RE: What Would Happen If We Cancelled All Laws? - My 100th Post! Woohoo!
As always, such an excellent post! I heard Marina Abramovic interviewed about that performance you referenced here and I found it so powerful and moving. Firstly, her courage to carry through with it all the way through, and secondly how people dealt with this power she had given them. fascinating and such a brilliant piece.
I have always been so deeply disturbed by the kinds of human behavior that was seen in that Stanford experiment. We can all see it seeping through in various parts of life....we need socialization and laws for sure and those should be written when people come together to share their best highest thinking and ideals. This helps individuals and societies rise to their highest selves more often. We aren't really a great group of beings without guidance because our lowest moments can be very ugly and dangerous to others!
It is fascinating isn't it? I think that she is a performance artist in the truest sense of the term. She was quite literally prepared to die for her art; extremely brave, I know I couldn't do it.
Like you say, experiments like this really expose our base, primal, and dark instincts. However they also reveal why we've made it thus far; not everyone decided to abuse Mariana, there were helpers there as well as abusers.
Also Zimbudo's girlfriend effectively stopped the Stanford experiment by walking out.
We are incredibly complex social creatures, with undeniable ties to our savage past, which is what makes these things so fascinating I guess.
Thanks for stopping by!
Cg