Philip Zimbardo is an American psychologist and a professor emeritus at Stanford University. He wrote The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil and recently gave a lecture at the World Affairs Council of Northern California. I was very excited to watch his lecture after reading about his past experiments and studies...particularily his Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgrim Experiment (not his but relevant and that of his friend's). His lecture, How Good People Turn Evil, is over an hour long but very thought-provoking. If you want to watch it, make sure you have time for all of it. It's gripping, even through the Q&A at the end. Warning: The video footage includes graphic pictures of Abu Graib. If you can stomach the photos (if you can't, listen and close your eyes) then you should watch because he explains how these soldiers, otherwise good moral people, were sent off to an immoral war and seduced to commit the atrocities that we saw at Abu Graib. It actually explains a lot about human nature, good and evil, power and authority.
Note: When I talk about the atrocities, please don't get me wrong. I support our troops. But I don't support the way the war is going. Saddam and Osama are responsible for mass murder and genocide and in no way am I attempting to explain THEIR evil.
Click to see Lecture Video (sorry, could not embed due to an unclosed tag that I couldn't find and fix myself)
Links
The Situationist (includes his lecture and his interview on Colbert)
FORA.tv
Milgrim Experiment
Professor Zimbardo's Website
Lucifer Effect Website
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4 comments:
Hey hey hey! I am out of jail and interested in reading a new book. Think I'll have to check this one out.
Good people have to turn evil if they want to support the family, there is little room for good in this world but I'm still a good guy even though I have a lot of chances to do bad in the taxi i don't but lots of cabbies do, If i was a guard in that experiment i'd like to think that I would have been a good guy
Christopher! OMG...I just wrote a post a couple weeks ago about my OTHER friend on the "inside" and I told everyone that he was my only friend on the inside and now you comment that you just got out of jail...now everyone thinks that I am keeping in touch with all these prison dudes. Okay everyone, for the record...Chris is a blog friend who only had to do some time this weekend. I really don't have a bunch of jail friends...really...ha ha
Good people turning evil. Its an iteresting topic. I think I'll be reading more into it.
My personal theory is mental illness.
xx
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