July 15, 2025 • 25 mins
Andrew and Gare discuss the reasons why people justify doing bad things, from pleasing authority to narratives of necessary evil.
Sources:
Humankind by Rutger Bregman
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
All the media.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Hello and welcome to it happen here. Last episode, I
was joined by your savior. Hello, and he's here again
because we're gonna get more into what we spoke about
last time. Last episode, we painted a hopeful account of
humanity's nature. Could see if my reading of Rutka Bregmann's
Humankind a hopeful history. So I probably fed into the
(00:29):
anarchists so utopia narrative a bit with that previous episode.
But the truth is that I'm not really being optimistic
and being realistic. But realism has been confused with cynonicism
for so long that even acknowledging both sides of the
coin can be seen as overly utopia. People can be bad,
and we'll get into the why. But for whatever reason
(00:52):
they are bad, that is why as anarchists have consistently
argued nobody should have authority. Now they will always be outlined.
And this explanation I'm about to share it is not
going to get into every unique case of badness, but
we are going to get into some of the reasons
that people do bad and what we can do about it.
(01:13):
As I said last episode, we took issue with this
idea of civilization as a thin venail and were put
forward the premise the Keemans are mostly pretty decent. In fact,
I didn't mention it last episode, but we don't even
really like to kill each other, contrary to popular belief,
(01:33):
brag when actually shares that in World War Two, studies
showed that many soldiers didn't shoot their weapons even in combat.
Trained soldiers had a difficult time actually pulling the trigger
and killing people. There are exceptions, as I said before,
but in a lot of cases it's very difficult for
people to actually kill. Military strategies ended up changing once
(01:56):
authorities realized this, and the training programs of soldiers was
to readers time to overcome this resistance. But that reluctance
to killin does also indicate that it takes some effort
to overcome our general decency toward each other because most people,
again most on all, are not natural born killers. So again,
(02:17):
how do we do bad? You know, all sorts of
atrostees have been carried out by humans, both in ancient
and modern times. What do you think is the course.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Self preservation in some way, either physical or psychological. I'm
not an anthropologist, I'm not a sociologist. Most of my
experiences with people is both queer people and then looking
at Nazis and like political extremists. So it's maybe not
the best sample side for the general population. I think
I tend to exist kind of on the perimeter of
(02:50):
most human experience, but probably some form of either psychological
or physical self preservation in my experience slash opinion.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
That's interesting. I didn't think of it. I think it
comes close to what Breaguen ends up getting into, but
I think self preservation, well, we'll get into that in
a bit. You know, it's it's difficult to square that
with just how brutal some of these disasters have been,
you know, these atrocities that have taken place around the world,
(03:24):
organized systemic industrial cruelty, you know, things like the Holocaust.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Totally, it's interesting because I think it's two paradoxical instincts
that play off each other. There's this self preservation and
there's also I believe in I thin guess some version
of the death drive, and I think those can can
interact in really odd ways. But the desk drive, Yeah,
like it's like it's specifically, it's like specifically like like
(03:49):
fascism and like you know, you can see this in
like the genocides of the twentieth century and twenty first
centuries like specifically, but no like fascism as like a
political embodying of the death, which is I think also
an aspect. I think these things exist together in parallel
while being paradoxical, and that's what produces a lot of
the incongruity around things like fascism, right, it is, it
(04:13):
is like an inherently paradoxical system.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
When you say self preservation, are you just talking about
on the individual level, or are you seeing like community
self preservation as.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Well, both both, but also I think not even just physical,
but also like psychological, like being able to like continue
being able to continue existing as yourself, either within a
group of people or just you as an individual, Like
psychological things that you need to do to make yourself
feel like you're in community or that you are safe,
that you have meaning, or that you have purpose as
well as the physical aspects.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
And you're saying that that lends itself to atrocity.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
I think it can.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, well that actually is strikingly close to
what Bragman ends up uncovering.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Look at the reasons that people will talk about for
like why the genocide and Gaza is like necessary, right?
Speaker 2 (05:00):
It is?
Speaker 3 (05:00):
It is playing off both of those impulses.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Yeah, yeah, I mean all sorts of genocides when you
hear the descriptions of them, and this is what you
hear of the people who perpetuated them, what their explanations
or justifications, you know, from the Holocaust to Rwanda to Palestine. Yeah,
it's me and mar you know, totally it is deeply
Evil's that something we can look away from it? It
(05:25):
really is difficult to square with the most humans a
decent thesis when you look at how some of these
society is, even the ordinary people, for example, the citizen
population of Israel, even the civilian population, even they are
like disturbingly genocideh in their rhetoric. And so you know,
it's like, how do we reach that point? How do
(05:46):
we get there? How does an ordinary human baby grow
into that?
Speaker 3 (05:51):
It can happen to you. It can happen very easily,
and I think it can happen in a short time
span and you can get out of it. I think
maybe not just as easily, but you can't get out
of it also in a fastime span. I think it's
like that you are not immune to propaganda. Idea you
can look at like in n To Germany, Robert has
talked about quote unquote the little Nazis, the regular Germans
who ended up partipating and becoming Nazis, and you are
(06:14):
not immune from that, and that can happen as a
response to a whole bunch of traumatic impulses as well.
Whereas I think people now even use like politics just
to You're like this like idea of politics as permission
to be like an overtly cruel person to other people,
either like in your life or online. Right, you will
(06:36):
you will use use various political topics, and that gives
you permission to unleash unmitigated hostility against people that you
now perceive as being like immoral or you perceive as
being like ontological enemies.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Exactly exactly. I mean there were particular studies that were
undertaken in the twentieth century that are often used to
sort of explain that, you know, after all of Nazi
Germany and the post World War TWI era, people will
seeking explanations for atrocity and so so experiments were done
(07:09):
and are now pointed to as explanations for how this
could have taken place. You know, so one particular experiment
that's really well known as the Stanford prison experiment. Right,
this idea that you take random students and give them
a position of power and they become sadistic gods. You know,
it proves just how thin the ven ale civilization really is,
or already the evil the civilization could empower. But at
(07:34):
least for that particular experiment, the reality was never so straightforward.
You know, the gods were literally coached and encouraged to
be cruel. You know, they were actually putting on performances.
The prisoners were also expected to perform, so rather than
being like an actual scientific experiment, it was more like
guided theater.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
I mean it inadvertently, it becomes an interesting experiment in
like humans desired to like please authority.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Right exactly, exactly, to like perform to.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
The expectations of the people who are actually running this experiment,
and how capable you are of falling into these roles
under like under that paradigm exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
I mean, you see that in Nazi Germany as well,
a lot of the people were doing things to please
the fear, you know, like they didn't necessarily know or
there was a lot of wiggle room from what I've
read to interpret the fear as wishes, Yeah, as people
who wanted to rank up and rise up in the
in the organization, but interpret things in a way that
(08:38):
they would presume would please Pitta and his desires moving
towards the fear. Yeah, exactly, exactly. That's the that's the
name of the phenomenon. I mean, when the sound for
(09:01):
Person experim When people tried to recreate the experiment for television,
E've got it made for pretty boring TV because it
was bad science in the first place. It's not something
that people do not actually, it's it's what they do
when they are pushed, when they are prodded, you know,
when certain expectations, et ceter. It's kind of similar with
this other famous experiment that that Bragman talks about, which
(09:22):
is the Stanley Milcrumb's Obedience experiments, where volunteers were told
to administer increasingly painful electric shocks the stranger just because
I got in a lamp code told them to. It's
like another instance of you know, we doing these things
just to please authority, even to the point of murder,
because you know, the dial of the electric shock was
(09:44):
deadly after a certain point, and you could hear the
screams of the the victims. Of course they were fake screams,
but you know, the participants could hear them. But what
Bragman ended up uncovering is that most of the participants
will't follow the orders blindly. They were following the orders, yes,
but they would do because they believed that they were
doing something good, something good for the good of science.
(10:05):
That even though the shocks were uncomfortable, that it wasn't
something they want to do, there was a noble sacrifice
in the name of progress. Even so, the participants weren't
in the front. You know, they were distressed, they were shaken,
they were sweat and they were begging to check on
the learner. But they also said things like he agreed
to be in the experiment, you know, or this will
(10:26):
help science right or I don't want to do this,
but I have to, demanded lab Coote, who is telling
them to continue, please continue, please continue. He was calm,
he was professional, and also even how the nudge is
that he used were framed made a difference. So if
he was directly ordering them and telling them you have
to do this, surprise many people would actually be more
(10:47):
likely to resist a direct order framed in that way
for such an experiment, but a more subtle nudge, just
like know what, you know, science, the experimental requires this,
you know, the experiment needs to do this at more
subtle It tended to get people to continue. And the
people who were interviewed who did take it up to
those higher volagers, they said they did it because they
(11:08):
believed they were contributing to scientific development. So it's really
this misguided belief in a higher cause that also contributes
to atrocity. It's very easy to get this idea that, oh,
you know that those are just monstrous people. You know,
we have this idea in pop culture that these the
Nazis are like cartoonish monsters. They are monstrous, but they
(11:31):
are monstrous people. You know, they are, at the end
of the day, people who do evil with the belief
that they're doing good. It's a very extent. I know
that there were some who you know, recanted or who
knew what they were doing wrong, but they had other
pressures that were pushing them in that direction. Right. There
(11:51):
are many explanations we was behaving and all sorts of situations,
but a lot of the people they thought that they
were contributing to the right things, didn't care, but they
were taught to care in the wrong direction. The bad
guys don't think that they're bad guys. And whether we're
talking about the Nazis of the past or the Designers
of today, they construct these elaborate narratives to frame themselves
(12:16):
as the righteous ones. You know, as far as the
Nazis are concerned, they are purge in Germany of a
serious threat to the well be in and the safety
of their future and all that stuff. Read Designers to stay.
You ask them, even though they're pariahs of the world
at this point, you ask them why they believe that
this must continue, and they will say, you know, we
have to defend ourselves. We have a right to defend ourselves. YadA, YadA, YadA.
(12:40):
There are true believers within these groups, you know, who
are able to commit some of the worst acts, committed
ideologues who boast of their trustees, who express no remorse,
who take pride in their role, and people reach that
point of ideology through a process of radicalization. You know,
we look at the tends to genocide. I think is
(13:01):
the framework people have used before to point out how
a segment of a population can become a target of genocide.
It's not like one day you wake up and it's
just like, oh, we're going to geneside this group of people.
It's a process. You know. First you start off with classification.
You create a separate group of people, separate category of poison.
(13:22):
You make them signify themselves in some way, carry ID
cards or some kind of insignia on their clothing or whatever.
They begin to face discrimination or some kind the discrimination,
you know, is ramped up through dehumanizing language. You compare
them to verment or rodents, the disease. And that's just
the thing, and we're going to get to that. But
(13:43):
part of how you get people who would otherwise be
caring or compassionate about their fellow human is through distance. Right,
So the people who who are most blood thirsty tend
to be very far from the front lines. You know,
people who are demanding that World War One continue, for example,
(14:05):
they were very far from the actual fighting versus at
the actual front lines of World War One. You had
soldiers playing football together during Christmas. That's a separate story.
But you create distance, either create physical distance or you
create psychological distance and dehumanization is one of the ways
you create psychological distance. You distance people from seeing their
(14:27):
fellow human being as a human being. Segregation is another
way of creating that distance, which then lends itself to
the humanization. Comparing the people to wom into animals, anything
other than human as another step in the humanization and
can people to separate themselves from those peopuel and then
they create specific groups. The next stage to create specific
groups and organizations to enforce discriminatory policies. You fool the broadcast,
(14:52):
operate the propaganda to polarize population. And then we'll step seven, eight, nine,
and ten go from actually preparing the removal relocation of
people to the persecution, the extermination of the group, and
finally the denial that such a crime ever could so
that process it can take years, it can take decades,
(15:17):
but it's something that can turn even the most regular
poison into virulent proponent of Rihanna side if they are
not fastidious in their opposition to any such language, especially
in the early stages, because they get fed this steady
extreme propaganda of all the actions are justified, their loyalty
(15:38):
to their inn group becomes tested by their willingness to
engage in those harmful actions. The stay with that group,
will do whatever their tool is good, even if it
leads to other people being hood and it just creates
an evil. But it's an ordinary evil. It's an evil
that is convinced of. It's a virtue. It is wrapped
up in ideology and social conformity because you know, humans
(16:00):
are social creatures and it drives us to cooperate. But
that sociality can be narrowed down to test our in group.
And that's where Breakman actually gets into an interesting point
about empathy, right, because we tend to see empathy as
a positive thing, and it can be. But as Bragman notes,
drawn from psychologists Paul Bloom's work, empathy can also make
(16:21):
us partial, irrational, and even cruel, because it can narrow
our focus to those people who are like us and
ignore others. That's why soldiers can fight and kill other
people because they feel empathy for their in group, their
homeland citizens, or their comrades and arms. Their loyalty and
affection for the people they care about supersedes the lives
(16:43):
of the people that they don't care about. Now, of course,
we want to look at systems and we're talking about
this because I don't think that this hijack and of
empathy is inevitable. You know, nationalism, propaganda, these things play
a role in how people end up being separated this way,
and it's in groups and our groups. But you know,
(17:03):
there is also indications that in group and our group,
separation cann occur even in the absence of a stake,
So it is something we have to be continuously vigilanti of.
Another aspect of as a systemic analysis or approach, is
(17:29):
looking at how our position within society also shapes how
we operate, how we treat people, how we think, and
how we act. Bragrant cites neuroscience research that demonstrates how
authority literally changes how we think. Powerful people become less
empathetic and I'm more likely to see others as tools
(17:50):
rather than independent people. You know, this is not new information,
per see. You know, the envirolence that powerful people are
in both shapes them and are shaped by them, they say,
and has long gone that power corrupts and absolute power
crupts absolutely and spaces like Silicon Valley, like Wall streets,
like Washington, DC, like corporate boardrooms and all the other
(18:13):
upper echelons of government to divorce rulers and authorities from
ordinary people, their insular spaces that keep them from being
challenged or being grounded by the impact of their actions
and others, so powerful people don't have to care. And
I think such hierarchies are attractive to people who already
are inclined to do bad, even if they believe that
they're doing good. The authoritarians, the supremacists, the abusers, They
(18:37):
are attracted to those positions. But even good intention people
could lose themselves in authority too, because authorities as a
whole existed in this bubble that rewards their worst instincts,
and a further shape in the system around their worst instincts,
around distrust, selfishness, exploitation, and so on, to reward themselves
and their patterns of behavior, and thus, through the social
(18:59):
most seaway fact, people end up in that expectation created
by the system.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
I guess my only comment here is that these systems
are not just exclusive to like state power or like
corporate authority. These same mechanisms reproduce themselves in all sorts
of social arrangements, including like radical politics, and frankly especially
radical politics. You can see it's a lot with groups,
whether they're communists, whether they're anarchists, whether they're I don't know.
(19:27):
Social democrats probably have this problem, but no specifically like
in anarchist scenes, you see this happen constantly. It is
almost funny how how much of these things just get
natively recreated and like in group out, group in amics
are always are always a big issue. I mean, like
you can also point to the book Cultish, which explains
(19:50):
how American culture is pretty defined by like cult like tendencies,
not saying that every single group is a cult, but
cult dynamic explain to a large part of everyday American life.
And that's both good and bad. Sometimes being in occult
is fun until it's not very fun. So these dynamics
themselves are not necessarily you know, bad, but there's something
(20:13):
to be like mindful of.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Yeah, exactly, so in being mindful of it, you know,
that's an aspect of it. You know, we have to
find solutions to this academic of badness, of behaviors being
reinforced by these systems that are cause harm to people
and harm to the world. And so what I always
(20:38):
advocate for and we is big and small. I wouldn't
call it the one solution to everything, but it's it
does encompass a lot, but it's just understanding and taking
on a dynamic social revolutionary approach to change, you know,
from the effort to do to confront the existence system,
(21:00):
to stand up against it. But they're also the things
that you do to put forward an alternative, to put
forward and to practice alternatives. So one of the things
that we can do is to create, but you know,
perpetuate a positive and trusting take on human decen see,
you know, to create that social place boy effect that
(21:23):
can shape how people treat each other for better, but
that can be boiled down to just be nicer to
each other. So there's more we've done than that. Of course,
on the systems front, we also to change how we
educate each other in radical spaces and also in terms
of how we raise children. We have to organize you know,
(21:43):
alternative economic systems and alternative social arrangements that get us
in the habit of trust, of trusting people's freedom, of
practicing freedom, and also of emphasizing greater intrinsic motivation in
people as well. You know, a lot of our society
(22:05):
is built around control and mechanisms of control through extrinsic
forms of motivation, you know, like punishments and prisons and
grades and bonuses and wages, all the different things that
are meant to keep us going here now. But I
think a system that more leans into intrinsic motivation is
something that we should be working toward. You know that
(22:27):
people do things so they're in see for reasons that
we are driven by. That I think is far more
sustainable long term and more fulfilling long term than continuing
to be stuck with the punishments and rewards that come
from outside. Yes, we have to develop a revolutionary consciousness
that is also very much grounded in you know, people's
(22:50):
intrinsic motivation to have their needs met, to pursue their interests,
to care for others. And that is where I think
we'll say tea in fors long term because you can
create all these bonuses and incentives externally, but I don't
think it's something that will last. There are, you know,
experiments in earth with a great emphasis on intrinsic motivation,
(23:13):
not even necessarily radical experiments. By see what Bregman actually
looks at examples of schools that don't have grades or
fixed curriculums, and that companies that don't have managers, that
are run entirely by employees. I mean, anarchists have been
known about these, but he emphasizes that the people in
these environments thrive because they've been trusted to direct themselves.
(23:34):
They can bring off the best in themselves because they've
been given the room to do so, you know, and
spaces like free schools and maker spaces and cooperatives they
give us the room to develop our cooperation and creativity.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
You know.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Of course, the system isn't going to stand by as
these transformations take place. It might tolerate or even celebrate
some like the examples that Bregman had looked at, but
those are always going to be treated as exceptions the
second he tried to make them the norm. I think
you're going to face some real challenges because ordinary people
one of these things, but the rulers don't. It's like
(24:09):
the example that I had brought up earlier, you know,
the famous nineteen fourteen Christmas truth during World War One,
where British and Jeman soldiers put down their guns, they
sang songs, they played football, but eventually the high command
crack down these truces. The fratnization of people who are
different from each other was a threat to the war
(24:29):
machine because these systems are invested in maintaining hostility and division,
and so we have to consciously and openly stand up
against hostility and division to build systems that bring out
the best in people. I don't think that a hopeful
view of human nature should be seen as utopian. As
I said earlier, is realistic. Cynicism is not realism. They're
(24:53):
not the same thing. Having hope is not being that
you are completely deluded of the darks side or dark
aspects of humanity and humanity's possibilities. But it means that
you don't limit yourself to that outcome, that you challenge
that narrative, and that you seek to do better and
to create something better. And that's really what I care about,
(25:16):
and that's all I have to share. All power to
all the people.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
This it could happen. Here is a production of cool
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All the media.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Hello and welcome to it happen here. Last episode, I
was joined by your savior. Hello, and he's here again
because we're gonna get more into what we spoke about
last time. Last episode, we painted a hopeful account of
humanity's nature. Could see if my reading of Rutka Bregmann's
Humankind a hopeful history. So I probably fed into the
(00:29):
anarchists so utopia narrative a bit with that previous episode.
But the truth is that I'm not really being optimistic
and being realistic. But realism has been confused with cynonicism
for so long that even acknowledging both sides of the
coin can be seen as overly utopia. People can be bad,
and we'll get into the why. But for whatever reason
(00:52):
they are bad, that is why as anarchists have consistently
argued nobody should have authority. Now they will always be outlined.
And this explanation I'm about to share it is not
going to get into every unique case of badness, but
we are going to get into some of the reasons
that people do bad and what we can do about it.
(01:13):
As I said last episode, we took issue with this
idea of civilization as a thin venail and were put
forward the premise the Keemans are mostly pretty decent. In fact,
I didn't mention it last episode, but we don't even
really like to kill each other, contrary to popular belief,
(01:33):
brag when actually shares that in World War Two, studies
showed that many soldiers didn't shoot their weapons even in combat.
Trained soldiers had a difficult time actually pulling the trigger
and killing people. There are exceptions, as I said before,
but in a lot of cases it's very difficult for
people to actually kill. Military strategies ended up changing once
(01:56):
authorities realized this, and the training programs of soldiers was
to readers time to overcome this resistance. But that reluctance
to killin does also indicate that it takes some effort
to overcome our general decency toward each other because most people,
again most on all, are not natural born killers. So again,
(02:17):
how do we do bad? You know, all sorts of
atrostees have been carried out by humans, both in ancient
and modern times. What do you think is the course.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Self preservation in some way, either physical or psychological. I'm
not an anthropologist, I'm not a sociologist. Most of my
experiences with people is both queer people and then looking
at Nazis and like political extremists. So it's maybe not
the best sample side for the general population. I think
I tend to exist kind of on the perimeter of
(02:50):
most human experience, but probably some form of either psychological
or physical self preservation in my experience slash opinion.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
That's interesting. I didn't think of it. I think it
comes close to what Breaguen ends up getting into, but
I think self preservation, well, we'll get into that in
a bit. You know, it's it's difficult to square that
with just how brutal some of these disasters have been,
you know, these atrocities that have taken place around the world,
(03:24):
organized systemic industrial cruelty, you know, things like the Holocaust.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Totally, it's interesting because I think it's two paradoxical instincts
that play off each other. There's this self preservation and
there's also I believe in I thin guess some version
of the death drive, and I think those can can
interact in really odd ways. But the desk drive, Yeah,
like it's like it's specifically, it's like specifically like like
(03:49):
fascism and like you know, you can see this in
like the genocides of the twentieth century and twenty first
centuries like specifically, but no like fascism as like a
political embodying of the death, which is I think also
an aspect. I think these things exist together in parallel
while being paradoxical, and that's what produces a lot of
the incongruity around things like fascism, right, it is, it
(04:13):
is like an inherently paradoxical system.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
When you say self preservation, are you just talking about
on the individual level, or are you seeing like community
self preservation as.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Well, both both, but also I think not even just physical,
but also like psychological, like being able to like continue
being able to continue existing as yourself, either within a
group of people or just you as an individual, Like
psychological things that you need to do to make yourself
feel like you're in community or that you are safe,
that you have meaning, or that you have purpose as
well as the physical aspects.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
And you're saying that that lends itself to atrocity.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
I think it can.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, well that actually is strikingly close to
what Bragman ends up uncovering.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Look at the reasons that people will talk about for
like why the genocide and Gaza is like necessary, right?
Speaker 2 (05:00):
It is?
Speaker 3 (05:00):
It is playing off both of those impulses.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Yeah, yeah, I mean all sorts of genocides when you
hear the descriptions of them, and this is what you
hear of the people who perpetuated them, what their explanations
or justifications, you know, from the Holocaust to Rwanda to Palestine. Yeah,
it's me and mar you know, totally it is deeply
Evil's that something we can look away from it? It
(05:25):
really is difficult to square with the most humans a
decent thesis when you look at how some of these
society is, even the ordinary people, for example, the citizen
population of Israel, even the civilian population, even they are
like disturbingly genocideh in their rhetoric. And so you know,
it's like, how do we reach that point? How do
(05:46):
we get there? How does an ordinary human baby grow
into that?
Speaker 3 (05:51):
It can happen to you. It can happen very easily,
and I think it can happen in a short time
span and you can get out of it. I think
maybe not just as easily, but you can't get out
of it also in a fastime span. I think it's
like that you are not immune to propaganda. Idea you
can look at like in n To Germany, Robert has
talked about quote unquote the little Nazis, the regular Germans
who ended up partipating and becoming Nazis, and you are
(06:14):
not immune from that, and that can happen as a
response to a whole bunch of traumatic impulses as well.
Whereas I think people now even use like politics just
to You're like this like idea of politics as permission
to be like an overtly cruel person to other people,
either like in your life or online. Right, you will
(06:36):
you will use use various political topics, and that gives
you permission to unleash unmitigated hostility against people that you
now perceive as being like immoral or you perceive as
being like ontological enemies.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Exactly exactly. I mean there were particular studies that were
undertaken in the twentieth century that are often used to
sort of explain that, you know, after all of Nazi
Germany and the post World War TWI era, people will
seeking explanations for atrocity and so so experiments were done
(07:09):
and are now pointed to as explanations for how this
could have taken place. You know, so one particular experiment
that's really well known as the Stanford prison experiment. Right,
this idea that you take random students and give them
a position of power and they become sadistic gods. You know,
it proves just how thin the ven ale civilization really is,
or already the evil the civilization could empower. But at
(07:34):
least for that particular experiment, the reality was never so straightforward.
You know, the gods were literally coached and encouraged to
be cruel. You know, they were actually putting on performances.
The prisoners were also expected to perform, so rather than
being like an actual scientific experiment, it was more like
guided theater.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
I mean it inadvertently, it becomes an interesting experiment in
like humans desired to like please authority.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Right exactly, exactly, to like perform to.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
The expectations of the people who are actually running this experiment,
and how capable you are of falling into these roles
under like under that paradigm exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
I mean, you see that in Nazi Germany as well,
a lot of the people were doing things to please
the fear, you know, like they didn't necessarily know or
there was a lot of wiggle room from what I've
read to interpret the fear as wishes, Yeah, as people
who wanted to rank up and rise up in the
in the organization, but interpret things in a way that
(08:38):
they would presume would please Pitta and his desires moving
towards the fear. Yeah, exactly, exactly. That's the that's the
name of the phenomenon. I mean, when the sound for
(09:01):
Person experim When people tried to recreate the experiment for television,
E've got it made for pretty boring TV because it
was bad science in the first place. It's not something
that people do not actually, it's it's what they do
when they are pushed, when they are prodded, you know,
when certain expectations, et ceter. It's kind of similar with
this other famous experiment that that Bragman talks about, which
(09:22):
is the Stanley Milcrumb's Obedience experiments, where volunteers were told
to administer increasingly painful electric shocks the stranger just because
I got in a lamp code told them to. It's
like another instance of you know, we doing these things
just to please authority, even to the point of murder,
because you know, the dial of the electric shock was
(09:44):
deadly after a certain point, and you could hear the
screams of the the victims. Of course they were fake screams,
but you know, the participants could hear them. But what
Bragman ended up uncovering is that most of the participants
will't follow the orders blindly. They were following the orders, yes,
but they would do because they believed that they were
doing something good, something good for the good of science.
(10:05):
That even though the shocks were uncomfortable, that it wasn't
something they want to do, there was a noble sacrifice
in the name of progress. Even so, the participants weren't
in the front. You know, they were distressed, they were shaken,
they were sweat and they were begging to check on
the learner. But they also said things like he agreed
to be in the experiment, you know, or this will
(10:26):
help science right or I don't want to do this,
but I have to, demanded lab Coote, who is telling
them to continue, please continue, please continue. He was calm,
he was professional, and also even how the nudge is
that he used were framed made a difference. So if
he was directly ordering them and telling them you have
to do this, surprise many people would actually be more
(10:47):
likely to resist a direct order framed in that way
for such an experiment, but a more subtle nudge, just
like know what, you know, science, the experimental requires this,
you know, the experiment needs to do this at more
subtle It tended to get people to continue. And the
people who were interviewed who did take it up to
those higher volagers, they said they did it because they
(11:08):
believed they were contributing to scientific development. So it's really
this misguided belief in a higher cause that also contributes
to atrocity. It's very easy to get this idea that, oh,
you know that those are just monstrous people. You know,
we have this idea in pop culture that these the
Nazis are like cartoonish monsters. They are monstrous, but they
(11:31):
are monstrous people. You know, they are, at the end
of the day, people who do evil with the belief
that they're doing good. It's a very extent. I know
that there were some who you know, recanted or who
knew what they were doing wrong, but they had other
pressures that were pushing them in that direction. Right. There
(11:51):
are many explanations we was behaving and all sorts of situations,
but a lot of the people they thought that they
were contributing to the right things, didn't care, but they
were taught to care in the wrong direction. The bad
guys don't think that they're bad guys. And whether we're
talking about the Nazis of the past or the Designers
of today, they construct these elaborate narratives to frame themselves
(12:16):
as the righteous ones. You know, as far as the
Nazis are concerned, they are purge in Germany of a
serious threat to the well be in and the safety
of their future and all that stuff. Read Designers to stay.
You ask them, even though they're pariahs of the world
at this point, you ask them why they believe that
this must continue, and they will say, you know, we
have to defend ourselves. We have a right to defend ourselves. YadA, YadA, YadA.
(12:40):
There are true believers within these groups, you know, who
are able to commit some of the worst acts, committed
ideologues who boast of their trustees, who express no remorse,
who take pride in their role, and people reach that
point of ideology through a process of radicalization. You know,
we look at the tends to genocide. I think is
(13:01):
the framework people have used before to point out how
a segment of a population can become a target of genocide.
It's not like one day you wake up and it's
just like, oh, we're going to geneside this group of people.
It's a process. You know. First you start off with classification.
You create a separate group of people, separate category of poison.
(13:22):
You make them signify themselves in some way, carry ID
cards or some kind of insignia on their clothing or whatever.
They begin to face discrimination or some kind the discrimination,
you know, is ramped up through dehumanizing language. You compare
them to verment or rodents, the disease. And that's just
the thing, and we're going to get to that. But
(13:43):
part of how you get people who would otherwise be
caring or compassionate about their fellow human is through distance. Right,
So the people who who are most blood thirsty tend
to be very far from the front lines. You know,
people who are demanding that World War One continue, for example,
(14:05):
they were very far from the actual fighting versus at
the actual front lines of World War One. You had
soldiers playing football together during Christmas. That's a separate story.
But you create distance, either create physical distance or you
create psychological distance and dehumanization is one of the ways
you create psychological distance. You distance people from seeing their
(14:27):
fellow human being as a human being. Segregation is another
way of creating that distance, which then lends itself to
the humanization. Comparing the people to wom into animals, anything
other than human as another step in the humanization and
can people to separate themselves from those peopuel and then
they create specific groups. The next stage to create specific
groups and organizations to enforce discriminatory policies. You fool the broadcast,
(14:52):
operate the propaganda to polarize population. And then we'll step seven, eight, nine,
and ten go from actually preparing the removal relocation of
people to the persecution, the extermination of the group, and
finally the denial that such a crime ever could so
that process it can take years, it can take decades,
(15:17):
but it's something that can turn even the most regular
poison into virulent proponent of Rihanna side if they are
not fastidious in their opposition to any such language, especially
in the early stages, because they get fed this steady
extreme propaganda of all the actions are justified, their loyalty
(15:38):
to their inn group becomes tested by their willingness to
engage in those harmful actions. The stay with that group,
will do whatever their tool is good, even if it
leads to other people being hood and it just creates
an evil. But it's an ordinary evil. It's an evil
that is convinced of. It's a virtue. It is wrapped
up in ideology and social conformity because you know, humans
(16:00):
are social creatures and it drives us to cooperate. But
that sociality can be narrowed down to test our in group.
And that's where Breakman actually gets into an interesting point
about empathy, right, because we tend to see empathy as
a positive thing, and it can be. But as Bragman notes,
drawn from psychologists Paul Bloom's work, empathy can also make
(16:21):
us partial, irrational, and even cruel, because it can narrow
our focus to those people who are like us and
ignore others. That's why soldiers can fight and kill other
people because they feel empathy for their in group, their
homeland citizens, or their comrades and arms. Their loyalty and
affection for the people they care about supersedes the lives
(16:43):
of the people that they don't care about. Now, of course,
we want to look at systems and we're talking about
this because I don't think that this hijack and of
empathy is inevitable. You know, nationalism, propaganda, these things play
a role in how people end up being separated this way,
and it's in groups and our groups. But you know,
(17:03):
there is also indications that in group and our group,
separation cann occur even in the absence of a stake,
So it is something we have to be continuously vigilanti of.
Another aspect of as a systemic analysis or approach, is
(17:29):
looking at how our position within society also shapes how
we operate, how we treat people, how we think, and
how we act. Bragrant cites neuroscience research that demonstrates how
authority literally changes how we think. Powerful people become less
empathetic and I'm more likely to see others as tools
(17:50):
rather than independent people. You know, this is not new information,
per see. You know, the envirolence that powerful people are
in both shapes them and are shaped by them, they say,
and has long gone that power corrupts and absolute power
crupts absolutely and spaces like Silicon Valley, like Wall streets,
like Washington, DC, like corporate boardrooms and all the other
(18:13):
upper echelons of government to divorce rulers and authorities from
ordinary people, their insular spaces that keep them from being
challenged or being grounded by the impact of their actions
and others, so powerful people don't have to care. And
I think such hierarchies are attractive to people who already
are inclined to do bad, even if they believe that
they're doing good. The authoritarians, the supremacists, the abusers, They
(18:37):
are attracted to those positions. But even good intention people
could lose themselves in authority too, because authorities as a
whole existed in this bubble that rewards their worst instincts,
and a further shape in the system around their worst instincts,
around distrust, selfishness, exploitation, and so on, to reward themselves
and their patterns of behavior, and thus, through the social
(18:59):
most seaway fact, people end up in that expectation created
by the system.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
I guess my only comment here is that these systems
are not just exclusive to like state power or like
corporate authority. These same mechanisms reproduce themselves in all sorts
of social arrangements, including like radical politics, and frankly especially
radical politics. You can see it's a lot with groups,
whether they're communists, whether they're anarchists, whether they're I don't know.
(19:27):
Social democrats probably have this problem, but no specifically like
in anarchist scenes, you see this happen constantly. It is
almost funny how how much of these things just get
natively recreated and like in group out, group in amics
are always are always a big issue. I mean, like
you can also point to the book Cultish, which explains
(19:50):
how American culture is pretty defined by like cult like tendencies,
not saying that every single group is a cult, but
cult dynamic explain to a large part of everyday American life.
And that's both good and bad. Sometimes being in occult
is fun until it's not very fun. So these dynamics
themselves are not necessarily you know, bad, but there's something
(20:13):
to be like mindful of.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Yeah, exactly, so in being mindful of it, you know,
that's an aspect of it. You know, we have to
find solutions to this academic of badness, of behaviors being
reinforced by these systems that are cause harm to people
and harm to the world. And so what I always
(20:38):
advocate for and we is big and small. I wouldn't
call it the one solution to everything, but it's it
does encompass a lot, but it's just understanding and taking
on a dynamic social revolutionary approach to change, you know,
from the effort to do to confront the existence system,
(21:00):
to stand up against it. But they're also the things
that you do to put forward an alternative, to put
forward and to practice alternatives. So one of the things
that we can do is to create, but you know,
perpetuate a positive and trusting take on human decen see,
you know, to create that social place boy effect that
(21:23):
can shape how people treat each other for better, but
that can be boiled down to just be nicer to
each other. So there's more we've done than that. Of course,
on the systems front, we also to change how we
educate each other in radical spaces and also in terms
of how we raise children. We have to organize you know,
(21:43):
alternative economic systems and alternative social arrangements that get us
in the habit of trust, of trusting people's freedom, of
practicing freedom, and also of emphasizing greater intrinsic motivation in
people as well. You know, a lot of our society
(22:05):
is built around control and mechanisms of control through extrinsic
forms of motivation, you know, like punishments and prisons and
grades and bonuses and wages, all the different things that
are meant to keep us going here now. But I
think a system that more leans into intrinsic motivation is
something that we should be working toward. You know that
(22:27):
people do things so they're in see for reasons that
we are driven by. That I think is far more
sustainable long term and more fulfilling long term than continuing
to be stuck with the punishments and rewards that come
from outside. Yes, we have to develop a revolutionary consciousness
that is also very much grounded in you know, people's
(22:50):
intrinsic motivation to have their needs met, to pursue their interests,
to care for others. And that is where I think
we'll say tea in fors long term because you can
create all these bonuses and incentives externally, but I don't
think it's something that will last. There are, you know,
experiments in earth with a great emphasis on intrinsic motivation,
(23:13):
not even necessarily radical experiments. By see what Bregman actually
looks at examples of schools that don't have grades or
fixed curriculums, and that companies that don't have managers, that
are run entirely by employees. I mean, anarchists have been
known about these, but he emphasizes that the people in
these environments thrive because they've been trusted to direct themselves.
(23:34):
They can bring off the best in themselves because they've
been given the room to do so, you know, and
spaces like free schools and maker spaces and cooperatives they
give us the room to develop our cooperation and creativity.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
You know.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Of course, the system isn't going to stand by as
these transformations take place. It might tolerate or even celebrate
some like the examples that Bregman had looked at, but
those are always going to be treated as exceptions the
second he tried to make them the norm. I think
you're going to face some real challenges because ordinary people
one of these things, but the rulers don't. It's like
(24:09):
the example that I had brought up earlier, you know,
the famous nineteen fourteen Christmas truth during World War One,
where British and Jeman soldiers put down their guns, they
sang songs, they played football, but eventually the high command
crack down these truces. The fratnization of people who are
different from each other was a threat to the war
(24:29):
machine because these systems are invested in maintaining hostility and division,
and so we have to consciously and openly stand up
against hostility and division to build systems that bring out
the best in people. I don't think that a hopeful
view of human nature should be seen as utopian. As
I said earlier, is realistic. Cynicism is not realism. They're
(24:53):
not the same thing. Having hope is not being that
you are completely deluded of the darks side or dark
aspects of humanity and humanity's possibilities. But it means that
you don't limit yourself to that outcome, that you challenge
that narrative, and that you seek to do better and
to create something better. And that's really what I care about,
(25:16):
and that's all I have to share. All power to
all the people.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
This it could happen. Here is a production of cool
Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit
our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can now find sources for it could happen here,
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It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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