For years, I've admired the artwork of M.C. Escher. So many of his works feature patterns that challenge the viewer's sense of perspective. Beneath the title of this column is an Escher work called Circle Limit IV. Depending upon your focus, you see either a gathering of demons or of angels. This picture opens The Lucifer Effect - Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, written by social psychologist, Philip Zimbardo. In 1971 he, created the Stanford Prison Experiment, whose effects were sufficiently profound as to require the experiment to be halted midstream.
As a researcher, Zimbardo challenges us to ask some basic questions about ourselves:
Is the world populated by some people who are good, and others who are evil? Can we draw a bright line marking the borderline between good people and bad people? When we consider good or bad people how should we weigh the factors of behaviors exhibited versus the pervasive environmental context?
In parashat Kedoshim (Leviticus, chapters 19-20), for example , God tells us to be Holy because "I, Adonai your God, am Holy." There are a host of commandments (do this, don't do that). A simple formulation of being good (or Holy) might go like this - people who follow the commandments are doing good; people who transgress are doing bad. The dominant cultural take is dispositional view - we measure each individual as a discrete independent agent, responsible for her or his actions. We point toward Hitler, Idi Amin, Pol Pot and Stalin and we perceive these people as walking packages of evil - they are not like us.
What about the nature of the society in which you live? Living within a terrible environment doesn't give you permission to behave as a monster. But the toxic atmosphere must take its toll. Consider Noah's neighbors or Lot's fellow townsfolk. Noah emerges sufficiently unscathed so as to be considered righteous.
Lot doesn't fare so well. Survivors of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorra, Lot and his daughters live in a cave near Zoar. Genesis 20:30-38 describes Lot's daughters seduction of their father. Check out this work by Hendrik Goltzius painted in 1616. Despite the Torah 's telling us that on both of the nights in question, Lot was "unaware of himself when he lay down or when he awoke, " the artist isn't buying that story for a moment. He portrays a lusty old man who is more than dimly aware of what is transpiring around him. What happened to Lot? Was his nature always this morally challenged, or did his prolonged stay in Sodom turn his heart?
Far beyond our musing about Noah or Lot, this inquiry is about our troubled world. In Rwanda, within the space of a few months in 1994, between 800,000 and one million Tutsis, three quarters of the Tutsi population were murdered by their fellow neighbors. How do we explain Hutus slaughtering their neighbors on command? We have verbatim testimonies of the killers - but their words serve to shock us further. Categorizing people as good or evil fails to adequately confront the reality of these atrocities. Zimbardo argues that there are larger pervasive dynamics at work.
If Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment is the mashal (parable), the social dynamics of Abu Ghraib serve as the nimshal (the unpacked commentary, the bitter harvest, if you will). The culturally dominant American narrative has been about "a few bad apples," but, as Zimbardo points out, this construction allows us to ignore the barrel in which the apples rotted. Indeed, we have scrupulously avoided a serious investigation of the those who crafted the barrels.
There is a dark side within our nature, and its lure is powerful. The creators of our liturgy were well aware of the dark side's pull. I'd say that their outlook tilted strongly toward behaviorist. Evidence: At the end of the birchot hashachar (morning blessings), there is a paragraph in which we ask God (1) to get us into the habit of Torah, (2) to help us cling to doing mitzvot, and (3) to coerce our inclination to serve God [!] - it's pretty much as if we are saying, "God, you know how the dark side tugs at us. Play the role of puppeteer if You must! Just make sure we serve You."
This bit of liturgy should give us some pause. What are the text's implications for free will and the nature of being human? And while we're asking, what are the implications of human Knowledge of Good and Evil being acquired through Adam and Eve's eating of the forbidden fruit? Who are we? As the Who sing (Quadrophenia),
Can You See the Real Me?
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