US Soldier Training: “We brainwash them…’a little bit’”?
Irony of the day: Before a soldier can stand up for America’s ideals of individual liberty, they first submit themselves to the ultimate regime dedicated to make them resign their own individuality.
It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas: Shocking Lies, Torture and Mind Slaves
The Milgram experiments from the early 1960′s are classic (but shocking) studies that demonstrated the “sheeple-ness” of people everywhere. In the experiments — which have been replicated numerous times across multiple cultures, races and age ranges — subjects willingly engaged in administering extremely painful electric shocks to other human beings for no reason other than the fact they were ordered to do so by an apparent authority figure.
These studies have long demonstrated the “do what I’m told” mentality of approximately 70 percent of the population. Only 30 percent of the study subjects refused to torture fellow human beings when so ordered.
Each of our Individual Voices Is More Important Than We’ve Realized
by “George Washington”
I just read a study which says that even one dissenting voice can give people permission to think for themselves. Specifically:
Solomon Asch, with experiments originally carried out in the 1950s and well-replicated since, highlighted a phenomenon now known as “conformity”. In the classic experiment, a subject sees a puzzle like the one in the nearby diagram: Which of the lines A, B, and C is the same size as the line X? Take a moment to determine your own answer…
The gotcha is that the subject is seated alongside a number of other people looking at the diagram – seemingly other subjects, actually confederates of the experimenter. The other “subjects” in the experiment, one after the other, say that line C seems to be the same size as X. The real subject is seated next-to-last. How many people, placed in this situation, would say “C” – giving an obviously incorrect answer that agrees with the unanimous answer of the other subjects? What do you think the percentage would be?
The Invitation
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow; If you have been opened by life’s betrayals or
have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!
