Throughout, Zimbardo argues with passion and acumen that the general public and our political and cultural leaders must learn to overcome the knee-jerk psychological reactions that lead us to make the same errors over and over again. He assigns blame where it is due (including to himself, for having crossed ethical lines in the Stanford Prison Experiment) and takes strong political stances. [ emphasis added]
Another one of Zimbardo's books, in which the title eludes me at the present, explored these knee-jerk reactions. There were six of them, as I recall. One of those knee-jerk reactions a deference to authority. This is what I think needs to be challenged more. We have a first amendment right to criticize the leadership, but once the left gets into power, this seems to become forbidden for some strange reason. It is almost as if a great number of us have decided to lose their tongues.
What do you do about these knee-jerk reactions? It wouldn't be knee-jerk if people stopped reacting to events and started thinking about them. How do you get people to think? Thinking is hard work and the last thing people want to do is to do something that is so hard and unpleasant. For the truth can be unpleasant.
It is much more comforting to believe the leadership really cares about us. But what if they don't? The thought that we could be at great risk due to the folly of our leadership is a thought that is just too unpleasant for so many people to contemplate.
Here's a thought experiment for you: Ask yourself how would you feel if this President Obama really doesn't care about the country he is leading, and actually prefers some harm to come to it?
I think most people would reject that out of hand. Most, if not all people would just rather not believe this and I think this is true due to the knee-jerk reaction of deference to authority.
It would be very difficult to change these unthinking knee-jerk reactions, but that may be the task in front of us if we are to survive.
No comments:
Post a Comment