![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
We Cannot Extrapolate From Young White Cismen What Everyone Else Would Do
This post was originally commentary I attached to a link to some other article that has since been removed and I don't remember enough of the article to search for an alternate copy of it or a wayback machine archive of it. But I've used this commentary in other discussions since, so I'm archiving it here. If I find a relevant article to attach to this commentary, I will amend this post. I think it might have been the story of the real-life "Lord of the Flies" where a group of boys was shipwrecked but they formed a cooperative culture until they were rescued? But I'm not sure.
I got into this argument with a former metamour once. Apparently she had read some well-written book about the Stanford experiment and waxed philosophical about the terrifying nature of people, and I criticized the experiment for its many flaws which means that we can't draw the conclusion that people are fundamentally evil and corruptible, but that *privileged white boys who want to impress their authority figure who removed their accountability in the first place* are the only ones we can draw that tentative conclusion about.
She also really did not like me saying that.
When someone is raised with empathy as one of their highest values, and are taught throughout their life about the responsibility that comes along with authority, and that other people are real people too, and that consent can be revoked at any time but certain times are really difficult to retract consent from, and that rehabilitation is both more effective and more humane (and that it's admirable to be humane) than punitive justice systems - you don't get this outcome.
As we know, because we've seen how other cultures handle their justice system. And not everyone devolves like this.
I got into this argument with a former metamour once. Apparently she had read some well-written book about the Stanford experiment and waxed philosophical about the terrifying nature of people, and I criticized the experiment for its many flaws which means that we can't draw the conclusion that people are fundamentally evil and corruptible, but that *privileged white boys who want to impress their authority figure who removed their accountability in the first place* are the only ones we can draw that tentative conclusion about.
She also really did not like me saying that.
- When people are raised at or near the top of the privilege ladder;
- When they are given absolute authority with no accountability and no personal history of education or exposure to the responsibility of authority;
- When their own authority figure involves himself personally in the experiment instead of recusing himself;
- When *someone believes their victim is consenting* (because the victim is a volunteer who, presumably, can "opt out" at any time, and they don't understand what happens to a victim's ability to consent *even when they originally volunteered*);
- When they believe the whole thing is play-acting and *are told to take on a particular role*;
- When they come from a society that says one class of people is subhuman and then they are told to play a character in charge of said sub-human who is also supposed to be a "character";
When someone is raised with empathy as one of their highest values, and are taught throughout their life about the responsibility that comes along with authority, and that other people are real people too, and that consent can be revoked at any time but certain times are really difficult to retract consent from, and that rehabilitation is both more effective and more humane (and that it's admirable to be humane) than punitive justice systems - you don't get this outcome.
As we know, because we've seen how other cultures handle their justice system. And not everyone devolves like this.