Nope, sorry, I *did* go back and read the whole thing (after my first reply and before I received your next message) along with a fair number of the mutual-admiration-society posts that followed on his site.
And I still find this to be comments-from-the-peanut-gallery crap.
I don't equivocate morally. I have a strong view of what I believe would be the "right thing to do" and I *hope* that, in such a situation, I would do it. And I know what I would wish that others would do in such a situation.
But this misses the point. To sit here and say, "Me and my kind, we'd do better" is the height of hubris.
As for "sophistry," I can see few better examples than the essay in question!
Michael Marinacci <mikalm_at_ix.netcom.com> wrote:
One psychology experiment > thousands of years of aggregate human
experience, and scores of examples of how individuals and groups respond in
dramatically different ways to REAL-WORLD crisis situations? (Just one:
Remember the devastating Kobe earthquake ten years ago? How many Japanese
were looting electronics stores, raping children and shooting at relief
workers in its wake?)
Moral equivocation and sophistry. Read the whole thing and try again.
> Ok, pardon me, but ...
>
> Well, my goodness ... I just don't know what to say. I got about two
pages into it, then just couldn't stomach it any further. His tribe
wouldn't do this, and his tribe wouldn't do that. What an amazing piece of
sanctimonious, self-righteous, my-shit-doesn't-stink garbage.
>
> The author -- aside from being, and let's note this again, sanctimonious
and self-righteous -- has apparently never heard of the Stanford Prison
Experiment, which among other things, clearly showed that this stuff about
"my tribe doesn't/wouldn't do that sort of thing" is ... and how can I put
this delicately? ... hmmm ... How about unmitigated, hubris-driven
horseshit! Yeah, that about does it.
>
> For anyone not familiar, in 1971 the Stanford psyche department conducted
an experiment to see what would happen to "good" people put into a "bad"
situation. The author of the tripe essay linked below suggests that "his"
people would do wonderful things in these awful circumstances. Yeah, right.
Stanford took a group of nice, white, well-off college kids, randomly
divided them into "guards" and "prisoners," put them in a mock jail and had
them play their assigned rolls. The "guards" were given few instructions
other than "to keep order." The experiment was famously terminated
prematurely after a few days because by then the "guards" had become
sadistic and the "prisoners" were, oh, about ready to slit their wrists.
And guess what? They were all from the same "tribe."
>
> (sigh) I have so little patience for anyone who sits in the comfort of his
home office and pontificates that he (and his kind) would do better if
placed in some horrific circumstance that he has never -- and very likely
will never -- experience.
>
>
> Since certain individuals on this list are using the Katrina disaster as
yet another opportunity to indulge their own obssessive political hatreds, I
thought I'd link to this rant, which sums up my perceptions of the Root
Causes and Big Picture surrounding this event, and others that have led up
to it:
>
> http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000129.html
>
> (By the author's definitions, I'd probably be classified as a Pink/Grey
hybrid, and a lazy, extremely amateurish Sheepdog...)
>
>
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>
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>
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Received on 2005-09-06 21:47:29