Sunday, November 8, 2009
Cultural Influence
The best reading we did this week was the Police Battalion 101 reading. What I found fascinating was the ability of the Nazi party to control people they barely knew. The whole time I was reading this I was thinking about the famous experiment where the test subjects were asked by a fake specialist to electrocute people. The subjects shocked other people with surprising frequency, and didn't show signs of stopping even in cases where the person getting ficticiously shocked screamed in horror. I think both the experiment and the Police Battalion anecdote illustrates the immense control that authority has on people. Furthermore, the author went out of their way to describe how the members of the police battalion were akin to the average citizen. The author makes a very valid point by subtlety showing the average humans threshold to do as their told and follow the crowd. Another famous experiment I remember was the one where people were asked to pick out the line with the longest length, or something along those lines( I believe this experiment has been done many times), and the rest of the room who were paid actors picked the wrong line. I think this a microcosm of the situation in the villages of Germany. Even without any direct authoritative figure, except for some Nazi party orders the reserve police are willing to do as they are told rather than speak up. The few who do not follow their orders give few thoughts on why they cannot perform their duty. Could this happen in America? Certainly not in the current cultural climate, but I definitely believe this could happen if an authoritative party rose to power; this could have been particularly scary during the reconstructionist era of the South. All that needs to be changed is the culture; the culture that people are raised in, shapes everything about a person, and it is normally scarier for someone to step out of that culture than to stand up and take action and risked being ostracized.
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I completely agree. Resisting the crowd or defying authority is often much harder than just going along with it. When you consider that, at the end of the day, the men of PB 101 were given an order, not a request. They were a part of a military system with a chain of command that they were requited to obey. While Trapp clearly gave them the option to step out and abstain, he was also their commanding officer giving them a direct order. Who actually wants to step forward and refuse to follow an order?
ReplyDeleteOverall, I think your post raises important points about understanding the Holocaust.
Its interesting that you bring up that experiment, because I remember thinking the exact same thing when we were discussing Police Battalion 101. I think that this experiment goes on to prove the power of "mob mentality" or the fraternal pressure that these men felt. I do not feel that Germans are necessarily unique: you could put a New Zealander in their shoes and I think that they would walk the same path.
ReplyDeleteAnother experiment that I think also proves this point: scientists put a group of people in a waiting room and mixed them with a few actors who knew what was going on. they then made it seem as if the building was on fire (smoke poured into the room from another door). The actors did not move AND neither did any of the other people. Yes they looked around confused and concerned but no one actually got up and left. It goes to show you the power that people exert upon one another