The Lucifer Effect

The section in "the History of Palestine" when we see the Israeli military begin removing the Palestinians from there homes I, at first, called hypocritical. These people who have been persecuted for years were know the ones doing the persecuting. I was reminded, at this time, about an experiment with college students and a mock prison. In this experiment, some students were given the role of prison guard and others were given the role of prisoners. Without any prompting, the prison guards quickly became tyrannical and sadistic in their behavior. The prisoners, on the other hand, exhibited passive and depressed behavior, some allowing themselves to be abused with little or no resistance. This experiment was conducted by Philip Zimbardo and he called this phenomenon the Lucifer Effect.

Returning to the removal of the Palestinian people by the Israeli military, I cannot help but see a correlation of behavior. One group of people given authority and power over another group of people who become victims. This is not a prison guard situation, however, I feel like the principle of the matter still exists. One, when given the opportunity, seems to take full advantage of the power they wield over another human. I am not one to classify this as "human nature" however, I do think that there is seems to be a pattern or trend of humans with more power and authority dehumanizing and behaving with sadistic tendencies toward people who are in a weaker or less powerful position.

There is a slide show of this experiment and a book published by Zimbardo. The link to the slide show will be found at the end of this post but there are two comments that I found to be directly related to the situation in the Middle East.


The first comment is about the person who took on the role of head of the parole board:

"During the parole hearings we also witnessed an unexpected metamorphosis of our prison consultant as he adopted the role of head of the Parole Board. He literally became the most hated authoritarian official imaginable, so much so that when it was over he felt sick at who he had become -- his own tormentor who had previously rejected his annual parole requests for 16 years when he was a prisoner."

Here I feel like we can see the idea of a learned behavior. Instead of learning from his experience and becoming an understanding parole officer, we see that this mock parole officer learned the negative behavior of one in power and copied that when given the opportunity. This then relates to the Israelis removing the Palestinians from their homes with brutal force. Exposed to negative authority and persecution, the Israelis learned this behavior and then repeated it when the opportunity arose.


The second comment came from a person who was actually in a prison:

"I was recently released from solitary confinement after being held therein for thirty-seven months. The silence system was imposed upon me and if I even whispered to the man in the next cell resulted in being beaten by guards, sprayed with chemical mace, black jacked, stomped, and thrown into a strip cell naked to sleep on a concrete floor without bedding, covering, wash basin, or even a toilet....I know that thieves must be punished, and I don't justify stealing even though I am a thief myself. But now I don't think I will be a thief when I am released. No, I am not rehabilitated either. It is just that I no longer think of becoming wealthy or stealing. I now only think of killing -- killing those who have beaten me and treated me as if I were a dog. I hope and pray for the sake of my own soul and future life of freedom that I am able to overcome the bitterness and hatred which eats daily at my soul. But I know to overcome it will not be easy."

What is so disturbing about this comment is the line "I now only thing of killing--killing those who have beaten me and treated me as if I were a dog." This may perhaps articulate one line of thinking of a "terrorist" group or a member of one of those groups who have been subjected to military brutality.