The Psychology of Evil: The Stanford Prison Experiment to Abu Ghraib

in Current Affairs, Psychology, Video - Politics/Society | November 8th, 2007

Back in 1971, Philip Zim­bar­do, a Stan­ford psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor, set up an exper­i­ment that quick­ly and now famous­ly went awry. Here, Zim­bar­do had under­grad­u­ates play the role of pris­on­ers and prison guards in a mock prison envi­ron­ment. Meant to last two weeks, the exper­i­ment was cut short after only six days when, as The Stan­ford Prison Exper­i­ment web site puts it, the guards “became sadis­tic and [the] pris­on­ers became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress.” For Zim­bar­do, the way things played out says a lot about what hap­pens when good, aver­age peo­ple are put in bad sit­u­a­tions. And it speaks to how tor­ture sce­nar­ios, like those at Abu Ghraib, become pos­si­ble. (For more on the par­al­lels between the prison exper­i­ment and the tor­ture in Iraq, you may want to check out Zim­bar­do’s recent video-cap­tured talk at Google­plex.

Below, we’ve post­ed a video that offers a quick ver­sion, with orig­i­nal footage, of how the prison exper­i­ment went down. If you’re inter­est­ed in under­stand­ing what he calls the “Lucifer Effect,” the title of his new book (which, by the way, was just reviewed by Martha Nuss­baum in the Times Online), then it’s worth your time.

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America’s Endless Capacity to Reward Failure

in Current Affairs | November 7th, 2007

Please God give me the luck to enter the upper echelons of the American elite — the upper, upper crust where normal rules don’t apply, where illogic reigns, where failure doesn’t have consequences, only out-sized rewards. Please give me the luck to fail splendidly one day (even to bring a major company or a nation itself to near ruin) and yet get nothing less than the platinum parachute that a lucky few deserve:

  • Stan O’Neal, CEO of Mer­ill Lynch, recent­ly led the bank to take a $7.9 bil­lion write-down because of bad deals in the sub-prime mar­ket, result­ing in a $2.3 bil­lion loss, the worst loss in 93 years for Mer­rill. As he began to feel the heat, O’Neal secret­ly start­ed look­ing to sell the bank to Wachovia, a deal that could have per­son­al­ly net­ted him an esti­mat­ed $250 mil­lion. Instead, the board of direc­tors oust­ed him last week and he got to walk with $161.5 mil­lion in secu­ri­ties and retire­ment ben­e­fits, the fifth-largest exit-pay pack­age for a U.S. exec­u­tive. It’s good to be the king.
  • As the sub­prime mort­gage mar­ket melt­ed down this sum­mer, James Cayne, the chief exec­u­tive of Bear Stearns, was nowhere to be found. In this midst of the cri­sis, two of the bank’s hedge funds col­lapsed. But, accord­ing to The Wall Street Jour­nal, Cayne was out of town for ten days and incom­mu­ni­ca­do. No cell­phone. No Black­ber­ry. Noth­ing. Where was he? Play­ing in a bridge tour­na­ment in Nashville (and it’s alleged by the Jour­nal that he has a pen­chant for smok­ing pot at such tour­na­ments). For­tu­nate­ly, his team placed in the top third of the com­pe­ti­tion, and he gets to keep his high­ly lucra­tive job. In the mean­time, Cayne let War­ren Spec­tor, the com­pa­ny’s Pres­i­dent, take the fall. And Bear just announced that it’s lay­ing off 2% of its work­force. It’s good to be the king.
  • Don Rums­feld, the for­mer Sec­re­tary of Defense, used the Iraq War as a prov­ing ground for his the­o­ries about how the US army should fight the mod­ern war and defend itself against the unknown and the unex­pect­ed. Rums­feld’s mantra was to keep the armies small, mobile and high-tech. And that’s what we did for four years in Iraq, despite mount­ing evi­dence that we had too few troops on the ground. Rums­feld, who could nev­er adjust his the­o­ries to the real­i­ties in Iraq (see this piece in the Armed Forces Jour­nal), even­tu­al­ly got forced out, leav­ing behind a mess that will con­sume the US for a decade or more. What’s the fall­out? Months lat­er, Rums­feld gets Stan­ford’s seal of approval. In Sep­tem­ber, Stan­ford’s Hoover Insti­tu­tion announced that he will join as a “dis­tin­guished vis­it­ing fel­low” where he will par­tic­i­pate on a task force of schol­ars and experts focus­ing on “issues per­tain­ing to ide­ol­o­gy and ter­ror” in a post 9–11 envi­ron­ment. It’s pre­cise­ly the same flawed vision that land­ed the US in a deep hole that the Stan­ford-affil­i­at­ed think tank is choos­ing to hon­or. Once again, it’s good to be the king.

Amen.

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Timely Talk About Fire

in Books, Current Affairs | October 26th, 2007

fireline.jpegIt’s been an unspeak­ably bad week through­out much of fire-rav­aged South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. As of Thurs­day, the toll looked liked this: 500,000 acres burned; 1,800 homes destroyed; 57 peo­ple injured and at least six killed. As all of this tran­spires, a new book has come out that gives you an inside look at fire­fight­ers who make their liv­ing bat­tling nat­ur­al wild­fires. On the Fire­line: Liv­ing and Dying with Wild­land Fire­fight­ers is writ­ten by Matthew Desmond, who spent four years tack­ling these blazes. And, in this lengthy free excerpt you get graph­i­cal­ly exposed to the risks and loss­es that they expe­ri­ence pro­fes­sion­al­ly and per­son­al­ly. It cer­tain­ly makes you feel for the fire­fight­ers on the front­lines this week, and we wish them and our fel­low Cal­i­for­ni­ans the best.

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A New Model for Investigative Journalism

in Business, Current Affairs, Media | October 15th, 2007

As we’ve dis­cussed before on this blog, one of the major casu­al­ties in the shift­ing new media land­scape is the tra­di­tion­al inves­tiga­tive journalist–someone with the time and resources to research in-depth sto­ries. In response to this prob­lem a new group called Pro Pub­li­ca is propos­ing a nov­el eco­nom­ic mod­el: hire the jour­nal­ists into a foun­da­tion and give their work away to the pub­li­ca­tions where it will make the biggest impact.

The new ini­tia­tive, head­ed up by Paul Steiger, head edi­tor at the Wall Street Jour­nal for 16 years, will spend $10 mil­lion annu­al­ly to sup­port a news­room of 24 jour­nal­ists and 12 oth­er staff in New York City. The mon­ey comes from Her­bert and Mar­i­on San­dler, for­mer heads of Gold­en West Finan­cial Cor­po­ra­tion, a big play­er in mort­gages and sav­ings.

It seems like­ly to me that Pro Pub­li­ca will suc­ceed in attract­ing some high-lev­el tal­ent, both because of Steiger and because many jour­nal­ists have come to fear for their jobs in the shrink­ing news­rooms of tra­di­tion­al papers. The real ques­tion is how well this sys­tem will work in dig­ging up and deliv­er­ing qual­i­ty report­ing. What do you lose, and what do you gain, when your employ­er is no longer a “paper of record” but a pri­vate foun­da­tion fund­ed by peo­ple with their own polit­i­cal agen­das? On the oth­er hand, it’s easy to argue that every news­pa­per already has some kind of polit­i­cal posi­tion, so maybe Pro Pub­li­ca will be no dif­fer­ent.

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Al Gore’s “Earth in the Balance”: A Free, Environment Friendly Copy (Almost)

in Books, Current Affairs, Google | October 15th, 2007

Since the release of An Incon­ve­nient Truth, Al Gore has had quite a run. He first won him­self an Emmy, then an Oscar, and now the Nobel Peace Prize. Although the film rep­re­sents Gore’s most well known work on the envi­ron­ment, it’s hard­ly where his envi­ron­men­tal efforts began. His cam­paign goes back to the late 1970s, when he held con­gres­sion­al hear­ings on cli­mate change and green­house gas­es. And it moves through the 1980s and then the 1990s, when he occu­pied the Vice Pres­i­den­cy. In 1992, while oth­er polit­i­cal lead­ers quib­bled over the pros and cons of NAFTA, Gore put the envi­ron­ment on the nation­al agen­da, real­ly for the first time, when he pub­lished Earth in the Bal­ance: Ecol­o­gy and the Human Spir­it. (The Bush admin­is­tra­tion then took it off the agen­da, regret­tably.) Gore’s book became a nation­al best­seller, and it has since gone through sev­er­al new edi­tions, the lat­est hav­ing been issued just last year. You could buy the book, but the good news is that Google serves up large por­tions of the book online for free. It’s at a price you can’t beat, and it goes easy on the pulp. Have a good look. And also see below Gore’s com­ments upon learn­ing about the Nobel Prize.

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A Photographer’s Chronicle of the War in Iraq

in Books, Current Affairs | October 10th, 2007

Aus­tralian pho­tog­ra­ph­er Ash­ley Gilbert­son doc­u­ment­ed for The New York Times the US inva­sion of Iraq, cap­tur­ing the light­ning fast over­throw of Sad­dam’s regime and then the slow lapse into civ­il war. His new book, Whiskey Tan­go Fox­trot: A Pho­tog­ra­pher’s Chron­i­cle of the Iraq War, col­lects some of his best work. Com­bined, the print­ed pho­tographs offer what he calls a visu­al “tes­ta­ment to what war actu­al­ly is.” They let you see how deci­sions made by the Pen­ta­gon have real human costs on the ground in Iraq; or, put a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly, the pho­tos illus­trate in stark detail “what for­eign pol­i­cy looks like from the ground up.” Below, you can watch a video that fea­tures an intel­li­gent inter­view with Gilbert­son and offers a good glimpse into his pho­to­graph­ic work. Def­i­nite­ly give it some of your time.

Spe­cial Note: Sup­port an Inde­pen­dent Press

We all know that an inde­pen­dent press is absolute­ly essen­tial to pre­serv­ing a demo­c­ra­t­ic and open cul­ture. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, more than 80 per­cent of peo­ple live in coun­tries with­out a free press. That means more than 5 bil­lion peo­ple can’t trust what they read in the news­pa­per, hear on the radio or see on TV. Here is a very tan­gi­ble way to empow­er inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists. Con­tribut­ing $100 to the Media Devel­op­ment Loan Fund will pro­vide inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists with print­ing press­es and broad­cast­ing equip­ment, tools that are essen­tial to over­com­ing cen­sor­ship and giv­ing a voice to the unheard. Click here to get more infor­ma­tion.

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Satirizing Ahmadinejad: The New Yorker Picks Up Where SNL Left Off

in Current Affairs, Media | October 8th, 2007

The satirists are get­ting a lot mileage out of Mah­moud Ahmadine­jad’s dec­la­ra­tion that Iran is gay-free. Last week, Sat­ur­day Night Live spoofed Ahmadine­jad, as we not­ed. Then, The New York­er par­o­died Ahmadine­jad on the mag­a­zine’s cov­er with one of its famed car­toons. (The image includ­ed a not-so-oblique ref­er­ence to Lar­ry Craig, the con­ser­v­a­tive US Sen­a­tor who recent­ly got caught up in some mens’ room high jinks. Unfa­mil­iar read­ers can get the scoop on Craig here.) Of all the inane com­ments Ahmadine­jad has made, and there are many, it’s inter­est­ing that the satirists have cho­sen to focus on this one. Deny­ing the exis­tence of gays in Iran is no more empir­i­cal­ly absurd than deny­ing the Holo­caust. So why the empha­sis on the sex­u­al­i­ty com­ment? Because Ahmadine­jad has been play­ing the anti-semi­tism card for some time, but the homo­pho­bia card is rel­a­tive­ly new, hence mak­ing it wor­thy of atten­tion? Or is it because sex­u­al­i­ty offers an always con­ve­nient way to take a polit­i­cal ene­my down a peg? Or since there’s no good way to sat­i­rize a geno­cide, per­haps sex­u­al­i­ty becomes a good default. Ok, I’m stumped. Note to self: think twice next time before over-ana­lyz­ing jokes. Speak­ing of jokes, make you check out the footage we post­ed of Woody Allen doing standup in 1965.

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Ahmadinejad Spoofed on Saturday Night Live

in Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | October 4th, 2007

Ahmadine­jad’s recent appear­ance at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty gen­er­at­ed a lot of seri­ous press (watch his speech here), and, quite right­ly, jour­nal­ists and com­men­ta­tors seized on his more out­landish asser­tions — that the Holo­caust is not a his­tor­i­cal giv­en, and that homo­sex­u­als actu­al­ly don’t exist in Iran. After all of the seri­ous report­ing was done, Sat­ur­day Night Live got to work and aired this clip that con­tin­ued its tra­di­tion of bit­ing polit­i­cal satire. Here it goes:

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