Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Interesting facts at the end of a book
Did you know that:
A few years before the outbreak of WWII, Mussolini was invited to Berlin to participate in an NSDAP rally held at a stadium. During the rally a storm broke out of nowhere. Lashing rain and gale-force wind made everyone scoot off and ... totally forget about Duce, who - soaked to the skin - had to go back to his hotel on foot!
Shortly before Hitler's invasion of Poland, he met Duce and Galeazzo Ciaco, the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, to discuss the prospect of France and Great Britain joining the war. It was then that Hitler made a bet with Ciano that the western powers would not join the war if he invaded Poland. The stake was a collection of Italian paintings in case of Hitler's winning, and the Führer's private collection of weapons in case of his losing. Five years later Ciano was executed for treason. He had never so much as laid a finger on his weapons.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Sexmaniacs
Sunday, July 29, 2007
"The Perils of Obedience"
So what was in that episode that prompted me to dig deeper in the topic? The ninth episode “Why We Fight” depicts perhaps one of the most shocking scene in the whole history of war movies. After moving their CP to a small town of
What makes them so petrified in that forest is a displaced person camp. A DP in
The residents of the nearby town claimed they hadn’t known anything about the camp. “They’re gonna have hell of an education tomorrow” an officer said. And hell of an education they had; the residents were made to bury the corpses bare-handed as an action to “increase their awareness”. Whether they and the whole of the German population did or didn’t know remains a controversy even today. Nevertheless, the people of that time
I will not elaborate on the details of the experiment as this would make my post far too lengthy. For details see – here. For the time being suffice it to say that the whole experiment relied on an elaborate set-up that made the subjects think they were testing the influence of punishment on learning. This punishment was low amperage electric shocks, and the subject-teacher was to apply these shocks each time the subject-learner made a mistake. In reality, the subject-learner was an actor and there were no electric shocks. The subject-teacher was told by the experimenter to continue with higher and higher voltage. The idea was to see how far the subject-teacher would go despite the subject-learner’s pleas to stop. Milgram intended to do the experiment in the
In a poll conducted by Milgram before the experiment, several Yale seniors estimated that on average only 1.2% of the subjects would go as far as the maximum 450V shock. Moreover, these were labeled the “sadistic few”. In fact as much as …65% of the subjects applied the highest shock, nobody steadfastly refused to continue the experiment even when the subject-learner asked them to or screamed out of pain (these were audio recordings in reality). As much as 80% of the subjects continued the experiment although the subject-learner told them about his heart problems. The striking thing is that the results in other countries were similar so it can’t have been a national trait. Shocking, isn’t it?
Subsequent variations of the same experiment revealed that not personality of the subjects but rather the situation was a determining factor. Physical proximity to the subject-learner or the experimenter, experimenter’s confidence, the presence of allies, and a few others had a great impact on the results. Be it as it may, the results of the initial experiment showed people’s proneness to submit to authority. Where does it come from? In childhood we are to listen to our parents, in school to teachers, in adulthood to employers and the authorities. It seems that the system we are born into fosters obedience, which – in the right circumstances – can override our conscience. Perhaps that’s what happened in
After reading about the experiment, I tried to imagine myself as a subject and, honestly, I had no idea how I’d behave. I might as well go as far as 450V or I might quit, I don’t know. But even though I did not take part in the experiment, I’ve drawn some conclusions for myself. I realized how valuable each individual’s independence is and what a threat an excessive demand for obedience poses.
I’m glad that the foundation stone of Democracy,