I finished listening to Philip Zimbardo’s book The Lucifer Effect. It’s an unpleasant, rather boring and repetitive book that I probably wouldn’t have read if I were reading it on paper, but during my commute or while driving I operate in a different attention mode, and I listened to it from beginning to end.
It’s unpleasant, but undoubtedly important. It’s a thoroughly illustrated argument that any person is capable of cruel and vile acts under the influence of a situation, and “any” here means “any, including me”, not “any, but not me, I’m not like that”. Despite the fact that some logical transitions and arguments seemed strange and excessive to me, it all sounds, of course, convincing.
But what I’m thinking about after it is this: in creating situations where ordinary people torture, humiliate and kill other people, Zimbardo blames not only the system, but also specific people who form the system, climbing higher and higher up the chain of power (in his case it ascends to President Bush, but for my reasoning this doesn’t matter).
Suppose we reach the end of the chain, to the person who turns out to be responsible for everything. It appears that Zimbardo’s reasoning somehow doesn’t apply to them, and their motives for committing evil are different, but what are they? I don’t believe it all comes down to this person being pure evil, that would be too simple.
This question seems more important and relevant than ever to me, but Zimbardo doesn’t seem to address it at all.