The Menace Within

In 1971, psychology professor Philip Zimbardo began an experiment that became known as the Stanford Prison Experiment. Students were randomly assigned to be "guards" or "prisoners" in an imaginary prison scenario. It shocked the academic world and led to new standards for ethics in psychology studies.

Forty years later, the Stanford Prison Experiment remains among the most notable—and notorious—research projects ever carried out at the University. For six days, half the study's participants endured cruel and dehumanizing abuse at the hands of their peers. At various times, they were taunted, stripped naked, deprived of sleep and forced to use plastic buckets as toilets. Some of them rebelled violently; others became hysterical or withdrew into despair. As the situation descended into chaos, the researchers stood by and watched—until one of their colleagues finally spoke out.

The public's fascination with the SPE and its implications—the notion, as Zimbardo says, "that these ordinary college students could do such terrible things when caught in that situation" —brought Zimbardo international renown. It also provoked criticism from other researchers, who questioned the ethics of subjecting student volunteers to such extreme emotional trauma. The study had been approved by Stanford's Human Subjects Research Committee, and Zimbardo says that "neither they nor we could have imagined" that the guards would treat the prisoners so inhumanely.

Stanford Magazine interviewed some of the participants in the experiment, both faculty and students. They tell their side of the story in the latest issue. Link -via Metafilter

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My saying this may be an example of real love in action. Though by saying these things I place myself in a position apart from the norm, and therefor my audience and possibly the administrators of this website, and though that carries a weight of fear with it, I am in the act of saying it anyway.

My mental process involves much of the 'old man'. Currently I can identify several threads of concern; ranging from fear of reprisal, fear of error, fear of rejection, fear of ridicule, and just a general fear of asserting myself amidst a group of 'others'. All of this serves in some measure to prevent my saying anything, despite the carefulness and solidity of my deliberations. I may have the choicest bits of wisdom to share, but the fear remains, and probably will for the remainder of my days. But this is not an excuse for complicity or inaction, my rational and conscientious mind knows that right action is consistently thwarted by fear and normalcy. Fear is normalcy; it drives the bulk of our behavior. Fear drives us further into abstraction; seeking comfort for our egos in the unreality of pure thought. From there we can look down upon reality, as if it's laws and constants were merely circumstantial to our existence. We can turn a blind eye to the wisdom of the past, and hoist ourselves up on an ivory pillar, proclaiming our methods to far surpass our ancestors, without ever having an open-interest to their sentiments. We can ignore such realities because they make us feel uncomfortable and undervalued; but such realities will not ignore us.

Just as love is an orientation which refers to all objects and is incompatible with the restriction to one object, so is reason a human faculty which must embrace the whole of the world with which man is confronted.
Erich Fromm