|
submit
articles |
| How We Become Like the Enemy Research shows how easy it is to become aggressive, hostile, and unfeeling. Philip G. Zimbardo Evil is the perversion of human perfection;
it is the mind turned in on itself to hurt, harm, demean, and destroy
other people, along with their possessions and their most valued symbols.
If we take Good as the natural human condition, then Evil is its
antithesis, and Heroism its opposing force. But that triad represents
multiple facets of human nature. This terrorist attack on U.S. sovereignty
represents a new level of creative evil in which human intellect serves
the basest motives of violence and destruction. It is imperative not to
underestimate the power and catalytic force of this new enemy, and we have
to change our perception of this attack as "senseless violence."
Of course, this tragic destruction of lives and property does not make
sense to us because it is incomprehensible that any individual or group
would engage in such evil deeds. But calling it "senseless,"
"mindless," "insane," or the work of
"madmen" is wrong for two reasons. It fails to adopt the
perspective of the perpetrators, as an act with a clearly defined purpose
that we must understand in order to challenge it most effectively. And
such negative labeling also lulls us into thinking it is random, not
comparable to anything we do understand, and making us disrespectful of
the high level of reasoned intellect behind these deeds, however distorted
or diabolical it may be. Constructive efforts at preventing future
similar acts of international violence best begin with attempts to
understand not only the Who question, but the What question as well. Our
national leaders will seek out those who orchestrated this destructive
attack against our nation and eventually bring them to justice. But even
if the identifiable terrorist leaders were to be eliminated, would that
stop future terrorism? It is unlikely, unless we know what are the root
causes of the hatred against America; unless the ideological, political,
and social bases of the mentalities of the next generation of potential
terrorists are more fully appreciated and efforts to change them are
engaged. Evil has always existed in many forms and
will continue to flourish in different ways in different places. There are
individuals we acknowledge as embodying evil, just as Lucifer and Satan
do--Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and other national tyrants. They are all
dead, yet evil flourishes throughout the world with nameless conductors
orchestrating ever new violence. It is well for us now to go beyond our
tendency to focus on dispositional evil as a peculiar property or
characteristic of despicable particular individuals. Instead, we might
consider focusing on the determinants of evil in order to to identify the
breeding grounds that can seduce even good people to become perpetrators
of evil. Even while acknowledging
our individual and national need for retribution and punishment of the
leaders of this terrorist attacks, we must realize that without altering
the fundamental sources of anti-American and anti-democratic beliefs and
values in other nations, new replacements will emerge for each tyrant
leader we punish or kill. Much psychological research
reveals the ease with which ordinary people can be recruited to engage in
harmful behaviors against their fellow human beings. In one classic study
by Stanley Milgram, the majority of ordinary American citizens who
participated in it blindly obeyed an authority figure and administered
what they believed were painful, even lethal shocks to a stranger. Albert Bandura showed that
intelligent students were willing to be extremely aggressive toward other
groups of students merely because they were characterized with the
dehumanizing label of being just "like animals." In another demonstration from my own laboratory, normal college students recruited to role-play prison guards became their roles in a matter of days, behaving with escalating violence and sadism toward their prisoners--other college students. We know that a cult leader, Jim Jones,
reverend of Peoples Temple, was able to program his followers to commit
suicide, or to kill one another on his command, and more than 900 American
citizens did so in the jungles of Guyana. Research by John Steiner (an Auschwitz
survivor) indicates that most Nazi concentration camp guards were
"ordinary men" before and following their years of perpetrating
evil. Many more examples could be culled to illustrate reasons why we
should not demonize these terrorists as an alien breed. Instead, we should
focus on a better understanding of the mind control tactics and strategies
that might make even good people engage in evil deeds at some time in
their lives, and that might recruit new generations of impoverished young
people into lives of terrorism. We need also to acknowledge
openly "the dark side of religion" in terms of how religiously
based value systems can be perverted to justify and reward the most
horrendous of human deeds. Unbridled evil has been carried out in the name
of religion and condoned in the name of God over the centuries by most
nations of the world, and still is. The efforts of our military
forces in tracking down and destroying the terrorist leaders has a
collateral risk. It models revenge and retaliation at a national level
which can become a stimulus for individual hostility toward innocent
citizens in our own country whose ethnicity, religion, or appearance might
be similar to those of the terrorists. Research by Dane Archer
shows that homicide rates increase dramatically following all wars, the
same for victor or loser nations, presumably because individuals learn to
use violent means of conflict resolution as had been sanctioned by their
national leaders. We cannot allow that transfer of hostility to develop,
because it fuels the cycle of violence started by the terrorists.
Terrorists create terror; terror creates fear and anger; fear and anger
create aggression, and aggression against citizens of different ethnicity
or religion creates racism and, in turn, new forms of terrorism. We must individually
and collectively refuse to adopt the terrorists’ devaluing of human
life. If we do not, and we yield to the quiet rage of hatred that their
vile deeds have generated in most of us, then our desire to destroy them
at all costs will ally us more with the forces of evil than of good. If we...yield to the
quiet rage of hatred that their vile deeds have generated in most of us,
then our desire to destroy them at all costs will ally us more with the
forces of evil than of good. We have seen the
enemy--do not let it become us. We have also witnessed the tremendous
outpouring of positive emotions, good will and heroic deeds of Americans
in response to this tragedy. We are giving money and blood, selflessly
donating our skills and energies, and even sacrificing our lives to help
others. This tragedy may in the
long run help to nurture the best in us all, to rekindle civic engagement,
to connect each more fully with family, friends and neighbors, to put
community and nation before self interests. It may give us new reasons to
be genuinely proud to be Americans who oppose evil with tolerance,
compassion, justice, and love. Source: |