“At home, you know, you never have a big joint. And it’s really lovely to have something of a really nice, big joint.”

What in the…? Wow. The sixties really took hold there. “Are they in Amsterdam?” I asked.

1) Solve world peace.
2) Fix problems in Africa.
3) Reclaim OPACY from the Red Sox fans.

Three is looking challenging, but I’m optimistic that one and two are within reach. We’ve already figured out why smart people believe dumb things. Check. Now, if I can figure out why people turn toward evil deeds, maybe I can tackle all three goals at once.

I’ll spare you the heartbreaking bit of the introduction about Rwanda that made me wish I believed in hell, that is in terms of an afterlife, because there’s plenty of hell on earth. I will share a few passages about the power elite that reminded me of Pierre Bordieu’s work, Language and Symbolic Power, a tough, but interesting read if you can get through the page long sentences. I’m not kidding. How in the hell anyone managed to translate the original French is beyond me, but I guess that explains why I’m in a dead-end job and not a smart capable type who is making gobs of money translating French books, sipping cafe in a cafe, manging Napoleons and fraises-stuffed crepes. But I’ve digressed.

Think about this.

The Power to Create “The Enemy”

The Powerful don’t usually do the dirtiest work themselves, just as Mafia dons leave the “whackings” to underlings. Systems create hierarchies of dominance with influence and communication going down–rarely up–the line. When a power elite wants to destroy an enemy nation, it tuns to propaganda experts to fashion a program of hate. What does it take for the citizens of one society to hate the citizens of another society to the degree that they want to segregate them, torment them, even kill them? It requires a “hostile imagination,” a psychological construction embedded deeply in their minds by propaganda that transforms those others into “The Enemy.” That image is a soldier’s most powerful motive, one that loads his rifle with ammunition of hate and fear. The image of a dreaded enemy threatening one’s personal well-being and the society’s national security emboldens mothers and fathers to send sons to war and empowers governments to rearrange priorities to turn plowshares into swords of destruction.

It is all done with words and images…The process begins with creating stereotyped conceptions of the other, dehumanized perceptions of the other, the other as worthless, the other as all-powerful, the other as demonic, the other as an abstract monster, the other as a fundamental threat to our cherished values and beliefs. With public fear notched up and the enemy threat imminent, reasonable people act irrationally, independent people act in mindless conformity, and peaceful people act as warriors. Dramatic visual images of the enemy on posters, television, magazine covers, movies, and the Internet imprint on the recesses of the limbic system, the primitive brain, with the powerful emotions of fear and hate.”

Zimbardo promises to answer these questions:

How do ordinary people adapt to such an institutional setting? How do the power differentials between guards and prisoners play out in their daily interactions? If you put good people in a bad place, do the people triumph or does the place corrupt them? Would the violence that is endemic to most real prisons be absent in a prison filled with good middle-class boys?”

My hope is that if we have the language to articulate and a cognitive knowledge of how we’re manipulated, we’ll be resistant to it. As Zimbardo states,

“…how we can resist unwanted social influence, how to build resistance to the seductive lures of influen[tial] professionals…how to combat mind control tactics used to compromise our freedom of choice to the tyranny of conformity, compliance, obedience, and self-doubting fears…By understanding how social influence operates and by realizing that any of us can be vulnerable to its subtle and pervasive powers, we can become wise and wily consumers instead of being easily influenced by authorities, group dynamics, persuasive appeals, and compliance strategies.”

We are capable of great evil, but we are also capable of being heroes.

I’ll end this post with a link to this picture of Rosa Parks, which my friend Chris just coincidentally sent to me because he was fascinated with her eyes. Look at what they say: “I’m strong. I’m disgusted. I am not intimidated.”

Here’s another hero: Jeri Elster. Elster helped change the law on the statute of limitations for rape in California.

There’s so much we can all do to improve the world, if only we could muster enough faith in the possibilities to summon the courage and energy to take the steps to make it happen.

We’ve had four or five layoffs in the last few years. Honestly, I’ve lost count how many it’s been. We got rid of the deadwood, the deadwood’s brother and a lot of people who were valuable contributors working sixty and seventy hour weeks, sacrificing personal lives, all in the interest of launching a product whose final development was shipped to Cyprus.

Our company has instituted a forced bell curve because a bunch of idiots who don’t understand statistics read an article in some business magazine and thought it sounded like a good idea. There are a lot of people who are pretty hot after their recent appraisal. People who have been at the company for years are so bitter and fed up that they’ve started looking for a new job.

We all seem to agree, in our division anyway, that this is part of a strategy to get us to resign so that there’s less unemployment compensation to pay when our site is shut down. It’s looking more and more inevitable. In every company meeting for the last year someone always asks, “What new projects are we going to do?” and “Who will do the work if we do sell this product?” My former boss (now my second line) always tries to say something reassuring, but we can see through it. What work does come will be out-sourced.

Now we come to today, when one of our colleagues I’ll call L, a sweet and genial person, has resigned without even giving one weeks notice. The best part is that she had the courage to say what most of us haven’t, namely calling her manager a liar for going along with the system and fabricating reasons to give her a poor appraisal. Some managers have openly admitted that the ratings weren’t fair and they were forced to comply with the bell curve, “This year it was you, next year it will be someone else.” L’s manager has no conscience though and feels not the least bit of remorse. In the end, we’re all feeling like “What’s the point since the appraisal isn’t based on merit anyway.”