We are all familiar with the story of Lord of the flies. During a time of war, plain evacuating a group of English boys get's shot over a tropical island. Pilot dies, while many of the children survive and find themselves stranded on an uninhabited island.
They begin by establishing a society similar to the one they left at home. They start hunting for food, making shelter and developing a civilization in order to survive. But soon this civilization starts degenerating. Different clans are formed ruled by fear and violence and by the end of the book several boys have been killed.
William Golding wrote this book shortly after the World War II, so his pessimism about society was understandable. The world still felt atrocities of the Holocaust, atomic bombs and other horrors of war.
Is Golding's view of the world distorted or does everyone has innate ability to do evil?
One of the best known psychological experiments in history dealt with this topic of how humans react when put in various social situations. In 1971, A group of Stanford researchers led by professor Philip Zimbardo put 24 undergraduates under the microscope.
They arranged improvised prison in the basement of Stanford building, took these students (without criminal record and considered psychologically healthy) and made them act as guards and prisoners. They randomly assigned half to be guards and half to be prisoners. Researchers then observed behavior of the prisoners who had to stay in their cells 24/7, and the guards who took 8 hour shifts.
The experiment was designed to last for two weeks, but had to be stopped after only six days due to extremely abusive behavior of guards towards prisoners. On the first couple of days nothing happened, so they even thought of quitting the experiment because it looked boring. But from there, prisoners started demanding the freedom, and the guards looked at them more as a dangerous prisoners than as students. Tortures and aggression escalated so they were putting bags over their heads, stripping them naked and making them participate in extremely humiliating sexual activities. Psychological torture put prisoners under huge amount of stress and anxiety.
Professor had to stop the research after it got out of control to the point where he feared that consequences could be tragic.
What if it is true that every living creature has a capacity for evil, whether or not he acknowledges it? Maybe we all have the potential of doing cruel, immoral actions when in extreme situations. Or the better question may be, does the goodness in people overcomes the bad situation, or does the bad situation overwhelms the good in people.
The Stanford research and several similar experiments lead to the troubling conclusion. When put in tough situations, it's not that difficult to get people who were considered normal to act shockingly bad. As human beings we have both good and bad characteristics and abilities, and what separates normal people from the "psychopaths" is their ability to control negative urges, to resist acting them out.
Throughout history, humans showed they are willing to do anything to feel safe, secure and attain position of power. A sense of conscience and personal accountability is what keeps us from doing wrong.
Maybe that's why in the movies, books or tv shows we often better relate to gray characters who have good and bad in them than to pure paladins. Even the heroes that appeared noble and good had their hearts easily corrupted or filled with greed. Cause we all have capacity for heroism and selfishness. It's just the question of which one overpowers the other.
Like in the native American legend, old Cherokee is telling his grandson about the fight between two wolfs that's happening inside each of us. One wolf is anger, greed, arrogance, while the other is kindness, hope, love. When asked which wolf will win, he simply replies with "the one you feed".
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