Tuesday, March 31, 2020

The Lucifer effect



Written by Phillip Zimbardo is a disturbing look at the human experience and horrific book at the same time. He speaks about many different things and the worst of those are that those who do the worst evil are ordinary people. People who have families children and so on but they do the worst crimes against humanity.

He notes that there are seven social processes that grease the slippery slope of evil:
·         Mindlessly taking the first small steps

People who were experiments were not encouraged to those who they were experimenting on large electrical shocks to begin with but rather they were given small shocks and then the line was crossed then they kept going until abuse occurred. In the Stanford prison experiment abuse of the prisoners occurred because they were stopped by making the prisoners do press ups, from here the abuse continued.


  • ·         Dehumanisation of others


This is happening now to Muslims what happened to the Jews. Almost the entire media blames all Muslims for the actions of a few, which in itself is a great injustice. The dehumanisation of Muslims has lead to attacks on innocent individuals and groups. This  how the holocaust started by dehumanising the Jews. 



  • ·         De-individuation of the self (anonymity)

Social media is not a nice place for Muslims because anyone posts any hate or racist message without the social media doing anything about it, nothing at all. So in fact  social media is also responsible for the rise of the far right. None have been recently punished for race hate.



  • ·         Diffusion of personal responsibility


So the power that it over them controls so they do not feel responsible for their actions.



  • ·         Blind obedience to authority

 They never question authority and accuse that they are right and how wrong can they be when any political leader can spew race hate at Muslims. Not only can he keep his job without reprimand, he will run for re-election! In the Rwandan genocide, the authorities  compared their neighbours to cockroaches and they said should you not kill them? Ordinary people were given knifes and machetes and almost a million innocent people were killed.



  • ·         Uncritical conformity to group norms


How many people get caught up in group mentalities who drive people to commit crimes against humanity? Not to make himself be different he just sits and agrees to be part of the group, even though the group is wrong.



  • ·         Passive tolerance of evil through inaction or indifference


This is perhaps the worst thing of all as an innocent female Muslim might be shopping with her child and is abused by someone. The people present do nothing because it is nothing to do with them. This is passive or inactive type of racism. Even though they are not racist, themselves their silence when they should be speaking means they agree.



Genocide is happening of Muslims all over the world and the things that have happened are patterns that repeat themselves, repeatedly. Because humanity does not learn that dehumanising, someone is the first step to murder and genocide. I hope you all are listening and we must stop this nonsense now. All people have the right to live without harassment and in honour.


He called the Lucifer effect after satan who did the first evil act, then mankind followed his wretched example.




Reference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsFEV35tWsg