Totalitarian Seminar

This method analyses methods and facts of regimes. It seeks to control and manipulate all aspects of people including their private life by taking total control. The nature movement is related to Hegel and his Hegelian way of understanding totalitarian things. According to Popper and Hannah Arendt Hegel is totalitarianism. Nature if progressing to the laws of utopia of history.

There is a metaphor with Darwin and his idea of stylism and Nazism which is liberal and biological. It follows that Darwin found mutations occur naturally and the ones that best adapted to the environment were able to thrive and reproduce to carry on forward such as the appendix. This was a metaphor for the bourgeoisie class that needed to be rid of. It was like with Nazism medicine where we are devolving natural defects needed to help nature along.

In the Stanford prison experiment the victims were selected and the results showed that nature decides who is eliminated and it is evident that terror becomes total. The rules supreme when no one is in its way. It basis its self on loneliness manipulating the human condition and destroying relationships in society. There is a constant threat in human behaviour.

Everything is inside the state and not outside of it. Individuality makes it difficult to control hence terror and ideology. Orwell said that 'war is peace, freedom is slavery and poverty is plenty.' Popper pointed out that it is often used as justification for authority. Rousseau argued to be 'forced to be free.' Gypsies as well as Jews were persecuted by the Nazi's. 

Eichmann was accused of transporting the Jews on the trains to be killed. He was actually charged with crimes against humanity. According to Arendt he was only transporting Jews on the train and doing his job. However she sees the crime as not thinking about the situation and going against his morals of what he knows is right or wrong. He 'failed to think, and he failed to act.'

The crime against humanity was actually invented to get people like Eichmann who were actually innocent really into trouble. He only went to work to do his job with the trains and was a man that obeyed the law and wasn't a bad person. If he had of gone against the Nazi's and stopped transporting people on the trains he would have been killed anyway so really could not win. Arendt saw the Eichmann trial as a stitch up and didn't like the idea of it. 

The Darwin theory is a total explanation of the environment and is the only theory you need to know. Pluralism is the opposite of totalitarianism where you can think what you like and there are many different ideas on things. 

Liberalism and pluralism are derived from Kant as it is believed what we think now will be different to what we think next week as our thoughts will change.

It is possible to control thought by manipulating the language to control peoples mind(Orwell 1984). The media choose certain language to make people think a certain way. You can manipulate them to be scared of thinking anything else or their own way. The way things are said or the wording of certain things change over time such as 'ba ba black sheep' becoming racist and being changed to 'ba ba colourful sheep.' 

Thought crime is where you aren't even able to think certain things even though you can't help thinking them. Arendt says every new person born has to start from the beginning with learning which is why totalitarianism cant last.

Stanford Prison Experiment

This was a simulation study of psychology of imprisonment in Stanford Prison 1971. It was to see how people respond to a cruel environment without clear rules. It was a mock prison set up that followed events of Abu Ghraib in 2003 in Iraq where people were tortured and abused. Photos were released of how the people were treated and it was revealed they had bags on their heads and were treated like animals.

Images were similar to the Stamford Prison study however they weren't actually doing these things to them. A set of social psychological factors that can make people do anything they wouldn't have expected were given. The experiment was life like and tested the power of the environment. 70 men volunteered and were given psychological tests. 24 of these men who were healthy and normal were chosen. Half of them were selected to be the guards and half were selected as the prisoners and were given uniforms for each role. Prisoners were given a number each which they were referred to throughout along with a chain on their foot to remind them of their loss of freedom and a gown.

The guards felt awkward at first with giving orders. John Wayne became more extreme and decided to become the worst cruel prison guard you could be. He decided he would see how far he could take it before someone would tell him to stop. The prisoners rebelled and barricaded the cells and took off their numbers. The guards became to think of the prisoners as dangerous people and stripped the prisoners naked and used fire extinguishers to break their doors down. The study became remarkable from this point as human nature transformed rapidly.

The guards punished the prisoners by taunting them and not letting them sleep etc. Prisoner 8612 was the next key thing since the rebellion as he ended up having an emotional breakdown. The guards didn't believe or realise what they were doing. They escalated their power to taunt, humiliate and treat the prisoners badly. After the 4th day it turned sexual and the roles and environment were so powerful that they ended up treating prisoners as though they had done wrong. The prisoners started to break down with stress.

It was mistreatment and they became caught up in the events taking place without realising the extent of it. A psychology graduate visited the prison environment  and saw prisoners with paper bags over their heads. She found it demeaning and couldn't watch this mistreatment. She couldn't understand how they couldn't see what she did. The power given transformed people and the experiment was shut down after 6 days due to her making them realise the extent of it.

The Milgram Experiment

This experiment was to see how far people would go to inflict suffering on others when ordered to do so if they believe it is the right thing to do. Stanley Milgram wanted to see if law abiding citizens would give others an electric shock. Twelve members of the public arrived for a memory test well that is what they believed it to be. They were introduced to other people who they believed was a volunteer however it was the person running the test.

They believed it was a scientific study of memory when in actual fact it was obedience over authority. Each person was given a specific role of a teacher who applies the electric shock and a learner who receives them who was actually an actor. They observed the person being strapped and restrained to the chair ready to be shocked. The volts went from 15 all the way up to 450.

The teacher was given a list of words the learner had to memorise and had to increase the voltage of the shock every time they got it wrong. They wanted to see if the teachers called a stop to the test or obey the professor and increase the voltage in the belief that they are advancing science.

The teachers were expressing concern throughout the test but were told to continue by the professor who told them that the experiment requires them to go on. It was evident people were inflicting serious pain on others when told to do so. They weren't away that the sounds were pre-recorded and the electric shocks weren't actually happening. 

At one stage the learner went silent and could have been dead or unconscious from the shocks but the participant still went on to increase the shocks as silent meant the wrong answer.  They believed that science produces beneficial findings to society so there was a good reason to do this.

9 out of 12 participants went all the way to the end of the experiment. In the original experiment over 65% of the people went to 450 volts. At the end they were all immediately told the real situation of the experiment and what was happening. The participants  looked under stress but went on to do what the professor told them to do as it wasn't causing any long term harm on the people. 

The man that didn't carry on the experiment and did stop due to his own will said it sounded like the Nazi's in Germany and that he didn't want to conform when he didn't think it was right.