Archiv: the Lucifer Effect


23.02.2022 - 10:20 [ Naomi Wolf ]

Thinking Like a Tyrant

Something that is slowing down many people from fully grasping what is upon us, is that they are making mistakes in their reasoning about events, because they are engaged, naturally enough, in what intelligence analysts call “mirror imaging.” That is, because most of us are decent people with basic compassion at our cores, and are not sociopaths or psychopaths, we tend to “mirror image” in assuming that others are also driven by basic human motivations such as empathy, altruism, and kindness — or even just by the basic notion that other human beings are also deserving of life, self-determination and dignity. How can such brutality be imposed on us? How could others be at the helm of such vicious policies?

But this assumption, that those currently influencing events and making certain key decisions, are “like us” — is a fatal error.

14.02.2022 - 06:11 [ Gale.com ]

The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil

In The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, Philip Zimbardo theorizes that people discount situational influences when judging the actions of others. In particular, he recounts in detail the events of the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE), which he designed and directed: He replicated a prison block in a Stanford building and assigned male undergraduate volunteers to act the part of guards and prisoners.

The experiment, which was originally planned for two weeks, grew so dangerously out of control that Zimbardo was forced to shut it down after less than a week.

Drawing on his experience as an expert witness for the court-martial hearings on Abu Ghraib, Zimbardo presents a body of research evidence to suggest that the military as well as the Bush administration fostered a situation that turned ordinary soldiers into torturers and abusers. Zimbardo also suggests, however, that the power of situations can be used to promote good behavior and turn ordinary people into heroes. The Lucifer Effect is at times unbalanced and disjointed but well worth reading to remind us that where we are may affect us as much as who we are.

14.02.2022 - 05:31 [ Naomi Wolf / Substack ]

Is it Time for Intellectuals to Talk about God?

I have seen bad politics all of my life and this drama unfolding around us goes beyond bad politics, which is silly and manageable and not that scary. This — this is scary, metaphysically scary. In contrast to hapless human mismanagement, this darkness has the tinge of the pure, elemental evil that underlay and gave such hideous beauty to the theatrics of Nazism; it is the same nasty glamour that surrounds Leni Riefenstahl films.

In short, I don’t think humans are smart or powerful enough to have come up with this horror all alone.