Daylight Saving

  A concept I’ve known all my life.  I took it for granted that everyone did it; no big deal.  The sense of it was explained to me when I was a boy; the summer months gave us more daylight, suited to farmers welcome for  the extra time to work crops; In the winter, falling back saved fuel.  I never questioned the pragmatics; there didn’t seem to be a need.  Here is where I make a course change without indicating a turn; because today the topic is Evil.

  Evil, the exercise of power to intentionally harm, (psychological); hurt, (physical); and or destroy,(morally); committing crimes against humanity kind of evil.  Dr Phil Zimbardo in his book, The Lucifer effect mentioned that he Googled evil, a word he thought so empty that it should surely have withered away~ came up 135 million hits in a third of a second.

  His investigation into evil revealed some very startling intuitive observations. He mentioned that all of us can be enlisted to do evil.  He calls it The Lucifer transformation.  Social scientist have long been concerned with two dynamics of evil; that of Who people are, (dispositional); and the influence of  the situation.(the external).  What had been left out of the equation was a significant aspect; the Systemic (broad influences; political, economic, cultural background as well as the legal aka legitimate power) that can and does corrupt the individual. You want to change the person, change the situation; and to change the situation you got to know where the power is in the system.  Clearly it’s the dynamics which are subtle as interactivity of what do people bring into a situation? What does the situation bring out in them? And what is the system that creates and maintains that situation?

   His book The Lucifer effect reports it’s a celebration of the Mind’s Infinite capacity to make us behave kind or cruel; caring or indifferent; creative or destructive; and make us villains or heroes.  A good representation of this was a cartoon posted in the New Yorker

I’m neither a good cop nor a bad cop, Jerome. Like yourself, I’m a complex amalgam of positive and negative personality traits that emerge or not, depending on circumstances.

Noteworthy was Dr Zimbardo’s listing of what he called the 7 Social Processes that Grease the Slippery Slope of Evil

·         Mindlessly taking the first step

·         Dehumanizing of others

·         De-individualization of self (anonymity)

·         Diffusion of personal responsibility

·         Blind Obedience to Authority

·         Uncritical conformity to Group Norms

·         Passive tolerance of evil through inaction or indifference

Of importance to me was the latter, most likely to happen, in a new or unfamiliar situation where habitual response patterns don’t work, and where personality or morality are disengaged.

Nothing is easier than to denounce the evil doer

Nothing more difficult than to understand him

Dostoevsky

  I walked away from the discovery with some insight into my own practice of uncritical conformity; along with passive tolerance. But most importantly I was reintroduced to a familiar maxim:

Power without oversight is a prescription for abuse.

  Let us all be alert and active participants in our daily lives; to not be satisfied with avoiding complications.  Become an advocate for respect and personal dignity, justice, and peace.