The human Psych

The movie just watch is indeed disturbing. Yes there are other version of this real experiment played out as other stories.

Was it entirely accidental that the prisoner class did become mostly subservient and the guard class find a few able to role play the sadistic individual. Having been a GUARD now retired I can tell you that of course that profession can easily produce sick bs. But remember the prisoner class is composed of a lot of sick bs who have volunteered completely for the job of being locked up. The hard part for the real guard is being able to be the sick b towards prisoners if surrounded by mostly normal thinking custodidal officers. But if in the company of same minded sick bs then the inmates can have problems.

It may well be that certain nationalities can behave very differently in certain circumstances. For egample if secret KKK members were given this experimental task as guard and found that a couple of the prisoner class was black then that outcome might well be predicted. I note that our main guard was giving the impression that he was red necked white supremacist type, by his language anyway.

IN the UK we have Psychologists and Psychiatrists and while I am suspect about the so called abilities and indeed usefulness they may well all have a part to play. Our Psychologists are not to my knowledge which is now 20 years out of date able to prescribe the many medications the drug companies would like to be offered. Psychiatrists er are able to prescribe but they are also qualified doctors who have done the full training and are now specialising like any other branch of medical practitioners. However unlike surgeon who mistakenly chop off the wrong leg [but your other one is getting better] their diagnosis is purely an opinion. The surgeon of course may well be struck off but our erstwhile nut job medic who releases the now cured killer back into the wild is not held responsible for having a WRONG opinion.

Many experiments are attempted to find out what makes us tick and indeed are sometimes quite useful but in truth all the variables that can cause fatal hiccups cannot be all tested in any one experiment. I watched one recently where [fake] electrical shocks were being given by a group to subjects. The majority eventually gave shocks which would have killed had it been real. They were all normal decent people yet would have killed.

This was I believe also due to a very real period in our world history when what we might call a decent people in Germany were able to commit the worst atrocities. The so called uninvolved population were able to turn a blind eye. If interested have a look at the book BLIND EYE TO MURDER By TOM BOWER. While it does illustrate that the general population looked the other way during Hitler's reign it accuses the rest of the world of looking away in the aftermath of dealing with about 150,000 individuals involved with multiple murders. I do not need any opposing argument regarding the murders being committed in the defence of our todays need for oil. I see that as murder as well and I see that using our own troops to achieve that as wrong but do not hold the troops responsible except when they behave outside the rules of combat.

This experiment should be a warning as to how quickly a situation can get out of control. Think about the the various training exercises for our Astronauts/Cosmonauts for long periods in space as in the recent newsworthy recent launch of a Brit to spend some time on the Russian space station. We also have training regarding the potential of a Mars trip. Not too far away from the Stanford experiment.

We humans are able to be quite evil. The number of inmates in american jails are testament to this. It would be greater but criminals are able to pay lots of money to the men who keep them out of jail.