"The Human Behaviour Experiments" on CBC the Current--clip of

[Gloria]

this morning's interview.

Was listening to Radio Canada Intl. this AM (The Current) and they had a segment on this upcoming show that will air tonight on CBC Newsworld. With a DEBATE following...anyway, the producer went through a list of experiments about group think, obedience, etc and the discussion got to the military and what happened at Abu Ghraib. The conclusion was that awareness of this sort of thing can help us protect ourselves from abandoning what we know is right. During the discussion, the producer commented that Milgram hadn't had the chance to devise a study of what makes a "hero"--but implied, at least to me, that people who refuse to "fall in line" may very well be heroes.


*****



The Current: Part 3
http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/media/200609/20060913thecurrent_sec2.ram


**The Human Behaviour Projects

For the next half hour, we re-examined some old ideas about what makes us behave in evil ways. We started with some sounds from a notorious experiment conducted by psychologist Stanley Milgram in the 60s. In it, he examined how humans responded to authority by asking a group of volunteers to administer painful electric shocks to another group--- if they incorrectly answered a question. Some resisted, but others surprisingly-- readily-- participated.

It's one of three notorious psychological tests filmmaker Alex Gibney reexamines in his documentary called, "The Human Behaviour Experiments". And he told us why we must not only continue to illuminate the darker parts of the human psyche, but we should find new ways to reign them in. Alex Gibney joined us from our New York studio.

Alex Gibney is a film producer, director and writer. You can watch "The Human Behaviour Projects" tonight on the Big Picture with Avi Lewis, at 10 pm Eastern and Pacific, on CBC Newsworld.


From the Newsworld site about the full documentary---
This sounds like something worth checking out if you are in Canada....maybe it will land here on Discovery, like the CBC show on the "Toxic Legacy" of 911 did last night. It was scathing....

http://www.cbc.ca/bigpicture/human.html


Some facts from the sidebar:

In Peter Gabriel's song, "We do what we're told. Milgram's 37", the number refers to fully obedient participants in Experiment 18: A Peer Administers Shocks.

Who is more obedient - men or women? They're exactly the same at 65% according to Milgram. Although women consistently reported more stress than men.

A U.S. Army report contains testimony from an army team leader saying photos like those taken at Abu Ghraib were also taken in Afghanistan but have been destroyed to avoid "another public outrage."

General Barbara Fast, the chief of military intelligence in Iraq during the period of the most serious abuses - late 2003 through 2004 - has since been promoted for her work in Iraq.

At the Nuremberg trials Herman Goering said: "Of course people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. ... All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

[Cameron27]

1. I'd love to see it.

The program sounds fascinating.

If I could get their broadcasts, I'd be watching CBC quite often...sounds much better than what we're stuck with.

[whistle]

2. I hope the story goes back to the roots of the 300,000 nazi war....

...criminal scientists, professionals and poltical hacks and their families and friends brought into this country following WW II.

<snip>
November 21, 2005
Tired of Being Lied to? Modern History You Can't Afford to Ignore
Part 1 of a 3-Part Series
by Maureen Farrell

"Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people." ~ Theodore Roosevelt

"The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know." ~ Harry S. Truman

A couple years ago, historian Chalmers Johnson predicted that thanks to the "entrenched interests" of the military-industrial complex, the United States can look forward to a future of perpetual war, increased propaganda, fewer Constitutional rights, and a bloated executive branch. America, he warned, "will cease to resemble the country outlined in the Constitution of 1787" unless there is a "revolutionary rehabilitation of American democracy."

The founding fathers were particularly sensitive to liberty's fleeting nature and power's corruptive tendencies. Thomas Jefferson said that "even under the best forms those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny," while James Madison warned that "If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." And at the close of the Constitutional Convention, when someone asked Ben Franklin what type of government the framers had drafted, he presciently replied, "A republic, if you can keep it."

But America's wisest leaders did not merely warn against the death of the republic, but about how and why its democratic principles would gradually wither away. "Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence," Jefferson wrote in 1821. "We are free today substantially, but the day will come when our Republic will be an impossibility. It will be an impossibility because wealth will be concentrated in the hands of a few," Madison said in the New York Post. <more>

http://www.buzzflash.com/farrell/05/11/far05001.html



<other links>
http://space4peace.blogspot.com/2005/02/nazi-past-our-present.html

http://www.watchingamerica.com/thesundaymailzb000002.html

http://www.anomalous-images.com/text/omega3.htm

[Gloria]

3. Kicking for the new info posted....

[undergroundpanther]

4. Not falling in line

If that makes a hero,than I have been one before,But It didn't feel all that"heroic" at the time..In fact it felt like rage, it felt sick inside. My main"disobedience was standing up for fellow patients.. for their rights to be treated like human beings in a totalitarian environment. I was in a mental hospital,being a "hero" in a place like that where staff is psychopathic and unaccountable to anyone mostly,being a humane person with ethics gets you in deep shit.


You pay for caring and standing up,for others when you empathize . In the Mental Hospital,you can get locked in a little room indefinitely ,put in leather restraints, given nasty injections of drugs,and humiliated, treated like a problem patient and put on "watch". After those experiences I swore to myself I would NEVER stop standing up,when a bully shows their fucking asshole to someone who is vulnerable or in pain or not harming anyone.

I swear everything almost socially in our culture is designed to kill the hero in the human being.To foster obedience to authority figures and wrap the human soul in chains of commands.
In my life what has been the hardest,was not fearing the consequences of my disobedience.I feared what I felt like when I did nothing to help when I could have helped. The shame within me is like torture,the burning of my own wrath at myself is far worse than what any bully pissed off at me for standing up could do to me.

My life consisted of standing up to the bullies at home,in school,the bullies in the mental health system,the bullies on the street the cops,god,for years.. the list goes on and on..Scary truth is, 1 in 4 people have the kind of toxic personality that lies somewhere in the psychopath, narcissistic or authoritarian spectrum.And these personalities are who keep peace away from us,keep the world in turmoil,keep things sick.

But I have one hope it's not all that strong,but I refuse to let it go,for if I let it go I would kill myself right now,...The Hope is that more people will stop standing by,will disobey authoritarians and stop enabling them..and people will take the responsibility of empathy and acting upon that empathy for themselves and fuck what anyone else says, or thinks. The more people listen to their heart and disobey the rules the more the fucking asshole authoritarians among us,realize they are not free to abuse power, manipulate relationships,and desecrate our sacred person hood anymore. The bully heart belongs in chains of restriction and mistrust and rejection forever. The bully needs the social death sentence.. Not the heart of a caring,creative,disobedient, courageous, free spirit.

Being disobedient is not "heroic" per se.. I think it was or is our natural spirit orientation inside us within that has been systematically crushed or'broken' from day one..by our parents,the church,school.. on up. This "heroism" is just listening to your own conscience over the demands of conformity,and the din of social conditioning. A conscience is the desire to be better as a person than the world is ,and the desire to be who you are,in balance with compassion..THAT is the inner locus of control speaking..The command of the heart is supreme if you make it so.Ignore your own conscience at dire risk,you can lose a little bit of your sacred person hood,

At first ignoring your conscience makes you sick inside,if you keep on obeying authority over your own conscience you can become numb to your own heart's song and your voice withers to the party lines . That inner locus of self control is something we all have ,until we give it away to some asshole wearing an authority figure costume pretending as if he knew better than us ourselves what is right and good..we become obedient cowards,safe but calloused,somehow less than humane..

[undergroundpanther]

5. KICK

[Gloria]

6. kick for the eveing crowd....

[SmokingJacket]

7. Read "Opening Skinner's Box" by Lauren Slater

She describes lots of these different experiments -- it's fascinating.

But she also talks about the limitations of them. Apparently, particularly with the Milgram experiment, you can't always apply the results to other situations. For example, people who were especially obedient in the experient didn't seem to share any characteristics with each other: they weren't necessarily "followers" in real life, weren't less intelligent, etc. It seemed that that experiment pretty much just showed how people would act under those particular circumstances.

Interestingly, participating in the experiment actually caused some people to alter the way they looked at their lives. One guy was so horrified by the way he behaved (applying (pretend) shocks to people to the point of death) that he became the opposite (though I've forgotten the specifics!).