Studies by Pyszczynski, Solomon and Greenberg (described in their book In The Wake of 9/11: The Psychology of Terror) found that when people feel threatened, they usually become more prejudiced against those of a different group, whether religious, racial, or of national origin. Yet when people raised with liberal, tolerant backgrounds and values meet a sense of terror or a strong threat, they become more welcoming of those different from themselves, less punitive, and more understanding. It looks like the right kind of cultural backbone can effectively “immunize” a person against some sorts of “evil” behavior.

The short poem THE FINAL POLLUTION was both diabolical and liberating. I’ll always carry that image with me–a bunch of faithful religionists lined up before the pearly gates, except that inside awaits the gas chambers of some celestial Nazi. What a vision of the New Earth, one even worse than this one!
Or as Brecht once said, “He who smiles hasn’t yet heard the bad news.”
Black humor is the most liberating kind.
My beautiful first wife, long since dead of cancer, specialized in such nightmare visions. She was a German Jew who was deep, deep, deep into this darkest kind of black humor: “Hope for the best and prepare for the worst,” was her motto. She would love the image of a genocidal God, except that she would have insisted such a Diety must be Christian.
And of course she’d be right.
I’ve gotten fresh info on Milgram’s study and his subjects. Many were indeed harmed, but felt glad afterwards that they’d learned something priceless about themselves, and about humanity. (Eighty-five percent reported being happy they’d participated, whereas slightly more than one percent regretted participating.) I’m gradually coming to the conclusion that Milgram’s study can be justified, however much suffering it caused to its naive subjects, because any species that has both aggression and the ability to make choices must have at least one Milgram-type study to demonstrate the gravity of their situation. I’m glad today’s experimental ethics prevents more of such studies, however.
As for celebrities: a famous student of media and culture heroes was fascinated by the fact that Zha Zha Gabor kept getting into the newspaper, even though she hadn’t made a movie, recorded anything, or been on network TV for at least a couple of decades. One reason was that she had the bad habit, along with many other Hungarian aristocrats, of slapping people she considered her social inferiors. She slapped a Hollywood cop and could barely be restrained from slapping the judge.
This same student of culture and media came to another conclusion as to why Zha Zha kept getting so much ink in daily journalism and the trade journals. She was, he wrote, “famous for being famous…”

Larry Swaim

I am writing a book about evil, with a long chapter on systemic evil that attempts to analyze the Milgram study. I believe that the behavior of the “teachers” can be explained by a different causal factor than simply obedience, although obedience was important. But a big problems exists in understanding whether people in the Milgram experiment were harmed or not. Sadly, Milgram’s own follow-up studies were somewhat self-serving, and there is some evidence that many of the “teachers” did not understand what had happened. Milgram also played down the possibility that he had harmed people, for obvious reasons–if it were true that he had, he is just as guilty as the people who shocked the “learners” right up to 450, and his famous study becomes an examination of Milgram’s own capacity for evil, along with the “teachers.”
Does anybody have any information about people who may have been harmed by the Milgram study? Many people assume that some were, but solid information is hard to come by. Milgram himself claimed to own letters from people thanking him for their participation in his study, but I don’t know if they actually exist. And his follow-up interviews were not explicit enough about the subject that Milgram was really interested in, which was the capacity of a person to torture to death a complete stranger.
Incidentally, the best account of a former “teacher” in the Milgram study for me is that of Joseph Dimow. (See his essay in Jewish Currents, January 2004.) He instantly recognized that he was the subject of an experiment that had to do with the human capacity for evil, and refused to go on. He believes he could see through the experiment so quickly because he came from a leftwing home where power and authority were regularly deconstructed in family conversations. Secondly, he had been in a Marxist-Leninist organization at one time and had used the same kind of authority, and experienced it being used on himself.
Info about persons harmed in the Milgram would be greatly appreciated. Also perhaps the Stanford study, although there is already more anecdotal info about that than Milgram.

L. Swaim

HOLOCAUSTS

To Auschwitz and to Buchenwald
God led his chosen people,
To demonstrate, in Hanna’s words,
“The banality of evil.”

Now those who praise this loving God
And those who praise Reality,
Both build bombs to demonstrate
The evil of banality.

Another of my poems includes, among other ideas, the absurdity and horror of mass behavior in which the individual is at the mercy of gods or governments:

THE FINAL POLLUTION

Before the gates of Paradise
Queues of naked refugees
Pledge allegiance to the skies
While saints examine them for fleas.

Angels herd the milling crowds,
A rumor keeps alive their hope,
Before they’re marched into the clouds
Each receives a bar of soap.

Another poem, CORPORAL PUNISHMENT, begins: “We are all on the train to Auschwitz” It can be found at http://www.TheNextCivilization.com

We have limited hours on this fragile planet, with much of importance needed to be accomplished. It is in that context that Deb (and I) don’t know much about “Brittany and Jay-Lo and whoever else fits that mold.” Since it has become an issue here, though, I will dedicate one minute each to exploring them on Wikipedia . . .

Theonly2: I don’t think it is pretentious to not care enough about pop culture to keep track of pop icons. I have heard the name Brittany Spears (or however her name is spelled), but I have no idea what she has done to earn notariety. If, as Scholar described in his/her comment, she is someone who has married, divorced, had children and did some modeling when she was young, it is no wonder I don’t know who she is. In my book, that isn’t nearly enough to make me think she’s noteworthy.
No one can know it all, and we’re all ignorant about something. I’m okay with being ignorant about Brittany and Jay-Lo and whoever else fits that mold.