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| It gets worse... |
Personally I never felt kink is benign, something other practitioners preach over and over again. If you believe that, you also think kink exists in a vacuum, where people can switch their desires on and off, depending on their mood, rather than a continuum in which degrees of sadism, masochism, selfishness and other (un)usual desires exist.
Two classical psychological experiments have revealed humanity's true nature. In the Stanford Prison Experiment volunteer students were divided into two groups: prisoner or prison ward. The test soon got completely out of control. Participants adapted to their roles so well that prisoners harassed other prisoners at the request of the guards, while the guards themselves enforced authoritarian measures and ultimately subjected some of the prisoners to psychological torture.
An earlier experiment by Stanley Milgram, in which test subjects were asked to administer electric shocks to a person in another room if they answered test questions wrong, revealed similar results. Even when the person in the other room begged the test subject not to increase the voltage - the two of them had met before the experiment - most of them continued under the assumed authority of the experimenter. In the end about two thirds of test subjects administered a deadly final shock of 450 volts, several times over.
The experiment has been repeated a number of times, every time with similar results. Over 60 percent of test subjects was prepared to inflict the final deadly voltage.
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| I warned you. It is bad. |
A few weeks ago I ran into a rather upsetting post on Tumblr which reaffirmed the very same idea. What caught my attention was the image, and in particular the look in the woman's eyes. It was a performance art experiment in which the subject promised not to move for six hours, no matter what the public did to her. After a short peaceful period, the exercise turned to violence quickly. When after six hours she walked towards the public, they fled. So much for humanity.
Below is the full text, which I reposted from darkestgreen. The orginal blog seems to be gone.
“This piece was primarily a trust exercise, in which she told viewers she would not move for six hours no matter what they did to her. She placed 72 objects one could use in pleasing or destructive ways, ranging from flowers and a feather boa to a knife and a loaded pistol, on a table near her and invited the viewers to use them on her however they wanted.
Initially, Abramović said, viewers were peaceful and timid, but it escalated to violence quickly. “The experience I learned was that … if you leave decision to the public, you can be killed… I felt really violated: they cut my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the public. Everyone ran away, escaping an actual confrontation.”
This piece revealed something terrible about humanity, similar to what Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment or Stanley Milgram’s Obedience Experiment, both of which also proved how readily people will harm one another under unusual circumstances.”
This performance showed just how easy it is to dehumanize a person who doesn’t fight back, and is particularly powerful because it defies what we think we know about ourselves. I’m certain the no one reading this believes the people around him/her capable of doing such things to another human being, but this performance proves otherwise.”
I know I am a fool. Not only do I believe the Dalai Lama when he says: "My religion is kindness" I also believe the strong to protect the weak. Just remember: I am a fool, not a saint.
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