NZAmoeba

I was just watching an episode of the Jamie Kennedy Experiement (its one of those funny hidden camera shows) and they did a scene where these 3 people came to an acting class that turned out to be some kind of cult.

After what must be about 30 minutes of scary scenes these people are put through (giving away valuble items, one guy freaking out, the rest of the 'cult' all chanting) these 3 people are given a contract to sign their life to this cult (called bliss, that worships a robot in all of us). It's shortly after this that everything is revealed to be a big joke, and one of the guys reaction is this...

"Oh thank God!"



Sometimes it just doesn't click does it?

Nowhere357

I'm afraid the thought that we live in a world full of idiots is not jus pessimism talking.

I remember a similar show where the dupes were hired to guard a group of immigrant "slaves" being forced to work. In America! And they all (except for one delightful older man) were willing to electrocute the slaves when they made a break for freedom.

Disturbing and depressing. "Just doing my job" is a phrase that sometimes fills me with disgust.

Abel Stable

Oh yeah, human beings are able to rationalize & follow even the most horrific orders. What was the name of the psychiatrist who did the experiment on this? Milgrim? It makes me shiver.

lisarea

Stanley Milgram

Scary scary stuff. The researchers wore white lab coats or something to convey the idea that they were authority figures, and had the subjects believing they'd actually killed the guy in the booth.

People fucking make me sick sometimes.

JaeIsGod

Yeah , its a miracle that our dumb ass race still exists....

Marduk

"I remember a similar show where the dupes were hired to guard a group of immigrant "slaves" being forced to work. In America! And they all (except for one delightful older man) were willing to electrocute the slaves when they made a break for freedom."

You should read up on "The California Prison Experiment"
Some college students were picked to be 'guards' some 'prisoners'.
The experiment had to be stopped after a few days, the guards were getting a little carried away.
We are all potential Nazis it turns out.
There is another similar experiment, the name I don't recall, similar to the above, involving subjects who think they are administering shocks to another 'subject' (a hired actor) as long as an authority figure, a 'scientist' in this case, said it was OK they kept turning up the juice.

Ab_Normal

on a tangent, is Milgram the only psychiatrist to have his own rock song?

I've got it going through my head, which sucks because I don't have it on CD...

lisarea

I dunno. I'd think that Freud and Jung probably have songs about them, but I can't think of any off the top of my head.

Here's The Perils of Obedience, adapted from Milgram's Obedience to Authority.

This was a really significant study at the time and got quite a bit of publicity, falling right into line with post-WWII speculation about following orders and the conflict between personal responsibility and obedience to authority. It draws parallels to Hannah Arendt's biography of Adolph Eichmann, in which he is characterized essentially as a clueless functionary. (The banality of evil concept.) My parents were so horrified by it, in fact, that they intentionally tried to raise their kids not to blindly obey authority. (And yeah, they did regret it every now and again.)

I remember seeing the reality show with the 'guards' and 'slaves,' and although I don't remember whether they explicity talked about Milgram, the similarities were striking.

It's chilling that, even now, we're as mindless and obedient as ever. I guess I would have hoped that we'd have learned some lessons from Milgram's work.

Guess not.

Nialler

I had a conversation about this with a friend of mine some time ago. We were in Dachau at the time, and I opined that I would have made a very good nazi, being amenable to orders, enthusiastic about working my way up the ladder, and also having a strong survival instinct.

It might have sounded glib, but my point was that it is next to impossible to assess how I would have reacted in those times, and as such almost impossible to judge others who lived through those times.

That's not a defence of nazism - obviously those who created such an environment have questions to answer. It was jsut my feeling that in those circumstances (and I mean having been brought up in that milieu and been exposed to all of the propoganda) I would probably have donned the jackboots, and might even have been happy to do so.

PopeInTheWoods

It's refreshing to see someone be so openly realistic about such issues. Most people's knee-jerk reaction would be, "I'd never do anything like that." Perhaps admitting this possibility to yourself (and to others, good show!) reflects a contemplative nature that would actually make you less likely to commit evil acts under the influence of authority.

Andy