None of the "prisons" grew up on the streets and knew what it was like to be around the criminal element, nor did any of the "guards" have any training when it came to working in a correctional facility.

I see that comrade Zimbardo represented one of the accused during the Abu Ghraib trials.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse
http://www.udel.edu/PR/UDaily/2006/dec/zimbardo120705.html

What exactly qualified comrade Zimbardo as an expert, a supposed study that failed after 6 days?

None of the prisons grew on the streets? For once you're actually right, I believe they're normally built on them...

lain:

Other than that wonderful insight of yours you've completely missed the point, agaaaaaain...

 

[annabenedetti]

A socialist critiquing another socialist...go figure.

It was pretty funny, reading that. Knowing you hadn't read the links, researched the source, just looked for something that sounded good that you could throw up here.

You bouncing off the walls burbling about leftists and communists, while sourcing your articles from a socialist and you didn't even know it. :chuckle:

"Mysteries at the Museum" on the Travel Channel just happened to show an excerpt from The Stanford Prison Experiment this morning. I marveled how anyone could take a study seriously that lasted 6 whole days and had silver spoon fed liberals from one of California's indoctrination centers as the participants. None of the "prisons" grew up on the streets and knew what it was like to be around the criminal element, nor did any of the "guards" have any training when it came to working in a correctional facility.

Exactly. That's how the study was meant to be conducted. With participants who didn't have a criminal background. If you have a problem with that, talk to the U.S. Navy, they're the ones who gave Zimbardo the grant. They obviously had an interest in the subject of personality and environment and their influences on guards and prisoners.

Considering how many of the ordinary (non-criminal element) citizens of Germany allowed the Jewish population to be systematically marginalized, stripped of their civil rights one by one, stripped of their human dignity and eventually their lives - their friends, their neighbors, their shopkeepers and customers... Considering the German soldiers and the police and the SS and the government workers who dutifully obeyed the orders they were given.... no, you don't need someone with a criminal background for a study like the Stanford experiment, you need ordinary people.

I read these books by Victor Klemperer years ago and never forgot them:

I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933-1941

I Will Bear Witness 1942-1945: A Diary of the Nazi Years

Klemperer's diaries are instructive not only in how people who are considered the favored class look the other way when the people targeted as unfavored are persecuted, but also in how the persecuted are limited in their ability to withstand, let alone fight back against something so much bigger than they are.

I see that comrade Zimbardo represented one of the accused during the Abu Ghraib trials.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse
http://www.udel.edu/PR/UDaily/2006/dec/zimbardo120705.html

What exactly qualified comrade Zimbardo as an expert, a supposed study that failed after 6 days?

Spoiler

Philip Zimbardo is internationally recognized as a leading "voice and face of contemporary psychology" through his widely seen PBS-TV series, Discovering Psychology, his media appearances, best-selling trade books on shyness, and his classic research, The Stanford Prison Experiment.
Zimbardo has been a Stanford University professor since 1968 (now an Emeritus Professor), having taught previously at Yale, NYU, and Columbia University. He continues teaching graduate students at the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology, and at the Naval Post Graduate School (Monterey). He has been given numerous awards and honors as an educator, researcher, writer, and service to the profession. Recently, he was awarded the Havel Foundation Prize for his lifetime of research on the human condition. Among his more than 300 professional publications and 50 books is the oldest current textbook in psychology, Psychology and Life, now in its 18th Edition, and Core Concepts in Psychology in its 5th Edition.
His current research interests continue in the domain of social psychology, with a broad emphasis on everything interesting to study from shyness to time perspective, madness, cults, vandalism, political psychology, torture, terrorism, and evil. Noted for his personal and professional efforts to actually 'give psychology away to the public', Zimbardo has also been a social-political activist, challenging the Government's wars in Vietnam and Iraq, as well as the American Correctional System. Zimbardo has served as elected President of the Western Psychological Association (twice), President of the American Psychological Association, the Chair of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents (CSSP) representing 63 scientific, math and technical associations (with 1.5 million members), and now is Chair of the Western Psychological Foundation. He heads a philanthropic foundation in his name to promote education in his ancestral Sicilian towns. Zimbardo adds to his retirement list activities: serving as the new executive director of a center on terrorism, the Center for Interdisciplinary Policy, Education, and Research on Terrorism (CIPERT).
He is most excited by the publication of his most important contribution: The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil (Random House, 2007).

Honors and Awards

• Teaching
• Distinguished Teaching Award, New York University, 1965
• Distinguished Teaching Award for Outstanding Contributions to Education in Psychology, American Psychological Foundation, 1975
• Phoenix Award for Outstanding Teaching, Stanford Psychology Department Faculty, 1984
• California Magazine, Best Psychology Teacher in California, 1986
• The Walter Gores Distinguished Teaching Award, Senior Faculty, Stanford University, 1990
• Bing Fellow Outstanding Senior Faculty Teaching Award, Stanford University, 1994-1997
• WPA Recipient of the annual Outstanding Teaching Award, 1995
• Distinguished Teaching Award, Phi Beta Kappa (Northern California Chapter), 1998
• Robert S. Daniel Teaching Excellence Award, APA Division 2, Society for the Teaching of Psychology, 1999
• Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching, Stanford University 1999-2000
• Visiting Scholar and Adjunct Professor, Naval Post Graduate School (Monterey)

• Research
• Peace Medal from Tokyo Police Dept., 1972 (special recognition of a foreign national whose research and ideas significantly contributed to improving criminal justice administration)
• Fellow, Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, 1972
• Gordon Allport Intergroup Relations Prize (honorable mention), 1974, Society for Psychological Study of Social Issues (for the Stanford Prison Experiment)
• Distinguished Research Contributor Award, California State Psychological Association, 1977
• Psi Chi Award for contributions to the Science of Psychology, 1986
• Guze Award (Society for Clinical & Experimental Hypnosis), Best Research in Hypnosis, 1989
• Selected as one of ten major contributors to Social Psychology, Yosemite Conference on 100 Years of Experimental Social Psychology, 1997
• Ernest R. & Josephine R. Hilgard Award for the Best Theoretical hypnosis paper for Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, published 1999
• Distinguished Lifetime Contributions to General Psychology (APA, Division 2, 2000)
• APA Division 1 award, Ernest Hilgard Award for Lifetime Contributions to General Psychology, 2000
• Distinguished Contributions to Scientific Hypnosis (APA, Division 30, 2001)
• Psychology Today Magazine, Mental Health Award for Research and Treatment of Shyness, 2001
• Distinguished Contribution to Psychology as a Profession, California Psychological Association, 1998
• Los Angeles County Psychological Association: Psyche Award for Lifetime Contributions to Psychology as a Science and Art (2000)
• Distinguished Lifetime Contributions to Psychology, California Psychology Association, 2003
• Ig Nobel Prize In Psychology, 2003, AIR, Harvard University
• Nobel Prize in Psychology (Virtual) 2004, Klagenfurt University, Austria
• Havel Foundation Vision 97 Award, 2005, for lifetime of research contributions to knowledge
• Carl Hovland Distinguished Lecturer, Yale, 2005

• Writing
• National Media Award (honorable mention), American Psychological Foundation, 1973 (for popular writing on vandalism)
• William Holmes McGuffey Award for Psychology and Life, for Excellence and Longevity, (Textbook Authors Association) 1995
• New England Council of Latin American Studies (NECLAS) prize for the best book published on Latin American in 2002

• General
• President, Western Psychological Association, 1983, again in 2001
• Who’s Who in America, 1982 to present
• Ugliest Man on Campus (Most Popular Stanford Faculty/ Administrator), Alpha Phi Omega, 1983
• Chosen by Editors of The Sciences to represent psychology in its 35th year celebration reflecting on the contributions in each field of science, November, 1996
• Phi Beta Kappa, Distinguished Visiting Lecturer, 1989-1990
• President of the American Psychological Association, 2002
• Chair of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents (CSSP) representing more than 60 science and math societies, with 1.5 million members, 2005
• Elected President of the Western Psychological Foundation, 2005
• Board Member, American Psychological Foundation, 2005
• WPA Service Award, 2003

• Media
• Selected to be Senior Academic Advisor, Host, Writer and Narrator of Discovering Psychology, (A 26-part PBS TV series on psychology, Annenberg/CPB project, 1986-1989)
• London Weekend Television (Granada Media), “Human Zoo” Three Programs, Chief Scientific Advisor and On-Screen Expert
• STC (Society for Technical Communication) International Audiovisual Competition Award of Excellence for “The Power of the Situation” (Discovering Psychology video series), 1991
• Columbus International Film & Video Festival Bronze Plaque Award for “The Developing Child” (Discovering Psychology video series), 1992
• International Film & TV Festival of New York Finalist Certificate for “Past, Present and Promise” (Discovering Psychology video series), 1992
• WPA Film Festival Award of Excellence for “The Responsive Brain” and “Social Psychology” (Discovering Psychology video series), 1992
• WPA Spring Festival first place award for Quiet Rage: The Stanford Prison Study video, 1993
• WPA Spring Festival first place award for Candid Camera Classics in Social Psychology Video, 1993
• APA Presidential Citation for outstanding contributions to psychology for the Discovering Psychology video series, 1994
• Psychological Consultant, New Programming for NBC TV, 2002.
• Emmy Award, New England Instructional Television, Host, Cognitive-Neuroscience (Discovering Psychology Video Series), 2002
• WPA Spring Festival, First Place Award for Cultural Psychology (Discovering Psychology Video Series), 2002
• Sagan Award for Promoting Public Understanding of Science, Awarded by Council of Scientific Society Presidents, 2002.

Professional Experience

• Post Doctoral Trainee - West Haven Veteran’s Hospital, Clinical Psychology Dept., 1959-1960
• Co-Director (with Dr. S. Sarason), Children’s Test Anxiety Research Project, Yale University, 1959-1962
• Created, Directed The Harlem Summer Program, “A Head Start-Black Pride” Daily Program
• Staffed by NYU and CCNY Students in Harlem (1965)
• Training and research consultant in hypnosis, Morton Prince Clinic, New York, 1963-1967
• Co-Director (with Dr. E. Hilgard), Stanford Hypnosis Research Lab, 1969-1980
• Director, Stanford University Social Psychology Graduate Research Training Program
• Founder, Co-Director (with Dr. L. Henderson), Shyness Clinic/ Shyness Institute, 1975-present
• Senior Scientific Advisor, writer, narrator, Discovering Psychology, PBS-TV/ Annenberg Corp Video series (1989, updated 2001)

Teaching

• Instructor/Assistant Professor, Yale University, 1957-1960
• Assistant Professor, New York University, 1960-1967
• Professor, Stanford University, 1968 to present
• Senior Fellow, Monterey Naval Postgraduate School, 2004-Present
• Visiting Professor: Yale (1962), Stanford (Summer 1963), Barnard College (1966), University of Louvain (Belgium) Part-time (Summer 1966), University of Texas (1967), Columbia University (1967-68; Klingenstein Professor of Race Relations), University of Hawaii (Summer 1973), International Graduate School of Behavioral Sciences, Florida Institute of Technology at Lugano, Switzerland (Summer, 1978), University of Warsaw (Summer 2000)
• Visiting Professor Naval Postgraduate School, courses on the Psychology of Terrorism, for DHS Masters Program, Visiting Professor of Social Psychology, Webster University, Vienna, 2007).

 

[aCultureWarrior]

Quote:
Originally Posted by aCultureWarrior
A socialist critiquing another socialist...go figure.

It was pretty funny, reading that. Knowing you hadn't read the links, researched the source, just looked for something that sounded good that you could throw up here.

If you had read the links you'd know that besides Barker, other people questioning comrade Zimbardo's study were two people by the name of Stephen Reicher and Alexander Haslam. If their political affiliations have anything to do with their critique, please let me know why.
http://www.theologyonline.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4415633&postcount=40

You bouncing off the walls burbling about leftists and communists, while sourcing your articles from a socialist and you didn't even know it.

Being that comrade Philip Zimbardo was a part of the communist backed Vietnam anti war movement, and that the destruction of the Judeo-Christian based American criminal justice system is backed by Marxist/Communist front organizations, I'll gladly talk about both if you'd like.


Quote:
"Mysteries at the Museum" on the Travel Channel just happened to show an excerpt from The Stanford Prison Experiment this morning. I marveled how anyone could take a study seriously that lasted 6 whole days and had silver spoon fed liberals from one of California's indoctrination centers as the participants. None of the "prisons" grew up on the streets and knew what it was like to be around the criminal element, nor did any of the "guards" have any training when it came to working in a correctional facility.

Exactly. That's how the study was meant to be conducted. With participants who didn't have a criminal background. If you have a problem with that, talk to the U.S. Navy, they're the ones who gave Zimbardo the grant. They obviously had an interest in the subject of personality and environment and their influences on guards and prisoners.

Wow, the US government dishes out massive tax payer money to conduct a study that turned out to be worthless, that's a first. Again: Putting spoiled rich liberal college kids into that environment (both as inmates and guards/correction officers) proved nothing.

Considering how many of the ordinary (non-criminal element) citizens of Germany allowed the Jewish population to be systematically marginalized, stripped of their civil rights one by one, stripped of their human dignity and eventually their lives - their friends, their neighbors, their shopkeepers and customers... Considering the German soldiers and the police and the SS and the government workers who dutifully obeyed the orders they were given.... no, you don't need someone with a criminal background for a study like the Stanford experiment, you need ordinary people.

I read these books by Victor Klemperer years ago and never forgot them:

I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933-1941

I Will Bear Witness 1942-1945: A Diary of the Nazi Years

Klemperer's diaries are instructive not only in how people who are considered the favored class look the other way when the people targeted as unfavored are persecuted, but also in how the persecuted are limited in their ability to withstand, let alone fight back against something so much bigger than they are.

So liberals are now comparing the US criminal justice system with that of Nazi Germany?


Quote:
I see that comrade Zimbardo represented one of the accused during the Abu Ghraib trials.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Gh...prisoner_abuse
http://www.udel.edu/PR/UDaily/2006/d...rdo120705.html

What exactly qualified comrade Zimbardo as an expert, a supposed study that failed after 6 days?

Spoiler

I'm familiar with comrade Zimbardo's leftwing trophies. What I need to know is what made him an expert witness at Abu Ghraib trials. Was comrade Zimbardo really trying to compare the mock incarceration of a bunch of spoiled rich liberal college kids with the incarceration of mass murdering Muslim barbarians?

Was comrade Zimbardo really trying to compare a bunch of spoiled rich liberal college kids who played guard/correction officer for a few days with highly trained professionals from the Central Intelligence Agency who went through all kinds of interrogation training before being given the job at places like Abu Ghraib?

Speaking of Abu Ghraib: I'm surprised that the liberals who are known for ripping unborn babies out of their mothers wombs and selling their dismembered body parts got so upset with the treatment of a bunch of Muslim barbarians. I guess when one of their own is mistreated, they take it personal.

 

[annabenedetti]

If you had read the links

I'll bet you're wishing you had. As it is, I'm still chuckling at your using a socialist to make your argument. :chuckle:

I'm familiar with comrade Zimbardo's leftwing trophies.

No you're not.

What I need to know

Is more than I can help you with. Good luck with that.

 

[PureX]

There are so many variables involved in that experiment. For example, I can't help but wonder if other 'generations' of college students would have responded very differently to the same set of conditions in previous or subsequent trials. My bet is that they would have. Which then causes me to wonder what might have been going on within that generation that 'allowed' them to respond so destructively and so quickly.

Also, I can't help but wonder if the same experiment were run with only women, how that would have effected the outcome. I suspect it would have effected it significantly. But in what ways? Would they be less abusive? Or just less inclined to violence?

And how much would a person's philosophical/religious views determine their susceptibility to these kinds of situations? Would they be less inclined to abuse or be abused, or more?

This experiment just barely touches on what I believe is a very complex and significant phenomena of human interactive behavior. A phenomena that should be studied in far greater depth and detail. And yet, apparently has not been investigated in real earnest in the years, since. It almost makes me wonder if we don't want to know, or don't want to see ourselves that clearly.

 

[annabenedetti]

There are so many variables involved in that experiment. For example, I can't help but wonder if other 'generations' of college students would have responded very differently to the same set of conditions in previous or subsequent trials. My bet is that they would have. Which then causes me to wonder what might have been going on within that generation that 'allowed' them to respond so destructively and so quickly.

Also, I can't help but wonder if the same experiment were run with only women, how that would have effected the outcome. I suspect it would have effected it significantly. But in what ways? Would they be less abusive? Or just less inclined to violence?

And how much would a person's philosophical/religious views determine their susceptibility to these kinds of situations? Would they be less inclined to abuse or be abused, or more?

This experiment just barely touches on what I believe is a very complex and significant phenomena of human interactive behavior. A phenomena that should be studied in far greater depth and detail. And yet, apparently has not been investigated in real earnest in the years, since. It almost makes me wonder if we don't want to know, or don't want to see ourselves that clearly.

Thanks PureX, that's a great, thoughtful post. I agree that the experiment barely scratches the surface and had its limitations, some of which I touched on in the OP - subject, experimental and environmental extraneous variables, small sample size, etc. but if you think how far they've come in the past 44 years in studying human nature... Great strides, but there's so much more to learn about how genetics and environment affect behavior, cognition, emotion. I think people do want to know, but part of it's knowing what questions to ask before they can look for the answers. As for that particular experiment, advances in ethical considerations would make replicating it unlikely today.

Don't you think any cohort (and any individual) has the inherent capacity for either aggression or learned helplessness both from their genetic influences (personality, resiliency, and so on) and the effect of environment? I do. We'd all like to think we'd do or not do things, but it's easy to say until we face some sort of life-defining test. It's very interesting reading, to see how Zimbardo was involved with the Abu Ghraib investigation. And on dehumanization... I can't say it as well as he does, so here's an excerpt from him about how it works and how it's done:

At the core of evil is the process of dehumanization by which certain other people or collectives of them, are depicted as less than human, as non comparable in humanity or personal dignity to those who do the labeling. Prejudice employs negative stereotypes in images or verbally abusive terms to demean and degrade the objects of its narrow view of superiority over these allegedly inferior persons. Discrimination involves the actions taken against those others based on the beliefs and emotions generated by prejudiced perspectives.

Dehumanization is one of the central processes in the transformation of ordinary, normal people into indifferent or even wanton perpetrators of evil. Dehumanization is like a “cortical cataract” that clouds one’s thinking and fosters the perception that other people are less than human. It makes some people come to see those others as enemies deserving of torment, torture, and even annihilation.

[More by Zimbardo on dehumanization:]

It is all done with words and images. To modify an old adage: Sticks and stones may break your bones, but names can sometimes kill you. The process begins with stereotyped conceptions of the other, dehumanized perceptions of the other, the other as worthless, the other as all-powerful, the other as demonic, the other as an abstract monster, the other as a fundamental threat to our cherished values and beliefs. With public fear notched up and enemy threat imminent, reasonable people act irrationally, independent people act in mindless conformity, and peaceful people act as warriors. Dramatic visual images of the enemy on posters, television, magazine covers, movies, and the internet imprint on the recesses of the limbic system, the primitive brain, with the powerful emotions of fear and hate.

​

That page ends with a discussion of the American habit of taking photos of of themselves and their lynching victims, even making postcards of them. He links to Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America and Ralph Ginzberg’s 100 Years of Lynching, and there are many more fascinating and thought-provoking links scattered throughout his website.

I've read that women can be just as sadistic as men in some situations, so I wouldn't necessarily assume better of my gender even though the probability and level of aggression would generally be lower. As for myself, I'd never have signed up for such a study in the first place, it's not something that would've interested me at all. Even so, I'm pretty sure I'd have walked out because I'd have known I could. It seems on the face of it to be so illogical for the participants to lose their grasp of the fact that it was a voluntary experiment.

Hypothetically in an experimental situation: if I was a guard, I can't see myself being sadistic and I'd like to believe I'd be strong enough to confront my fellow guards. If I was a prisoner, I'm sure I would've been in on the first rebellion. :chuckle: Where does all that change? In real life. If I had to alter any of that to protect my loved ones, or myself, or someone weaker than me. So apply that to a Jew in the Warsaw Ghetto, for example. I don't even know where to begin.

 

[PureX]

It's a difficult subject to contemplate, just because it does involve so much complexity.

Off the top of my head, I'd say that ego (that automatic inclination to protect and maintain our idea of ourselves) tends to lean toward prejudice against others. We hold ourselves 'up' by putting other people 'down', so to speak. And that seems to be a common inclination regardless of any specific culture, epoch, philosophy, religion, or biological conditions. So it probably starts there.

Then, since prejudice (that raising oneself up by putting someone else down) tends to result in the dehumanization of the 'other', and since dehumanization extinguishes our empathy toward them, this intellectual tendency to raise ourselves up by putting others down starts to become more actualized as abuse, as the internal restraint of empathy is extinguished. And I would say it then becomes a process that feeds itself.

The more horribly we act toward others, the more we need to extinguish whatever feelings of empathy we may have for them, to relieve our own doubt and guilt (that our egos don't want us to acknowledge). We become invested in denying the reality of what we're doing. We NEED to believe our victims deserve to be treated as insignificant objects because they ARE insignificant objects relative to us (in our own eyes). And so on.

The wife beater needs to blame the wife, both as his excuse and his justification. And the more he beats her, the weaker she becomes and (in his mind) the more deserving of his abuse.

Victimization proves the victim's weakness, and weakness deserves (almost demands) victimization. Thus the cycle feeds on itself. The victimizer becomes more aggressive while the victim becomes weaker and less resisting. Each condition feeding the other.

 

[Traditio]

It's a difficult subject to contemplate, just because it does involve so much complexity.

Off the top of my head, I'd say that ego (that automatic inclination to protect and maintain our idea of ourselves) tends to lean toward prejudice against others. We hold ourselves 'up' by putting other people 'down', so to speak. And that seems to be a common inclination regardless of any specific culture, epoch, philosophy, religion, or biological conditions. So it probably starts there.

Then, since prejudice (that raising oneself up by putting someone else down) is a form of dehumanization, and since dehumanization extinguishes empathy, this intellectual tendency to raise ourselves up by putting others down starts to become more actualized as the restraint of empathy is extinguished. And I would say it then becomes a process that feeds itself.

The more horribly we act toward others, the more we need to extinguish whatever feelings of empathy we may have, because they cause us to feel doubt and guilt that our egos don't want us to acknowledge. We become invested in denying the reality of what we're doing. We NEED to believe our victims deserve to be treated as insignificant subjects because they ARE insignificant subject relative to us. And so on.

The wife beater needs to blame the wife, both as his excuse and justification. And the more he beats her, the more she becomes weak and (in his mind) deserving of his abuse.

Victimization proves weakness, and weakness deserves (almost demands) victimization. Thus the cycle feeds on itself. The victimizer becomes more aggressive while the victim becomes weaker and less resisting. Each condition feeding the other.

We see this especially in the case of socioeconomic status. Having more than someone else (especially at their expense) and the ability to exploit someone else is a status symbol.

There was a recent case of a CEO who set $70,000 as the base salary for his company (by slashing his own salary, let us note). So, the less paid workers got a big pay increase, whereas the higher earning workers got less of an increase.

They complained. The CEO told them that they were being selfish. They quit.

You see this constantly in discussions about minimum wage employment.

The ability to point at a McDonalds worker and say: "Haha, he gets paid less than I do, and he deserves it, that no-skilled, uneducated bum! He deserves to struggle and barely get by!" That's a status symbol. It makes people feel good about themselves.

That's why middle class conservatives, I think, will consistently vote against their own interests. Because voting conservative, keeping the status quo, means that somebody is going to be much worse off than them, and that makes them feel good about themselves.

That's why they ultimately tolerate (and, I think, even condone) the excesses of the corporate elite. Because deep down, they wish that they were in the same position. The corporate elite is an ideal. It's an object of aspiration. It represents the ability to overpower and to exploit, the ability to look down on everyone else and revel in one's own superiority.

And that's why conservatives like Donald Trump.

Because deep down, they're ultimately Nietzscheans.

The U.S. political arena is not a battlefield between Christianity and the godless atheists. It's a battleground between Nietzsche and Rousseau.

And that's why I don't vote.

 

[PureX]

We see this especially in the case of socioeconomic status. Having more than someone else (especially at their expense) and the ability to exploit someone else is a status symbol.

There was a recent case of a CEO who set $70,000 as the base salary for his company (by slashing his own salary, let us note). So, the less paid workers got a big pay increase, whereas the higher earning workers got less of an increase.

They complained. The CEO told them that they were being selfish. They quit.

You see this constantly in discussions about minimum wage employment.

The ability to point at a McDonalds worker and say: "Haha, he gets paid less than I do, and he deserves it, that no-skilled, uneducated bum! He deserves to struggle and barely get by!" That's a status symbol. It makes people feel good about themselves.

That's why middle class conservatives, I think, will consistently vote against their own interests. Because voting conservative, keeping the status quo, means that somebody is going to be much worse off than them, and that makes them feel good about themselves.

That's why they ultimately tolerate (and, I think, even condone) the excesses of the corporate elite. Because deep down, they wish that they were in the same position. The corporate elite is an ideal. It's an object of aspiration. It represents the ability to overpower and to exploit, the ability to look down on everyone else and revel in one's own superiority.

I think that's a very astute observation.

And there is the other rise of the cycle, too: the people being economically victimized. The more they are exploited and abused, the more they become "victims". Not just in the eyes of the victimizers; as weak, demoralized, and 'deserving' of their foul treatment, but in their own eyes as well. So that the worse they're treated, the more they believe they deserve it, and the more easily they accept it.

In fact, I think a lot of victims actually begin to victimize themselves by assuming they are the 'low-lifes' that their victimizers make them out to be in their minds. As the one group enables their egos at the expense of the other, the other group becomes egotistically 'disabled'.

 

[Desert Reign]

It really kinda shows us a darker side of human nature, specifically what happens when people who have no training are placed in an unearned position of power. Which means, we need to be a lot more careful about who we allow to hold power, and we need to ensure that there are always safeguards.

And what could be a better safeguard than having to be filthy rich in order to run for president?

 

[rexlunae]

And what could be a better safeguard than having to be filthy rich in order to run for president?

Sure. If you define merit as being material success.

 

[annabenedetti]

One of the things that really intrigues me about the experiment conducted by Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University in 1971 is how it was only chance which determined who was a 'guard' and who was a 'prisoner.' The participants didn't know it, but each individual's placement into one of the two groups was determined by a coin toss.

It makes me think how fine the line is between good and evil, and how easily it can be crossed. There are a multitude of variables, of course, but to what extent does environment affect the moral choices people make every day? How culpable are people for poor decisions they make when their environment has had a significant effect in shaping their behavior, when their good intentions are overwhelmed by a bad environment over which they have little or no control?

Thinking about determinism and free will:

From wiki: Semicompatibilism is the view that causal determinism is compatible with moral responsibility, while making no assertions about the truth of determinism or free will.