Psychology & The New Heroism
Philip Zimbardo has spent decades researching evil, and is now focusing on how to teach heroism:
Well worth checking out Zimbardo's work. It's always fascinated me that he has learned how to make most good people do bad things, which totally undermines the idea that a person must be innately weak or evil to do bad; now his research on heroism is showing that heroic behaviour (ie. integrity and selflessness) can be learned. His work has profound implications: We need to grow a culture in which integrity and prosocial behaviours are rewarded, in which co-operation, mutual aid, mutual respect, integrity, peace and sustainability are highly valued across the whole population.
That means ridding ourselves of top-down hierarchies which exist to ensure that a few people have massive wealth and power by ensuring that a subset of the population has much less, but enough to have a stake in the status quo (someone has to enforce The Way Things Are on behalf of those who reap the full benefit, and better it not be the elite themselves), and the majority have little to none. We have a system set up for the disempowerment of the majority.
Why, yes, Virginia, the class system is inimical to human health.
Click to viewWell worth checking out Zimbardo's work. It's always fascinated me that he has learned how to make most good people do bad things, which totally undermines the idea that a person must be innately weak or evil to do bad; now his research on heroism is showing that heroic behaviour (ie. integrity and selflessness) can be learned. His work has profound implications: We need to grow a culture in which integrity and prosocial behaviours are rewarded, in which co-operation, mutual aid, mutual respect, integrity, peace and sustainability are highly valued across the whole population.
That means ridding ourselves of top-down hierarchies which exist to ensure that a few people have massive wealth and power by ensuring that a subset of the population has much less, but enough to have a stake in the status quo (someone has to enforce The Way Things Are on behalf of those who reap the full benefit, and better it not be the elite themselves), and the majority have little to none. We have a system set up for the disempowerment of the majority.
Why, yes, Virginia, the class system is inimical to human health.