The Stanford prison experiment

How can the world become more peaceful, more worth living, more loveable?
In the next days and weeks I would like to publish a few stories and films on how society as well as the individual can be healed from the impacts of violence. My concern is reconciliation of the inner self as well as of people who are in conflict. And I admit that the healing of the so called “perpetrator” seems as important to me as that of the so called “victim”. I am concerned about respectful communication, about mediation and therapy, but also about a wider, social dimension: How can we achieve to develop a society focused on deescalation instead of answering violence by violence?

I would like to start with a short documentation of the Stanford prisoner experiment. In this experiment of 1971 arbitrarily chosen test persons were divided into roleplay attendants and prisoners of a roleplay jail. The experiment which was scheduled for some weeks had to be ended after 6 days because the attendants were increasing in cruelty so quickly and more and more prisoners were traumatised.

This film gives a remarkable documentation of the experiment as a look back from our time.


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The Eye of the Lion

“When you meet a lion”, so Mr. Mniyka from Kenya told me, “you must look him unwaveringly in the eyes. A single short glance to the side, a mere tenth of a second, and the lion attacks. He leaps faster than you can move or speak or even think. That is why, when you come across a lion, look him fixedly in the eyes. Look at him, simply look at him, unwaveringly – so long….until he goes.

Compulsion

The pictures followed him. It was like a bad film, which he had not consciously chosen, but stumbled into by mistake. Whenever he passed a stroller, he saw himself dragging the child out of it and trampling it on the ground. When he saw a beautiful woman go past, he saw himself tearing her clothes off her body and raping her. Were he with his family, he feared he could suddenly take a knife and stab one of them. Were he alone at home, he saw himself setting the curtains on fire. Were he on holiday, he feared hearing the voice of God telling him: “Set off today, go away from here without any belongings, and rely solely upon me from now on.”

It was torture. The more he tried to suppress these gruesome pictures and thoughts, the more they plagued him. Finally he said to himself in anger: “You idiot, you deserve it.” And he began to imagine everything in the smallest possible detail. How he trampled a child. How he raped a woman. How he stabbed his family. How he set his parents’ house on fire. How he went on a far journey without possessions. That day, the pictures lost their power. They became paler and paler.

The Enemy’s Enemy

“The buffalo is the most dangerous animal in the bush. It is even more dangerous than the lion. A person without a weapon can perhaps survive an encounter with a lion, but a buffalo – as soon as it sees a person, it attacks!” he explained. “I have only heard of one person who survived such an encounter”, he continued. “This man saw a buffalo emerging from a thicket pounding towards him at a gallop. The man passed out from shock. When he regained consciousness, he saw a lion sitting on the dead buffalo, greedily eating its flesh. The lion had followed the tracks of its victim. It had foreseen the encounter between the buffalo and the man, and had attacked the buffalo the moment it was distracted by its own attack.”

Spinning

Do you know the Grimm’s tale of Rumpelstilzkin? Here’s an article that Kathy published today in her food blog… And maybe you will find another thing… or person… in it that seems familiar to you… have fun reading it!

And… thanks, Kathy!