Video on Philip Zimbardo's book

[Approaching Infinity]

I was sent this video recently, an animation based on a talk by Phil Zimbardo on his book The Time Paradox (Zimbardo wrote The Lucifer Effect based on his Stanford Prison Experiment):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3oIiH7BLmg

Basically, different people have a different focus on time, which affects how we approach life: past, present, or future. He talks about education, different cultures, the effect of video games. He doesn't get into it, but I think there are probably correlations with different 'types' of humans (i.e. psychopaths and authoritarians).

 

[RyanX]

Thanks for posting this AI. It's quite dense with facts and statistics. I especially like the part about Sicilians and how they never plan because they don't have a future tense for verbs (is that really true?) :D

Anyways, I thought what he described as "present hedonists" most typically describe the psychopath or narcissist, but that not all present hedonists would be psychopaths. The idea of using video games to rewire kid's brains so that they become present hedonists is interesting - that seems to be one of the effects of these games. It might be a way of tuning their brains for programming from psychopathic leaders leading to quicker or longer lasting ponerization, perhaps?

 

[Tigersoap]

Thanks AI, nicely well made video.

It's interesting how at 2:17, where Lombardo speaks about the Italian mouvment, la Lega, who wishes to cut Italy in two is almost the same as what is happening in Belgium where the North sees the South as slackers and profiting from them. And the Southern part sounds exactly like he described !
The authoritarians in the North are really playing on the fear of the population and they're running a script which they are not even aware of !!

It's also very interesting about the part where technology reshaped our thinking about time, this is so true.

I heard an anecdote on the radio about a music film composer who was asked to do a musical score and the directors of the movie asked him how long it would take and he said "about one year" because he wanted to do something creative and take his time to really compose the music.
Of course, he was not hired for the job.

 

[Tigersoap]

I'll post it here as it talks about Mr Zimbardo.

I don't know if I'll get an answer to this but as Mr Zimbardo read Political ponerology did he revised his stance and did he add any additional comments about what he wrote in the lucifer Effect (I already read his endorsment of the book) with this new data about psychopathy ?

I may have missed it.

There was this article on the Sott about the book and how it was misleading :

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/129924-Environment+of+Evil

Thanks.

 

[Approaching Infinity]

I'll post it here as it talks about Mr Zimbardo.

I don't know if I'll get an answer to this but as Mr Zimbardo read Political ponerology did he revised his stance and did he add any additional comments about what he wrote in the lucifer Effect (I already read his endorsment of the book) with this new data about psychopathy ?

I may have missed it.

There was this article on the Sott about the book and how it was misleading :

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/129924-Environment+of+Evil

Thanks.

One thing to consider is that that sott article was written based on an article written about Zimbardo and his book, not the book itself. A lot of his statements make more sense after reading the book. The main flaw is that he doesn't talk a whole lot about psychopathy and its influence. Only after reading ponerology can you make sense of some of the stuff in his book, like the concept of "systemic evil". Basically, his book is an excellent analysis of ONE HALF of the problem: that of ordinary people. Yes, ordinary people CAN be made to do sadistic things, however that does not make them sadists. The pressures to conform, to follow authority, in a huge percentage of the population, are greater than their will to resist those influences, and can lead to behaviors that they will regret (as in Milgram's experiment and the prison experiment). So while Zimbardo hasn't offered any written revision of his stance, I think the two books are compatible to a great extent, it's just that Zimbardo's book has more holes in it, which is understandable given that it's based primarily on social psychology that hasn't been formed in the crucible of a psychopathic government structure.

 

[Tigersoap]

One thing to consider is that that sott article was written based on an article written about Zimbardo and his book, not the book itself. A lot of his statements make more sense after reading the book. The main flaw is that he doesn't talk a whole lot about psychopathy and its influence.

Hi AI,

Thank you for the reply.

It was very interesting to get a glimpse of what happened during the Prison Standford Experiment and how it parallels the torture "games" in Abu Grahib.
It is still a very disturbing idea that we are so mechanical that our personalities can shift under ponerogenic influences and become sadists.
While reading the book I could not help but to ask myself if I could resist such pressure in the same kind of situations or not.
Also I could not help but to link it to the idea of exo and endo-squeleton, which seems to be a factor in resisting such outside influences.

Like you said these two books definetely complement each other but I am glad I knew about psychopathy beforehand.

I wish that Mr Zimbardo would write something else with all this in mind ;)