When Things Fall Apart (Throwback)

[0] An old man says to his grandson, There is a fight going on inside me. It's a terrible fight between two wolves.

[1] One is evil, angry, greedy, jealous, arrogant and cowardly.

[2] The other is good, peaceful, loving, modest, generous, honest and trustworthy.

[3] These two wolves are also fighting within you and inside every other person too.

[4] After a moment the boy asks, which wolf will win?

[5] the oldman smiles the one you feed what we assume in other people is what we get out of them our view of human nature tends to be a self -fulfilling prophecy if we assume that people are fundamentally selfish then that's how they will behave if we assume that people are fundamentally decent then maybe we can create a very different kind of society this is redker bregman I'm a Dutch historian, and I'm the author of the book, Human Kind, A Hopeful History.

[6] But this story doesn't start off hopeful.

[7] There's a very widespread assumption that human beings are basically selfish, brutal, barbarian.

[8] And this is author Rebecca Solnit.

[9] Cowardly, just sort of despicable, and that civilization is some sort of structural overlay that keeps us from realizing our true brutal natures, preventing us from doing what we would really do if we could do anything we wanted, which would be rape, loot, pillage, maraud, steel.

[10] And that idea that if you take away civilization that people are essentially evil, has been an easy cell.

[11] Introduce a little anarchy.

[12] Upset the established order and everything becomes chaos.

[13] So many of these Hollywood movies like Batman gives us a very, simplistic view of how evil really works.

[14] The story of Batman has always been about the battle of good versus evil, the two wolves, Batman and the Joker.

[15] This city just showed you that it's full of people, ready to believe in good, until their spirit breaks completely.

[16] In the film The Dark Night, the Joker tries to convince Batman that everyone, from the mayor, to the people of Gotham are all just out for themselves.

[17] I'll show you, when the chips are down, these civilized people, they'll eat each other.

[18] See, I'm not a monster.

[19] I'm just ahead of the curve.

[20] Yeah, the Joker's really interesting.

[21] He's the quintessential stereotypical depiction of evil in our culture, I would say.

[22] So the Joker believes that everybody is dark, selfish, maybe even a little evil, like how we really are.

[23] And Batman is good.

[24] These two sides are a trope as old as storytelling, an idea that plays into something called the thin veneer theory.

[25] Veneer theory is a very old idea that's deeply entrenched in Western culture.

[26] It goes like this.

[27] Supposedly our civilization is just a thin layer, just a thin veneer.

[28] And below that lies raw human nature.

[29] The theory basically says that humans deep down are fundamentally selfish.

[30] Or maybe even worse than that.

[31] Maybe we're even beasts or monsters.

[32] And the only thing keeping us from eating each other is civilization.

[33] Basically hierarchy, governments, law and order.

[34] And when that's taken away...

[35] Then when something happens, just a crisis, a natural disaster.

[36] war breaks out, then people show who they really are.

[37] Then that veneer, it cracks.

[38] Civilization goes away.

[39] And yes, our true human nature is revealed.

[40] This is an idea that many of us accept us truth.

[41] But what if veneer theory doesn't actually hold up against scrutiny?

[42] What if it's a story we tell ourselves?

[43] What if it's just justifying shackles, authoritarianism, and overlords, justifying institutional violence, bosses, justifying inequality, holding us all in place, justifying lack of rights and freedoms, hierarchies, social controls.

[44] Things fall apart.

[45] That is why you have prisons and you have laws, you have borders, and you have standards.

[46] And the science, the evidence, the sociology doesn't really support that, but a lot of people believe it, and it props up a lot of social structures that I think themselves are pretty brutal.

[47] Istopia is a world where the police will not protect you.

[48] Authorities in China are strengthening their efforts to stamp out unrest over stringent COVID measures.

[49] Iran has been using death sentences as a way to intimidate people.

[50] The American people know that there is rising crime across this country.

[51] You have actual gang members killing people in cold blood and broad daylight.

[52] But who did they want to go after?

[53] Donald Trump.

[54] The world can often feel like a cold, brutal place.

[55] If you turn on the news or scroll social media, you're probably going to see dark stories about things happening in the world.

[56] It can feel isolating and scary and a lot of times hopeless.

[57] It can be easy to believe that the only thing keeping us from total chaos is that thin veneer of civilization.

[58] But what if the thin veneer is what's causing a problem?

[59] A fragile shell, a cover that's actually preventing us from having a better world.

[60] On this episode of ThruLine from NPR, how we've come to believe veneer theory and the stories that make us fear one another, and how it might be time to tell a different story, to feed the other wolf.

[61] Hi, my name is Grace Brown, and I'm from Upland, Indiana, and you're listening to ThruLine from NPR.

[62] Part 1.

[63] The Weaker Springs of Human Nature.

[64] To judge from the history of mankind, we shall be compelled to conclude that the fiery and destructive passions of war reign in the human breast with much more powerful sway than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace.

[65] These are words from the Federalist Papers, a series of essays that argued in favor of the Constitution of the United States of America.

[66] And that to model our political systems upon speculations of lasting tranquility is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character.

[67] The essays paint a bleak picture of human nature that without government and civilization, people would hurt each other whenever the opportunity presented itself.

[68] A fondness for power is implanted in most men, and it is natural to abuse it when acquired.

[69] And this is actually something that the founding fathers really had in mind when they were designing the Constitution.

[70] We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union.

[71] And that's why they wanted to create this elaborate balance of power, because they believe that if they wouldn't have that veneer of civilization, that, you know, hell will break loose.

[72] One great error is that we suppose mankind is more honest than they are.

[73] Our prevailing passions are ambition and interest.

[74] Alexander Hamilton.

[75] How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten spotting the Caribbean.

[76] Alexander Hamilton was one of the main authors of the Federalist Papers.

[77] He's been immortalized in recent years by Lynn Manuel Miranda's musical, and those were his words you've been hearing.

[78] A fondness for power is implanted in most men, and it is natural to abuse it when acquired.

[79] He's seen as an immigrant, an innovator, and a patriot.

[80] And while those things may be true, what's often left out of his story is that he was very pessimistic about human nature.

[81] And that wasn't exactly original or unique for his time.

[82] He was articulating a very old view of human beings as fundamentally bad and in need of civilization to behave one.

[83] well.

[84] This idea shows up in societies all over the world.

[85] But in the West, where we're going to focus this episode, the idea was most politely captured by one of Europe's most famous philosophers.

[86] Thomas Hobbes.

[87] During the time, men live without a common power to keep them all in awe.

[88] They are, in that conditions, called war, and such a war as is of a war as is of every man against every man. And he argued that back in the state of nature, we lived lives that were, in his famous words, nasty, brutish and short.

[89] In such condition, there is no place for industry because the fruit thereof is uncertain.

[90] And the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

[91] It was only when we gave up our liberty and we appointed powerful ruler that he called a Leviathan.

[92] It was only then that we established peace.

[93] So yes, we lost our liberty, we gained security in return.

[94] That's the ground bargain that we made with the rise of civilization.

[95] Thomas Hobbes thought a strong government was necessary to keep us from killing each other, from devolving into a state of mutual destruction.

[96] And if you look at the time and place he was born, it's easy to understand why he might have seen the world this way.

[97] Thomas Hobbs was an Englishman who lived during the civil wars, which were bloody and nasty in that country, and they're often blamed for shaping his political philosophy.

[98] From 1642 to 1651, English elites fought each other in a series of wars over governance and religious freedom.

[99] Thomas Hobbes lived during these brutal, bloody wars.

[100] But author Rebecca Solnit argues that a deeper backdrop was that Thomas Hobbs lived in a very Christian society.

[101] In which one of the fundamental beliefs was that somehow we fell from grace, were kicked out of paradise, and were fallen, and somehow had to be redeemed through Jesus and the church.

[102] So Christianity itself has, if not a thin veneer theory, at least a theory that human beings are kind of, of a mess that needs some cleanup work.

[103] Hobbs' idea caught on quickly and influenced politicians and philosophers for generations all the way up to Alexander Hamilton.

[104] He'd put into words long -held beliefs about human nature, and he did this at a time when Europeans were colonizing much of the earth and looking for justifications.

[105] Hobbs' idea that somehow you need authoritarian structures to control people corresponds really well to imperialism and colonialism people who saw themselves as civilization imposing order on chaos.

[106] It's been strongly developed in Western culture.

[107] Since the dawn of civilization, obviously rulers have always looked for justifications of their power.

[108] And this has always been one of the most logical and straightforward explanations.

[109] Like, we need to be in power to protect you from yourself.

[110] A hundred years after Thomas Hobbes published his famous book, Leviathan, another philosopher came along.

[111] And his name was Jean -Jacques Rousseau.

[112] Civilization is an hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.

[113] And in almost every single way, he believed the opposite of what Hobbes had argued.

[114] Every man having been born free and master of himself, no one else may under any pretext.

[115] Whatever subject him without his consent.

[116] According to Jean -Jacques Rousseau, our life in the state of nature was actually pretty good.

[117] We were quite healthy, we had lots of exercise, we had a very diet, and it was pretty peaceful as well.

[118] But then everything went wrong when we gave up our liberty, and we invented private property, and we settled down in villages and cities, and we created this thing called civilization.

[119] Human beings in a state of nature are pure and innocent and good and society is what corrupts them.

[120] So according to Rousseau, civilization was not what has saved us, but it was our downfall.

[121] This big debate between Hobbes and Rousseau, it really lies at the heart of our biggest political discussions, between the realists and the idealists, between conservatives and progressives.

[122] You know, very often when we're debating each other on Twitter, it's basically Hobson -Rousseau all over again.

[123] What is the essential nature of humanity?

[124] Are we inherently good or inherently bad?

[125] Are we more prone to being selfish individuals or helpful members of communities?

[126] Maybe the way we collectively answer these questions dictates how we structure our society.

[127] Our theory of human nature has absolutely massive implications for pretty much everything.

[128] So just to give a couple of examples, education.

[129] If you believe that kids are fundamentally lazy and selfish, then you need a quite hierarchical schooling system.

[130] But if you think that kids are naturally curious and creative, then maybe you don't need all that homework.

[131] Maybe you can just give kids the freedom to decide for themselves what they find interesting.

[132] If you are the CEO of a company, if you believe that your employees are fundamentally selfish, well, what are you going to do?

[133] You need a lot of bureaucracy probably.

[134] Maybe You're going to place cameras to make sure that your employees don't steal equipment.

[135] If you believe that your employees are fundamentally cooperative and actually want to do what's best for the company, then maybe you can work in self -directed teams and you don't need all those managers.

[136] And you can actually rely on people's intrinsic motivation.

[137] So again and again and again, our view of human nature has pretty practical implications for how we live our lives.

[138] It's very useful to the authorities and people invested in those structures to believe in their own value and necessity.

[139] And essentially, it's a justification for hierarchy, for authority, for the violence that authorities impose, which is always justified as like, oh, we're bombing these people to prevent violence.

[140] The police are shooting these people to prevent violence.

[141] We're beating these people up to prevent disorder.

[142] And all of this brings us back to the essential debate.

[143] Who was right?

[144] Was Thomas Hobbes right?

[145] Or was Jean -Jacques Rousseau right?

[146] Was civilization our salvation?

[147] Or has it been our doom?

[148] The truth is, Hobbs and Rousseau were both kind of just making stuff up.

[149] They had very little evidence for their viewpoints.

[150] Modern science was in his infancy when they were alive.

[151] These were just ideas that were just ideas.

[152] popped into their heads.

[153] So for a long time, this was just a philosophical question.

[154] And there was not really a way to resolve the debate.

[155] But now that's different.

[156] Now we've got the evidence from modern anthropology, archaeology, and I think we can actually say who was more or less right.

[157] Coming up, we revisit one of the most famous psychological experiments ever conducted and find out why we feed the wolf we feed.

[158] Hey, this is Bilal Dattery from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and you're listening to ThruLine on NPR.

[159] If you're listening as a subscriber to ThruLine Plus, we just want to say, thank you.

[160] And if you're not yet a subscriber and want to learn more about how to listen to the show without any sponsor breaks, head over to plus .npr .org slash throughline.

[161] Becoming a plus subscriber helps support all of our work at ThruLine.

[162] So we hope you'll join.

[163] Now, back to the show.

[164] Part 2.

[165] Feeding the Wolf.

[166] As a psychologist, I have focused my career about understanding how ordinary people or good people get seduced to doing bad things, evil things, if you will.

[167] The voice you just heard is American psychologist Philip Zimbardo, speaking to a Dutch public broadcaster, VPRO, back in 2011.

[168] And I have focused on trying to understand the power of situations and systems to dominate individuals.

[169] Maybe you've never heard of him.

[170] But the study he conducted back in 1971 at Stanford University might ring a bell.

[171] These are not prisoners, and this is not a prison.

[172] They are college students, and they were part of an astonishing experiment.

[173] The Stanford Prison Experiment is the most famous experiment in the history of psychology.

[174] And it was done by a young psychologist named Philip Zimbardo.

[175] And he had a pretty simple idea.

[176] He recruited 24 students and he said to 12 of them, you're going to be the guards.

[177] And to the other 12, you're going to be the prisoners.

[178] And so he put these prisoners in a fake prison in the basement of Stanford University.

[179] and his team wanted to see what happened when people either became guards or prisoners.

[180] The Prisoner's Rights Movement had started a decade before, and Zimbardo wanted to show how the U .S. prison system was failing.

[181] There, they were led to a simulated prison block consisting of three small cells, a narrow hallway, and a closet designed for solitary confinement.

[182] This would be their entire world for two weeks.

[183] The experiment was filmed by Zimbardo and his research team.

[184] And on the first day, it was mostly uneventful.

[185] The students, playing prisoners, were taken and put into their cells.

[186] But then, on the second date of the experiment, things began to unravel.

[187] There was a very sharp change in the whole nature of what was happening in that prison.

[188] There was a rebellion among the inmates.

[189] They refused to eat.

[190] They barricade themselves in their cells.

[191] They started ripping off their numbers, started screaming out obscenities at the guards.

[192] And that was countered by the guards with fire extinguishers.

[193] And after that, the guards, you know, basically did all kinds of terrible things.

[194] They tried to break their subordinates.

[195] The guards then began to escalate their use of power.

[196] Some of them had prisons clean out toilet bowls with their bare hands to do things which were really degrading and humiliating.

[197] And the prisons did it without complaining, just did it because this is what they had to do.

[198] And it was actually one inmate who really, you know, went ballistic.

[199] He started screaming, and I'm quoting here, I mean, Jesus Christ, I'm burning up inside, don't you know?

[200] I want to get out.

[201] This is all fucked up inside.

[202] I can't stand another night.

[203] I just can't take it anymore.

[204] So that's one of the reasons that the Stamford Prison Experiment became so famous because if you just look at the video of it, it's very, very powerful.

[205] And you think, what happened to these guys?

[206] And the story, as it's been told for, well, half a century, was that these, guards, they initially described themselves as hippies, pacifists, right, who would never heard a fly.

[207] But then in the context of being in that prison and being handed this power over the prisoners, they turned into monsters.

[208] So it's a very powerful illustration of veneer theory, right?

[209] These boys showed who they really were once they were in that situation.

[210] The results of the Stanford Prison Experiment made it into almost all psychology textbooks, and its essential takeaway that, given the right context, human beings will be quick to act brutally, was often accepted uncritically.

[211] That's basically the story that's been taught for decades and decades.

[212] It's incredibly famous in the United States, in Europe, in Asia.

[213] I recently visited Japan.

[214] Everyone knows about the Stamford Prison Experiment there as well.

[215] But why was the conclusion of this study so easy to believe and accept?

[216] Well, according to Rutgers, It's because it provides, quote, scientific evidence for what Thomas Hobbes was arguing centuries before.

[217] The way I see it is that they were just telling a very old story with basically the same message.

[218] People deep down are just rotten.

[219] We are rotten to the core.

[220] But when Rutger was writing his book, Humankind, a hopeful history, he wanted to find out whether anyone had actually really looked into the Stanford Prison Experiment.

[221] And that's when he...

[222] Stumbled upon this study published in full.

[223] French.

[224] It's a study by a sociologist called Tibala Taxier.

[225] The title in French is the history of a lie.

[226] It was first published in 2018.

[227] This is astounding.

[228] He was the first one to go into the archives of the Stanford Prison Experiment to study what really happened.

[229] For the most part, Zimbardo's results were accepted.

[230] No one had gone into the source materials to investigate it further.

[231] There was the archival material that could be looked at.

[232] Le Texier got on a plane and flew to California, went to Stanford, and did just that.

[233] And what he found was really, really shocking.

[234] Le Texier spent hours and hours looking through videos and documents that showed...

[235] These students were being pressured all the time to behave as nasty and sadistic as possible.

[236] And they weren't all up for it.

[237] Some student guards said things like, if it were up to me, I would just, you know, sit here and play hard and make music together with the inmates.

[238] The guards then began to escalate their use of power.

[239] But that's obviously not the result that Philip Zimbardo wanted.

[240] So he, together with one of his co -researcher, a man named David Jaffe, they basically pulled a huge amount of tricks to convince these students to start behaving in a really terrible way.

[241] David Jaffe, Zimbardo's co -researcher, also played the role of prison.

[242] In one of the recordings from the Stanford Archives, you can hear him pushing one of the guards and experiment to be tough on the inmates.

[243] But we really want to get you active and involved because the guards have to know that every guard is going to be what we call a tough guard.

[244] Jaffe tells the participant he has to be a tough guard to which the participant responds, I'm not too tough.

[245] You have to kind of try and get it in you.

[246] Well, I don't know.

[247] This experiment was supposed to show that in a prison, guards would naturally begin to act sadistically towards prisoners.

[248] But when some of the students playing guards refused to treat prisoners badly, the experimenters appealed to their values.

[249] And so they said to the students, like, you're progressive, right?

[250] You want this.

[251] You also, you know, want the criminal justice system in the U .S. to be reformed quite radically.

[252] So, come on, play along with this.

[253] We need these results.

[254] It's really important for the workings of the experiment because whether or not we can make this thing seem like a prison which is the aim of the thing depends largely on the guards.

[255] If the subjects already sort of know if they can guess what the point of the experiment is then obviously the experiment is not very scientific.

[256] then it's just a play that people are participating in.

[257] This is like the opposite of science.

[258] I asked Le Texier for my book if there's still something we can learn from the Stanford Prison Experiment, and he said, well, basically everything that can go wrong in science, that's what we learn about it.

[259] Zimbardo has acknowledged that there were problems with the methodology of his study, but he defends the study's conclusions and says the experiment was a cautionary tale of what would happen to anyone if we underestimate the power of social roles and systemic structures.

[260] And how did this end up affecting Zimbardo's career?

[261] Oh, actually, he had a fantastic career.

[262] He became the head of the American Psychological Association.

[263] He's the most famous living psychologist in the world today.

[264] What makes people go wrong?

[265] Interestingly, I asked this question when I was a little kid.

[266] I want to share with you some ideas about the secret power of time in a very short...

[267] These are some clips of Zimbardo giving talks on a range of topics.

[268] He's also played by Billy Crudup in the 2015 feature film about the Sanford Prison Experiment, which currently has an 84 % rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

[269] The experiment clearly has entertainment value.

[270] So 30 years after Zimbardo, another group of psychologists adapted the idea to television.

[271] In 2001, Professor Alex Haslam and Steve Riker set up another experimental situation involving men assigned to the roles of guards and prisoners.

[272] This experiment was filmed by the BBC.

[273] The BBC had an idea of creating a new reality television show.

[274] And they had heard about the Stanford Prison Experiment.

[275] They had seen the footage and they were like, this is great television, right?

[276] This should be great for ratings.

[277] So they asked two psychology professors to replicate the Stanford Prison Experiment, which they would then turn into a reality TV show.

[278] This is Alex Haslam, one of those psychologists, speaking about the experiment.

[279] Whereas in Zimbardo's study, he didn't have much, or much or any kind of ethical oversight of the project as a whole.

[280] In our study, we had an ethical committee on site that was monitoring all aspects of the study and were explicitly there to ensure that we didn't have any of the kind of abuses of the form that were manifest in Zimbardo's study.

[281] So there would be no interference in the experiment.

[282] They would just leave the prisoners alone and watch what would happen.

[283] The experiment took place over the course of nine days.

[284] Cameras were rolling the entire time.

[285] And they turned all that tape into four episodes of reality TV.

[286] I have watched the whole BBC prison experiment.

[287] I'll never get those hours back.

[288] It was the most boring thing I've ever seen.

[289] Nothing happens.

[290] It just goes on and on and on for hours.

[291] It's so incredibly boring.

[292] Some prisoners escaped from their cells.

[293] But there was no abuse from the guards, no uprising.

[294] The fact is, the results of the Stanford Prison Experiment were not replicated.

[295] Without coaching from the people running the experiment, the guards didn't become abusive bullies.

[296] Still, despite the BBC show and La Texier's review, the Stanford Prison Experiment still persist as an example of thin veneer theory.

[297] The idea that without the constraints of civilization, humans would basically easily, each other.

[298] Why do you think this study has been so persistent?

[299] Like, even though people have clearly debunked it, why do people still believe in it?

[300] It's just exciting.

[301] It's a fantastic, compelling story.

[302] Why do people binge watch Game of Thrones?

[303] Why do we all love succession?

[304] It's just, it's a fantastic story.

[305] It resonates with us on a very deep level.

[306] There's this concept in medicine, you know, the notion of a placebo.

[307] You know, you give someone a pill, and if only the person believes that that pill will cure him, then, you know, it may actually do.

[308] We become the wolf we feed.

[309] We humans, we become the stories that we tell ourselves.

[310] Our stories are never just stories.

[311] They are self -fulfilling prophecies.

[312] What happens when the stories we tell ourselves actually impact real life situations?

[313] What can we learn when we look at events where the thin veneer of civilization is removed during war or natural disasters?

[314] How do human beings actually respond to each other when things fall apart?

[315] Coming up, we revisit one of the greatest natural disasters in U .S. history and look behind its headlines.

[316] I'm Yvette, Alison Herman.

[317] I'm in Long Beach, California, and you're listening to ThruLine from NPR.

[318] Part 3.

[319] When the elites panic.

[320] Every person is hereby order to immediately evacuate the city of New Orleans or if no other...

[321] This is not the strongest part of the hurricane yet, and you can see...