“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Thursday, February 27, 2025

The Lucifer Effect: How to Act in a Bad Barrel

 As we are seeing, I hope, evil is not simply a case of "bad apples," it's a bad barrel. Evil is banality, just going along with the situation, which defaults to white supremacy and patriarchy. 

Milgram's experiments demonstrate that two thirds of people will do an evil act all the way up to murder if it is socially sanctioned. 

Zimbardo's Stanford Prison experiment turned psych evaluated Stanford grad students into Abu Ghraib torturers in 36 hours. 

We are witnessing abuse of immigrant prisoners in Gauntanamo Bay (see what Dick Durbin has said about this). 

We witnessed Theresa Borenpohl being dragged out of a town hall meeting in Idaho by fake fascist police. 

Watch and learn. Teach someone. 


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