After watching Phillip Zimbardo’s Ted Talk on the psychology of evil I was pretty much deluged with reactions. A lot of what he says makes a significant amount of sense to me. From evil being a slippery slope (which is often a system) that is greased with indifference, and anonymity among other things, to his ending with heroism being a socio-centric rather than ego-centric form of thinking. That heroism is a process of thought and self-view rather than an extraordinary individual, or someone who is one in ten million. The idea that everyone is a hero and no one should be passive or indifferent to atrocities or even “little” evils. I’ve certainly been guilty of not reacting before in situations like that, and in my earlier years even perpetuated situations such as goading friends to steal or hurting other people. It’s fascinating to view how much damage a pack of small boys and teens can do when left to their own devices for an afternoon with a leader that is amoral.
I think the Stanford Prison Experiment has pretty…unsurprising results. Obviously you can’t do an experiment like that within the bounds of ethics any longer. He had the prisoners picked up by real police officers with no explanations, from their own homes, with real handcuffs and police cars. What did he expect? Did he even let the individuals know that they could ask to terminate the experiment? Also what were the directions the “guards” received; as that would play a significant impact in their roles and how they acted in the situation.
He speaks of evil being the exercise of power with the purpose to harm another in various ways, or to harm a system or idea (presumably that is good). I overall agree with this but at times, it does seem that exercising power in return is one of the only ways to combat this. Which he points toward with his socio-centrism or the good of society way of thinking. In the end the power he talks of is the power of action or “right thinking”...