Human Nature

Every day, bombarded by acts of cruelty, we ask ourselves: how
can men be capable of so much evil? The example stretches from Riode
Janeiro, where a journalist friend (Tim Lopes) was barbarously
tortured to death, all the way to the Abu Graib prison in Iraq where
young American men and women who always behaved in exemplary fashion
in their own small provincial communities back home end up behaving
like monsters.
In 1971, professors from Stanford University in the United
States created a sort of simulated prison in the basement of the
Psychology Department. Using no special criterion, they chose 12
students as guards and another 12 as prisoners, all from the same
social background, middle class, strict upbringing, dignified moral
values. For two weeks the "prison guards" would be given total power
over the "prisoners".
The experience had to be interrupted after a week: after a few
days the "guards" began to reveal a form of behavior that became
increasingly sadistic and abnormal, committing barbarities never
before suspected. Today, over 30 years later, the two groups still
need psychological counseling.
The idealizer of the Stanford experience, Philip Zimbardo, told
the Herald Tribune: "I was not surprised at the photos of the Abu
Graib prison in Iraq. This is not a group of rotten apples placed in
a basket of fresh fruit, but exactly the opposite: when faced with
the possibility of absolute power, people of good sentiments lose all
notion of limits and let the most primitive instincts be released.
Another interesting study was carried out by Stanley Milgram
for Yale University. A group of students was chosen to
study "punishment techniques". They stayed on one side of a glass
with a machine for electrical shocks, while on the other side of the
glass a student had to give the right answers to certain questions.
Every time he made a mistake, the students were to apply a shock,
progressively increasing the voltage, even knowing that after a
certain point they could kill their fellow student.
The machine for shocks was false and the "student" was an
actor, but the students in the experience did not know that. To
everyone's surprise, 65% of the "interrogators" reached what would
have been the mortal dose.
In short, when we are faced with situations that allow us total
and absolute control over someone else, none of us can be certain
that we will not overstep the limits. But only those who have
undergone this type of experience (and, unfortunately, I remember
certain attitudes during my youth that would include me in this
group) know that at a certain moment we completely lose control and
move beyond reason.
If this is human nature, what are we to do? An old story that
takes place in the Pyrenees – possibly a legend – tells how a certain
monk called Savin, who came to collect donations in gold for the
chapel he wanted to build, passed by the house of one of the most
feared bandits in the region. Since he had nowhere to spend the
night, he asked if he could stay there.
The bandit, surprised at the monk's courage, decided to test
him, and asked:
"You have come here to provoke me. You want me to kill you and
steal your money and make you a martyr. If the most beautiful
prostitute in town came through that door right now, would you be
able to think she wasn't beautiful and seductive?"
"No. But I would be able to control myself."
"And if a monk came in with gold to build a chapel, would you be
able to look at that gold as if it were stones?"
"No. But I would be able to control myself."
Savin and the assassin had the same instincts — good and evil
fought for them, just as they fight for every soul on the face of the
Earth. When the evildoer saw that the monk was just like him, he also
understood that he was just like Savin, and became converted.
We have good and evil before us, and it is all a matter of
control.
Nothing more than that.


"Warrior of the Light, a www.paulocoelho.com.br publication."