anyone watch ABC's Primetime "Science of Evil" ?

“Did anyone watch this show tonight? Here is the website to refresh your memory.
http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=2765416&page=1

My first thought was I'd never do that, my second thought was I'd never do that. Then I began to think. How many times do I join into verbal barrages because others are doing so? How often do I tear someone down because others are? How easy it is to be cruel behind someone's back because the group is doing so. I am guilty. You may say, those are only words, not torture or violence. What would it take for me to escalate it? I wonder what would I do in an unknown situation. It is too easy to see someone as different. Just a step up to mock or ridicule, another step up to heckle; and how many more steps before I have no problem seeing them as less than human and then committing attrocities without a thought?

An honest person HAS to question themselves. Group mentality can be a scary thing. It IS a good thing to question authority when it goes against long held moral values; you truly have no one to answer to but God in the end.

I can only pray that I hold firm to what I hold to be honest and true and right. I must be as wise as a serpent and gentle as a dove.
last edited: 1/04/07 1:36:36 AM”

“No one saw this last night?”

“Looks pretty interesting. I show films of the Milgram Obedience experiment in my psychology class. This is an interesting follow-up.”

“I am interested to know what your students have to say about Milgram, what he did, and what his subject did, and furthermore what it says about humankind?

I also wonder what it says about psychology when they are willing to put people through an obviously distressing test. What happened to, "First do no harm". What does it say about Media when they are willing to repeat the test for the sake of ratings?

I did not stay in college, so I missed this class.”

“I saw it - have to love the teacher who said she could tell the guy was faking, just like her students who don't want to write papers do...then she started to question herself when she got into the higher frequencies.”

“That teacher was one the coldest woman I have ever seen. She was a middle school teacher; right? I have worked with kids of all ages in schools/Scouts for a very long time. Middle school kids are THEE most difficult kids to deal with. If she has been teaching at that level for a while, I imagine that is why she has toughened up. But still . . . she was scary. I don't remember her truly questioning, did I miss that?

I don't think, ESPECIALLY after WWII, that we need to perform experiments like this, we merely need to revisit and re-examine what went on before. Mankind has NOT changed, as much as we would like to think we have. We are the same animal we always have been.

If we want to be different, it has to be an individual choice, with an internal motivation. In the end, it seems the experiment points that out.”

“My students usually laugh uncomfortably - especially when the shock level goes pst the danger level. It's chilling. Generally they think it important enough to be worth the dismofort for the subjects. Some have said that people are better off knowing that they can be easily led into such evil.

Millgram had a bit of a sadistic streak. My father told me that when he was in Hong Kong in the 60s, Migrim approached my father and some other people about doing a study in which rumours were planted about Communist and CIA spies at the International Center and to see how it changed people's behaviors. The study was rejected because they though Milgrim was being sadistic and tht it was wrong to mess with people's feelings an their relationships that way.”

“I have done well by studying the laws lashon hara to avoid sheepish slander.”