Obediently Oblivious

We like to think of ourselves as inherently compassionate, by and large. We would come to the aid of the distressed, those in need, offer our assistance, in heartfelt response to obvious emotional need. If we witness someone in physical danger and we can intervene without risk to ourselves, we do so, willingly, without giving it a second thought, for this is an automatic response.

We empathize with the suffering of others, for we too are human, and we like to think of ourselves as responsible, as decent, as humane beings. Yet we can also behave as though we are indifferent to pain and suffering.

None of us really knows how we would respond under great duress. None of us is really capable of foreseeing how we would behave if we were placed in a dire situation of imminent danger that could be relieved by removing ourselves from the potential of helping others, others who have been targeted, not us. We witness instances of brutalization of others and make no step to intervene, if we too are to suffer.

This is human nature. It is not admirable, but it is understandable. That we would weigh our actions in relation to what danger it would pose to ourselves, if we choose to act. The sociologist Hannah Arendt, in studying the actions of those instrumentally involved in the Holocaust, concluded that human beings act as they do, not as fanatics or psychopaths, but as ordinary people who believe it is their duty to do as they are bidden.

She coined the phrase "banality of evil" to express that thesis. That people act at the behest of authority, believing that their response is 'normal'. Others have since taken that thesis and experimented with it, coming to the same conclusion; that if assured that what they are doing is perfectly all right, people will do actual harm to others. Now a new French television game show expresses a live psychological experiment.

Where The Game of Death presents as a traditional quiz show, with an enthusiastically approving audience in place to prompt the contestants, and a celebrity-figure hostess on duty to urge the players to act in accordance with the game 'rules'. The game is to pose questions to another player, and each time an incorrect response is given, to punish that response with electrical charges.

When the actor cries that he can no longer sustain the pain of the charges, the electrical prods continue with the players responding to the urging of the host and the shouts of the audience to continue. Even when the actor, whom the players take for another player just like themselves, pleads for mercy, and then finally acts as though he is dead, the electrical volts continue, the players seeming oblivious to reality.

The audience chants "punishment" with each incorrect response to a question, the host urges the players to continue playing, and the players obediently do just that. This is group mentality; not too many are prepared to defy the orders from authority, to deviate from a popular course, setting themselves apart from the social compact, obeying their conscience instead of consensus.

Fully 80% of the contestants fulfilled their audience-fuelled obligations to keep zapping the actor with the incorrect responses, with the maximum 460 volts, until the actor appeared to perish. Out of a total of 80 players, sixteen instructed themselves to walk away from the game, to separate themselves from the punishing scenario.

So much for participants in totalitarian-inspired brutalities against others. It is not that societies are necessarily evil, but that they are immensely suggestible, and their sense of the fitness of things, and their sense of justice is overtaken by their apprehension of response to an authority figure as being right and proper.