[lbo-talk] Class, Kink, Sex

Mike Ballard swillsqueal at yahoo.com.au
Wed Jan 10 23:24:10 PST 2007


From: Group Minds by Doris Lessing

One is known as the Milgram experiment. I have chosen it precisely because it was and is controversial, because it was so much debated, because all the professionals in the field probably groan at the very sound of it. Yet, most ordinary people have never heard of it. If they did know about it, were familiar with the ideas behind it, then indeed we'd be getting somewhere. The Milgram experiment was prompted by curiosity into how it is that ordinary decent, kindly people, like you and me, will do abominable things when ordered to do them-like the innumer- able officials under the Nazis who claimed as an ex- cuse that they were "only obeying orders."

The researcher put into one room people chosen at random who were told that they were taking part in an experiment. A screen divided the room in such a way that they could hear but not see into the other part. In this second part volunteers sat apparently wired up to a machine that administered electric shocks of increasing severity up to the point of death, like the electric chair. This machine indicated to them how they had to respond to the shocks-with grunts, then groans, then screams, then pleas that the experiment should terminate. The person in the first half of the room believed the person in the sec- ond half was in fact connected to the machine. He was told that his or her job was to administer increas- ingly severe shocks according to the instructions of the experimenter and to ignore the cries of pain and pleas £from the other side of the screen. Sixty-two per cent of the people tested continued to administer shocks up to the 450 volts level. At the 285 volt level the guinea pig had given an agonized scream and become silent. The people administering what they believed were at the best extremely painful doses of electricity were under great stress, but went on doing it. Afterward most couldn't believe they were capa- ble of such behaviour. Some said, "Well I was only carrying out instructions."

****************************************** MB:

Isn't this mind set, this psychological character structure, this acceptance of dominance and submission at the heart of *why* the working class is socially and politically conservative?

Isn't this mind set part and parcel of the dominant ideology summed up in the Wobbly song lyric: "Shake hands with your boss and look wise"?

Ah yes, the wage-slave knows s/he had to submit, but smiles because in *knowing*, s/he is superior to the boss. S/he's being realistic and accepting of "human nature", which as we all know is constant as "the more things change, they remain the same." There is no social conditioning to give up authority to the already existing dominants. After all, the educators have been educated and know best, just like father. As children, we "learn" to live with our "natures" (as reinforced by a thousand punishments) and submit. Those who don't submit are cast out. They are abnormal.

*********** Lessing from the same piece:

Again: a group of ordinary citizens, researchers, cause themselves to be taken into prison, some as if they were ordinary prisoners, a few in the position of warders. Immediately both groups start behaving ap- propriately: those as warders begin behaving as if they were real warders, with authority, badly treat- ing the prisoners, who for their part, show typical prison behaviour, become paranoid, suspicious, and so forth. Those in the role of warders confessed after- wards they could not prevent themselves enjoying the position of power, enjoying the sensation of con- trolling the weak. The so-called prisoners could not believe, once they were out, that they had in fact behaved as they had done. ***************** As Bill Bartlett said on this thread:

And regardless of the issue of consent, I still wouldn't accept the notion that someone who gets their kicks out of inflicting pain and/or humiliation is entirely sound mentally. Perhaps I'm old fashioned or perhaps it is simply wishful thinking on my part to reject the idea that this is a normal and healthy way to interact with someone you love. But I don't like the implications and prefer to believe that it is a symptom of either a psychological, or more likely a deeper social, problem.

*****************

My opinion is that none of us escape the abuses flung at us from birth on in psy-war of the politically dominant and this is because we are brought up within an historically obsolescent set of social relations, relations based on top down political/economic power. We are taught to accept it: TINA. This is why equal political power is considered naive by both conservatives and liberals, not to mention lots of leftists.

Isn't it that the philosophers only understood the world, but the point is to change it? Change it to a society where the freedom is each is condition for the freedom of all. Not by criminalizing sexual behaviours, but as Lessing puts it:

Imagine us saying to children: "In the last fifty or so years, the human race has become aware of a great deal of information about its mechanisms; how it be- haves, how it must behave under certain circum- stances. If this is to be useful, you must learn to contemplate these roles calmly, dispassionately, dis- interestedly, without emotion. It is information that will set people free from blind loyalties, obedience to slogans, rhetoric, leaders, group emotions." Well, there it is.

What government, anywhere in the world, will happily envisage its subjects learning to free them- selves from governmental and state rhetoric and pressures? Passionate loyalty and subjection to group pressure is what every state relies on.

***************************

Best, Mike B)

Watch the communist manifestoon! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1oGIffyVVk

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