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Was reading through the "Why are the Jews so hated" thread and wondering about something. Throughout history we examples of wholesale atrocities committed by average citizens against their own people or people within their own borders. Ok, I have know there are sometimes some factors. There are sometimes deep seated, lingering, simmering resentment that given the right environment to erupt will play out in sometimes fatal violence. What I don't get, however, is why/how an average Joe living next to his neighbor for years can, by the urging of some madman, just decide one day to go and chop his neighbor into pieces. Rwanda comes to mind where guys who were best friends growing up became mortal enemies overnight and one would savagely kill the other. The Crusades in Europe also spring to mind or the Nazis of Germany.
Are people really so gullible? Are many of us really just walking sheep who can't think and reason for ourselves? I have to admit, this is one reason things that facilitate these things (such as religion) scares me. I am a black man and despite what has happened to my ancestors in the past, I cannot even begin to fathom or consider the thought of some windbag convincing me it is justified to casually walk across the street and kill my white neighbor and his family. Why are others led to do such things so easily?
Humans are herd animals. Unfortunately it doesn't take much to cause a stampede, because you only have to spook the leader.
Once you have caused the leader to panic, the rest of the herd will quickly follow.
This is a question that has made people wonder for a long time. We all like to think we would not do those sorts of things. But in reality, unless we have been put into the situation that these people have, we don't really know, do we? What are each of use really capable of?
There was a famous experiment done several decades ago to try to answer this question. How does a normal, loving, peaceable person get turned into a Nazi monster? The experiment took a bunch of college students (easy to get to participate for cheap). The set up was a electric chair where a subject sat strapped in so he couldn't escape. The college students were told they were administering an experiment for how electric shocks affect subjects. There was a experiment leader in a white coat giving the students direction. The students were directed to administer shocks of varying intensity to the subject. The dial they used had increasingly dire labels all the way up to death inducing. The white coated guy encouraged the students to increase the shocks by saying things like it's part of the experiment.
The results were that most of the students were quite willing to administer death or severe injury inducing shocks to a complete stranger just on the seeming authority of the white-coated guy. Only a few actually refused to administer shocks that they believed would cause extreme pain and harm to the subject, whom they could see reacting in pain and agony depending on the strength of the shock.
What the students didn't know was they themselves were the subject of the study and both the guy in the chair and the white coated guy were actors with no actual shocks being given.
This would indicate that the majority of people are indeed sheep and do almost anything under the direction of authority figures and mob mentality. I don't have a link for this study, but it can be found with searches.
This is a question that has made people wonder for a long time. We all like to think we would not do those sorts of things. But in reality, unless we have been put into the situation that these people have, we don't really know, do we? What are each of use really capable of?
There was a famous experiment done several decades ago to try to answer this question. How does a normal, loving, peaceable person get turned into a Nazi monster? The experiment took a bunch of college students (easy to get to participate for cheap). The set up was a electric chair where a subject sat strapped in so he couldn't escape. The college students were told they were administering an experiment for how electric shocks affect subjects. There was a experiment leader in a white coat giving the students direction. The students were directed to administer shocks of varying intensity to the subject. The dial they used had increasingly dire labels all the way up to death inducing. The white coated guy encouraged the students to increase the shocks by saying things like it's part of the experiment.
The results were that most of the students were quite willing to administer death or severe injury inducing shocks to a complete stranger just on the seeming authority of the white-coated guy. Only a few actually refused to administer shocks that they believed would cause extreme pain and harm to the subject, whom they could see reacting in pain and agony depending on the strength of the shock.
What the students didn't know was they themselves were the subject of the study and both the guy in the chair and the white coated guy were actors with no actual shocks being given.
This would indicate that the majority of people are indeed sheep and do almost anything under the direction of authority figures and mob mentality. I don't have a link for this study, but it can be found with searches.
Yes Tesage I have read about thee type experiments and I realize what you are saying. For example, in the fantastic, yet disturbing HBO movie, Sometimes in April which dealt with the Rwandan tragedy, there was a scene where the star of the movie (from the tribe carrying out the atrocities) and his best friend (from the tribe being victimized) came upon a road block set up by members of the tribe that was on the offensive killing their rivals. They found out that star's friend was from the enemy tribe and asked him (the star) to kill his best friend to show his loyalty to his tribe. At the same time, he is worrying about his children whom he can't find and who are part Tutsi (the tribe under threat) because their mom is a Tutsi. He is conflicted because it he does not kill his friend, he risks losing his own life and never seeing his children again.
Now THAT is a tough decision and it's hard to sit here and say we would do A or B. I'm just puzzled at the folks who do these atrocities when they are not under such threats?
This is a question that has made people wonder for a long time. We all like to think we would not do those sorts of things. But in reality, unless we have been put into the situation that these people have, we don't really know, do we? What are each of use really capable of?
There was a famous experiment done several decades ago to try to answer this question. How does a normal, loving, peaceable person get turned into a Nazi monster? The experiment took a bunch of college students (easy to get to participate for cheap). The set up was a electric chair where a subject sat strapped in so he couldn't escape. The college students were told they were administering an experiment for how electric shocks affect subjects. There was a experiment leader in a white coat giving the students direction. The students were directed to administer shocks of varying intensity to the subject. The dial they used had increasingly dire labels all the way up to death inducing. The white coated guy encouraged the students to increase the shocks by saying things like it's part of the experiment.
The results were that most of the students were quite willing to administer death or severe injury inducing shocks to a complete stranger just on the seeming authority of the white-coated guy. Only a few actually refused to administer shocks that they believed would cause extreme pain and harm to the subject, whom they could see reacting in pain and agony depending on the strength of the shock.
What the students didn't know was they themselves were the subject of the study and both the guy in the chair and the white coated guy were actors with no actual shocks being given.
This would indicate that the majority of people are indeed sheep and do almost anything under the direction of authority figures and mob mentality. I don't have a link for this study, but it can be found with searches.
You know I have to admit that what you're saying makes sense but let me add another example if you will, and that is the perceived notion of imminent danger, I think if someone were to tell you that a certain group of people (i.e., religious or race) were going to do harm to you or your family or those of your race or religion and that it was up to you to defend or even take the life of the others because of your race or religion, a person would be hard-pressed not to do some sort of violence towards the other group. Just another example.
You know I have to admit that what you're saying makes sense but let me add another example if you will, and that is the perceived notion of imminent danger, I think if someone were to tell you that a certain group of people (i.e., religious or race) were going to do harm to you or your family or those of your race or religion and that it was up to you to defend or even take the life of the others because of your race or religion, a person would be hard-pressed not to do some sort of violence towards the other group. Just another example.
You know I have to admit that what you're saying makes sense but let me add another example if you will, and that is the perceived notion of imminent danger, I think if someone were to tell you that a certain group of people (i.e., religious or race) were going to do harm to you or your family or those of your race or religion and that it was up to you to defend or even take the life of the others because of your race or religion, a person would be hard-pressed not to do some sort of violence towards the other group. Just another example.
Certainly when threatened people will react in a way they think they have to. This is perfectly normal and when in scale to the threat, a justifiable action. What the study showed was that most people will do harm to another just on the say so of a seeming authority figure (the white coat) with no threat to themselves at all. That is the scary part.
Humans are herd animals.
Unfortunately it doesn't take much to cause a stampede, because you only have to spook the leader.
Once you have caused the leader to panic, the rest of the herd will quickly follow.
I think you're right. Look at what happened in Yugoslavia when various ethnic and religious people had lived as neighbors for decades suddenly turned on each other after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the term ethnic cleansing described how the opposing sides wanted to exterminate each other. The same thing is happening in Iraq today. These people also lived as neighbors for decades and now they're slaughtering each other.
These people also lived as neighbors for decades and now they're slaughtering each other.
Unfortunately this is what usually happens when a so called super-power comes along and decides to change things in how he thinks that things should be, without any regards of local history and / or society (and politics).
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Unfortunately it doesn't take much to cause a stampede, because you only have to spook the leader.
