Stanford Prison Experiment

http://www.prisonexp.org/

"What happens when you put good people in an evil place? Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph? These are some of the questions we posed in this dramatic simulation of prison life conducted in the summer of 1971 at Stanford University."

"How we went about testing these questions and what we found may astound you. Our planned two-week investigation into the psychology of prison life had to be ended prematurely after only six days because of what the situation was doing to the college students who participated. In only a few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress."

This experiment sheds light on what's going on between Israel and the Palestinians today, as well as many other horrors in the past (Nazi prison guards come immediately to mind) and present (Federal thugs raiding a Santa Cruz marijuana co-op of dying cancer patients, etc., etc.). I think all of us need to be aware of the dark side of our nature, in order to guard against succumbing to it.

JdL

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "John A. deLaubenfels" <jdl@a...>
wrote:
> http://www.prisonexp.org/
>
> "What happens when you put good people in an evil place? Does
>humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph? These are some of the
>questions we posed in this dramatic simulation of prison life
>conducted in the summer of 1971 at Stanford University."
>
> "How we went about testing these questions and what we found may
>astound you. Our planned two-week investigation into the psychology
>of prison life had to be ended prematurely after only six days
>because of what the situation was doing to the college students who
>participated. In only a few days, our guards became sadistic and
>our
>prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress."
>
> This experiment sheds light on what's going on between Israel and
>the Palestinians today, as well as many other horrors in the past
>(Nazi prison guards come immediately to mind) and present (Federal
>thugs raiding a Santa Cruz marijuana co-op of dying cancer patients,
>etc., etc.). I think all of us need to be aware of the dark side of
>our nature, in order to guard against succumbing to it.
>
> JdL

exactly john. this was a necessary counterpart to my hopeful
"humanity" post.