I drove my daughter to a sports camp this morning, in the suburban neighborhood where her father, my ex-husband, lives. I'm a city girl. I grew up in a (smallish, true) city, Portland, Oregon, and I live in Seattle. I don't care for the suburbs, and as I was driving I asked myself why. The sports camp had been moved from one location to another, and I was following some other families who also hadn't gotten the notice. "Oh, it's easy to find. It's really close," one mother assured me, but I still asked if I could follow.
We drove down the winding roads that suburbs are famous for, deeply shaded by our Pacific Northwest greenery. The road lacked any discernable landmarks, once you passed the single stoplight and the single stop sign. If you knew the way, or rather, if you followed the road without thinking about it, you would end up in the right place. Just put yourself on autopilot and follow the road, and don't think about it.
Then I was reminded of an article I read just last night, about the Stanford Prison Experiment as it approaches its 40th anniversary. If you're not familiar with this project, here's the short explanation. In 1971, Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo designed and lead an experiment in how people adapt to the situation of being powerless. The experiment gathered a group of young men and divided them into two groups, Prisoners, and Guards. A basement office was converted into the prison, and the guards were instructed to think of themselves as real prison guards, that they could not physically harm the prisoners, but that they "should try to create an atmosphere in which the prisoners felt 'powerless.'" The experiment ended before scheduled as the Guards devolved into torturers, and due to the extreme trauma the Prisoners were experiencing. The Guards created an environment of psychological torture, including sleep deprivation, being stripped naked, having paper bags placed over their heads during movement, etc.
The article linked above interviews men assigned to the role of Guards, where they describe putting on a role and letting things happen without questioning their assumptions about that role.
I was kind of running my own experiment in there, by saying, "How far can I push these things and how much abuse will these people take before they say, 'knock it off?'" But the other guards didn't stop me. They seemed to join in. They were taking my lead. Not a single guard said, "I don't think we should do this." - Dave Eshelman reflecting on his role as prison guard
These were ordinary young men, not bad people at all, who were given ultimate power with no oversight. They pulled out a roll from fiction or fantasy and played it to the best of their ability. The environment allowed and eventually encouraged such abuses. Just put yourself on autopilot and follow the road, and don't think about it.
Last week we learned of the extreme tactics used by Rupert Murdoch's employees at News of the World; hacking into the cellphones of celebrities, royals, government officials, and even murder victims and martyrs of the 9/11 attacks. Just to get a scoop. This morning similar reports are coming out about employees of The Sunday Times and The Sun, also owned by Murdoch.
If Murdoch's media organizations are, and have been, committing crimes to obtain private information about people in England, we must assume his organizations in the US use similar tactics.
I wonder, though, why the employees of these organizations would do such heinous things. Were they simply following a road that was well traveled, and not bothering to think? Had they become so acculturated to this utter lack of morals or even professional ethics, that the tactics hardly felt like crimes any more? One article from 2002 describing a NOTW employee who quit rather than fall in line, quotes the lone ethical journalist an assistant editor:
Charles Begley: Well, to be frank, Greg, as far as my future at News International is concerned, I haven't toed the line for the editor's pet project. I didn't prance around while the World Trade Centre was being bombed, for her personal amusement. I can't just stroll in.
Greg Miskiw(asst editor): Why not? Charles, that is what we do - we go out and destroy other people's lives.
Just put yourself on autopilot and follow the road, and don't think about it.
Craig Haney, one of Zimbardo's grad students, and responsible for overseeing the experiment and gathering and analyzing data from it, sums up the acculturation process.
I also realized how quickly we get used to things that are shocking one day and a week later become matter-of-fact. During the study, when we decided to move prisoners to different parts of the prison, we realized that they were going to see where they were and be reminded they're not in a prison—they're just in the psych building at Stanford. We didn't want that to happen.
So we put paper bags over their heads. The first time I saw that, it was shocking. By the next day we're putting bags on their heads and not thinking about it. That happens all the time in real correctional facilities. You get used to it. I do a lot of work in solitary-confinement units, on the psychological effects of supermax prisons. In places like that, when prisoners undergo the so-called therapy counseling, they are kept in actual cages. I constantly remind myself never to get used to seeing the cages.
We are in a position as a society where we see the metaphorical cages and paper bags that the Murdoch empire as used to gain power and money. Politicians bow before him and curry his favor, or at least try to avoid his ire.
We have a choice to make: to just follow the road, not think about it, and let Murdoch's employees continue to use the ruthless, heartless, illegal methods of information gathering, or we can remind ourselves, again, that this country, our country, The United States of America, (and the UK, our political parent) is based on freedoms. And it doesn't matter if the harassment comes from the government or just a politically motivated corporation. Hacking cell phones, tricking lawyers, illegally obtaining medical records of members of government and celebrities and dead teenagers, and all of the other tactics Murdoch's people use, have to stop. We can't let this experiment continue. Our world is traumatized.
Get off autopilot, change the road, and think about what you're doing. The consequences are too high.
