Conformity

And so, I have been made aware of something on the other side of the same coin as my previous post. Not only would I have tolerated being a slave, I would have also been a slave owner. And chances are you would have been too.

It goes back to the Stanford Prison Experiment. This is one of my all-time favorite experiments, and it goes a long way to show how humans behave when they are arbitrarily put in a position of power. For those of you who are not reading this and are not familiar with the experiment, you should check out the link and read up on it. Basically, a mock prison was set up in the basement of the Stanford psychology department, and students were assigned to role play the positions of both prisoners and guards. The experiment had to be cut short because the "guards" were treating the "prisoners" too cruelly.

The implications of this are really quite opposite to the opinion that all people are inherently good. I never thought that people were naturally good, and that we all have our inner evil, but I guess its still shocking to see it all in action. And I think it would be reasonable to draw a connection between this experiment and the treatment of slaves in the early United States.

Slave holders were put in positions of power over their slaves, and were treated a lot worse than the prisoners in the Stanford basement. Were they treated this way because all slave holders were evil? Did Stanford manage to accidentally pick a group of particularly evil people and put them in power over "normal" people? No. Everyone would have done the same if they were in their position.

Now this may come off as downright insulting. "You mean to say that I’m evil?" Well, yea. But don’t worry, I am too. Actually that really isn’t a good reason to not worry. Maybe you should worry. And be glad you can’t really own slaves in this era. But you still might kidnap someone eventually, and treat them like scum for no particular reason.

Also, not EVERYONE in the early United States owned slaves, and even then not all slave owners treated their slaves badly. The general consensus is that these people were the minority. However it does leave a glimmer of light for the rest of us. If it is everyone’s nature to act harshly when in a position of power, and not everyone DOES, it IS possible to act contrary to your nature. Therefore I cannot excuse the horrible treatment of slaves as just some evil people doing what they were hard wired to do. If you can act contrary to your nature then you are still responsible for your actions when you act in accordance to your evil nature.

It all comes down to integrity, unfortunately. Something that, evidently, a lot of people don’t have. There aren’t many people around today that would say that it was perfectly fine that slaves were treated the way they were (though they are out there). However most of the people who claim that slavery was an evil institution would in turn act in accordance with the social norms of beating slaves until there was a pool of blood at their feet if given the chance. If no one is going to reprimand or even look down on you when you do something that goes with your nature and your desire, then why act contrary? If you had integrity you would realize that it is evil and not do it, no matter what other people say, as some people did back in the day.

Keep an eye out for your own actions. We as individuals, and we as a society, can never be more than two steps away from institutions like slavery.

Tolerance

So I'm reading "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" by Harriet Jacobs.  And reflecting upon my own nature.

In the book, as in other slave narratives, slaves are treated like shit.  I'm going to assume at this point that whoever is reading this understands how utterly sickening slavery was, because that's not what I'm writing about.  What has caught my mind is how the slaves react to their treatment.  Or rather the range of reactions.  Some resist to the death, and some endure it.  And I cant help but put myself into these positions, and what scares me is how I know how I would react to it.

Id put up with it, until it killed me.

That's how I deal with a lot of things.  I'm a very tolerant person.  But I have always regarded this as a beneficial trait.  I'm not hot headed, I'm rational, etc.  But then I realised just what the implications of this would be.  I could see myself submitting in a position of slavery.  and not because I fear punishment, or because I would think that I belong there.  Its almost like I would be too nice to want to go against the grain.  I can endure things, sure, why not?  Its not that bad.

If I'm ever in a situation that sucks Ill just remove myself from it.  mentally.  Ill get lost in my own little wonderland and suddenly be able to put up with anything that is thrown at me.  And I'm starting to think that that's a very dangerous thing to do.

There's tolerance, as in tolerating diversity or tolerating other people using their freedoms in ways you find annoying.  but then there is tolerance, as in just letting every atrocity in the world float by without a glance.  And we have to find the line between the two, because the latter leads down a harmful self-destructive road.

There's something to be said about getting fired up.  If you see something happen right in front of you and you KNOW it is wrong, speak up.  do more than speak up.  And I'm not talking about cussing up a storm and deliberately pissing people off, I mean look everyone else in the eye and tell them, "you know this is wrong.  You know this shouldn't be happening, but you are just standing there letting it happen."

So quickly can we be conditioned into thinking everything is OK.  after all, there is always someone out there ready to fix things for us.  we don't have to worry about jack squat because we have ourselves to look after, common good be damned.  But we all know that this world isn't perfect.  Hell, we live in the "greatest nation on earth" and we can see that we are no where near perfect.  

Do not excuse imperfections.  Do not let yourself rationalize that things will get better on their own.  Do not let someone else take the first stand.

Nobody Reads Your Blog

Nobody is going to read this one either.  It's a fact of life.  So why do I want a blog?  Because I like having thoughts, and I like being able to put them down somewhere.  Maybe someday, hundreds of years down the road Ill look back on this and reflect upon myself.  Or maybe when I finally become a big time famous person people will find this and go, "oh wow, so that's what he's really like.  that explains a lot."

Of course, I like to think that people would actually care about what little I have to say.  That I somehow start a popular blog just by tossing my thoughts onto a website.  I'm not holding my breath though.