Philip Zimbardo’s revenge: Turning knowledge of evil into actions of heroism

I've previously commented on Phillips Zimbardo's thoroughly engaging work, including his lecture on "The Secret Powers of Time."  He is well respected for his research on a wide variety of social psychology issues. Forty years ago, Zimbardo unwittingly served as the mastermind of the infamous "Stanford prison experiment."  He selected healthy young men with no history of any psychological problems, drug abuse or violence and he put them into a situation where they would fill the roles of prisoners and guards in a simulated prison (in a school building) that soon turned ugly as Zimbardo stood by and observed. The prisoner abuse eventually become intolerable. During the course of the experiment, the "guards" became physically and emotionally abusive toward the "prisoners." Zimbardo took a lot of criticism for running this experiment, even though he shut it down six days after beginning what was scheduled to be a two-week long experiment. Zimbardo still today notes that his own "passive role" enabled the abuse. The Stanford experiment clearly demonstrated that a toxic situation can cause "good" people to act grotesquely. Based on his previous work, including the Stanford experiment, Zimbardo was called to serve as an expert witness in a case the US government brought against an Abu Ghraib guard who was accused of being a "bad apple." Zimbardo disagreed with that characterization, opining that Abu Ghraib was a terrible situation that was likely to corrupt many good people. As indicated in an article by Greg Miller titled "Using the Psychology of Evil to Do Good" in the April 29, 2011 edition of Science (available online only to subscribers), the guard being prosecuted:

. . . soon found himself supervising about a dozen military police and dozens more Iraqi police responsible for guarding more than 1000 Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. The prisoner population had recently tripled, creating a chaotic environment in which standard procedures and oversight broke down. The language barrier made prisoner same anonymous, Zimbardo says, and many prisoners were forced to go naked, further dehumanizing them and creating a sexually charged atmosphere. Guards worked daily 12 hour shifts for weeks on end. Fear of a revolt-or an attack from outside-mixed with boredom and exhaustion to create a volatile brew.
In short, Abu Ghraib constituted an episode of déjà vu for Zimbardo. It was no surprise to him that guards with no history of troublemaking or bad character would engage in grotesque acts.

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List of sole survivors

This has got to be one of the most feel-good Wikipedia pages: "List of sole survivors of airline accidents or incidents." Included in some of the most incredible survivor stories you will ever hear of. Including Vesna Vulovic, who fell 33, 000 feet and survived and Juliane Kopcke, who's plane exploded after being struck by lightning, then walked 9 days through the jungle before finding another human being.

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AT&T and Verizon’s wireless duopoly is on the rise and it will hurt YOU

John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) and Congressman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) held a press conference to raise antitrust and public interest concerns surrounding the proposed merger of AT&T and T-Mobile wireless telecommunication companies.  Markey explained further:

The AT&T - T–Mobile deal is like a telecommunications time machine that would send consumers back to a bygone era of high prices and limited choice,” said Markey. “AT&T and Verizon have divided the nation into Bell East and Bell West. Approving consolidation of the number of nationwide carriers from 4 to 3 and then inevitably to 2 would return consumers to a duopoly in the national wireless market. This would be an historic mistake. Consumers will be tipped upside down, with the money shaken out of their pockets as the lack of competition leads to higher prices. It is innovation and investment in new technology that ultimately leads to the changes that protect consumers and promote competition. Anything less is a huge step backwards for our country’s ability to compete and win in the global marketplace.

Here is an excerpt from Free Press:

AT&T and Verizon would control nearly 80 percent of the market for mobile telecommunications.

As a result of the merger, the wireless market would be more consolidated than the markets for oil, banking, automobiles and air travel. What does that mean? It means that to achieve comparable consolidation in the oil industry, ExxonMobil would have to merge with BP, Shell, Chevron-Texaco and Citgo. And to make the comparison still more accurate, Exxon would not only have to merge, but would require you to buy only Exxon gas for the next two years.

We should all be concerned about this level of concentration in the market for a service that all Americans increasingly depend on. Mobile service is as critical for families as affordable, reliable water and electricity, and communities who can least afford to pay more will bear the cost of lining AT&T’s corporate coffers. That’s why 50 organizations dedicated to social justice filed a letter today with the Department of Justice and the FCC opposing the merger.

In 1984, when the Justice Department broke up the old Ma Bell, the prevailing consensus was that AT&T had gotten too big. But the AT&T-T-Mobile merger would create a behemoth that’s substantially bigger than the old Bell conglomerate. It really is 1984 all over again.

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United States Citizen Consent Form and Survey

I suspect that only a smallish minority of people deeply care about the many dramatic political and legal changes that have been occurring in the United States over the past ten years. Just to make sure, though, I have created a United States Citizen Consent Form and Survey, and I would like to propose that it be distributed to all U.S. citizens and they be compelled to fill it out by federal mandate.

Maybe the results will substantiate my fears that I am an outsider living in what used to be my own country.

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