Evil quotient

[Meatball]

I was watching a TV show about the holocaust which showed how 6 million jews and millions of others were exterminated simply because the common population were " told" to do so. The mass brainswashing that Nazi propoganda perpetrated on the public and the willingness and cooperation to see the plan through is staggering. Now any one person is capable of evil due to some Dementia.
But ratianal people..?

How evil can man become?
Rational people in the millions can be 'convinced' that the world is better off without _________..

Under the right circumstances, can Americans be convinced that killing say..green eyed people, is ok, even their duty as humans?

is there a point that even mans ability to commit atrocities cannot cross?



This message was edited by mortician on 8-7-01 @ 3:11 PM

[HordeKing1]

MORTICIAN - There are no depths to man's deprevity. If you ever had any doubts whatsoever that we're barely evolved animals, just look at human history.

After the Holocaust, a whole bunch of psychological research was done trying to explain how an average (not the many many buthchers but an average) German citizen could have willingly participated in such atrocities. (All Germans had actual knowledge of what was going on even if they didn't do any killing personally. But were they all evil? If not why did only a handful do or say anything?)

The results of the experiments were disturbing to say the least.

In one experiment a person was told that every time he pressed a button a person in another room would recieve an electric shock. Every time he pressed the button a person in the other room screamed in a manner indicating that the shocks were causing him considerable pain. The majority of people tested went past an indicator clearly marked "lethal shock," despite the screams. Why? Simply because a guy in a white lab coat told him to!

In another experiment a number of people (8 I believe) were brought into a room and told to choose the shortest line on a blackboard. One line was unequivocally shorter than the others. What the test subject didn't know was that the other people were all ringers. The ringers said that the longest line was the shortest. Many subjects went along with the ringers because they "must be right" as they were in the majority. The subject blindly followed the majority even though he knew they were wrong.

Another very famous experiment involved separating a group of volunteers into two random groups. One group were called prisoners, the others guards. The guards were placed in charge of the prisoners in a simulated jail. To sum up the results, the guards brutalized the prisoners. The experiment had to be stopped very quickly for ethical reasons (The prisoners were in danger of being seriously hurt or even killed.)

So what does this show us? Even the people who are not genuinely evil have potential to do so to please an authority figure, or to conform to a majority, or to fulfill the role they think is expected of them.

Humans are animals and as such need the thin veneer of civilization and law. We are also thinking animals. As such we can understand concepts like good and evil. We must fight against people who seek to get others to do evil. Ask yourself; If you were a German in 1943, would you have been one of the few who hid Jews in the basement or would you have been like the majority who looted their stores, and moved into their homes? Would YOU have followed blindly or would you have questioned?

These questions are just as relevant today as they were then. Rascism (towards every ehtnic and religious group) is at an all time high in America. Yes it can happen here unless every person vows that they will not let it happen.

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