next!
Torture is Easy
Mon, 2010-03-22 23:27
#1
Torture is Easy
Mon, 2010-03-22 23:31
#2
OK, the discussion over here reminded me of the story of the French TV "game show" last week in which contestants tortured a victim (or at least an actor playing a victim), watched him scream, and were ready to kill - just to win a game.
Significantly, one player, whose Jewish grandparents had been persecuted by the Nazis, went along with the torture. She said afterwards: "Since I was a little girl, I have always asked myself why [the Nazis] did it. How could they obey such orders? And there I was, obeying them myself."
Milgram's subjects were alone with a disinterested professor as they wrestled with their consciences, and believed that they were unobserved. But in Le Jeu de la Mort, the contestants were undeterred by the knowledge that millions would witness their brutality. And an enthusiastic audience, as ignorant as the contestants that it was all a spoof, roared "Punish! Punish!" as the electric shocks intensified. If they'd been wearing togas, you could have imagined them enjoying a few Christians torn apart by lions. The French experiment suggests not only that most of us might have obeyed Nazi Gauleiters, but that 2,000 years of civilisation can fall away in an instant.
And what is the provocation for ditching the humanising effects of two millennia of history? Television. Not the greater good, not political fanaticism, not military repression, but an industry that I love and which keeps me employed.
So would ya...punk?
Tue, 2010-03-23 00:01
#3
And what is the provocation for ditching the humanising effects of two millennia of history? Television. Not the greater good, not political fanaticism, not military repression, but an industry that I love and which keeps me employed.
Is it television? Or is it fame and fortune (spelled M-O-N-E-Y)?
Tue, 2010-03-23 11:25
#4
So, people would behave like Ilse Koch in front of millions of people just for a few bucks? There has to be more going on here.
Maybe, as the demonstration suggests, people are inclined to this sort of behaviour.
Wed, 2010-03-24 22:12
#5
babblers aren't into Dostoevsky I guess.
Wed, 2010-03-24 22:53
#6
Well, al-Q, I was interested in your title for reasons of my own, but when it turned out to be about that old behavioural-science experiment, I lost interest. I have next to no interest in behavioural social science. Like, next to none, except when it is actually used to produce torturers, which of course it recently has been -- see Mitchell and Jessen. And then, of course, my interest becomes prosecutorial.
Shall I tell you tomorrow morning what my own interest in the topic is?
Thu, 2010-03-25 12:09
#7
By all means.
What I find interesting about these experiments is that they peel away the mask with which we disguise ourselves from ourselves.
Most people condemn, say, concentration camp guards, and claim they would never, under any circumstances, behave so badly themselves.
Yes. We would.