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.