The irony of the human condition

I'm back in Toronto now, and am fully back into the swing of things here again.  It's strange how quickly that can happen.   

Further to my posting of March 3rd regarding my visit to Israel, I'd like to offer more reflections about the human condition that this experience resurfaced for me.

I said in that last posting that to me, one of the great ironies and contradictions of the human experience is that, as a species, we can be awful; capable of atrocities of unimaginable proportion - while at the same time, we can be wonderful; capable of kindness, love, and giving of immense scale and impact.

Here is what I think it is important for us to consider: I don't believe that it is only "certain people" who are capable of great acts of goodness and others who are capable of great acts of evil.  I believe we are all capable of both.  That is, given the appropriate circumstances, we are capable of doing terrible things that inflict great harm upon others.  And, given another set of circumstances, we are capable of doing wonderful things - all of us.  I believe it is quite easy to find many examples of this as we read the pages of history, or review current news stories, or - perish the thought - review our own behaviour in current and past circumstances. 

This notion has also been backed up by research - perhaps the most famous of which is the series of experiments carried out  at Yale University in 1961 by Professor Stanley Milgram.  In those experiments, Professor Milgram had a person in a position of authority (a researcher) ask subjects to administer what they believed to be real electric shocks to people, starting at 15 volts and increasing in increments of 15 volts to a maximum of 450 volts, as a "punishment" for an incorrect answer to a question.  The  shocking results showed that on average, 65% of subjects were willing to proceed to the maximum 450 volt dosage, despite, in some cases, experiencing extreme stress or making verbal protestations about what they were doing.  This experiment has been replicated and tested a number of times.  One can find ample information about this via a simple web search.

Please do not get me wrong - in no way do I mean to minimize or legitimize in any way what the Nazis did in WWII, or any other acts of a similar nature. The Holocaust was an atrocity of grotesque proportion and intensity.  And sadly, the Holocaust does not stand alone as the only such horror.  Several other horrendous atrocities come immediately to mind in the 20th Century - such as the genocide inflicted upon Armenians during WWI, China's "Cultural Revolution" of the late 1960's, Cambodia's "killing fields" under the Khmer Rouge in the mid-1970's, the events in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990's, or the horrors of Rwanda in 1994 - to name but a few.  However, painfully, the Holocaust does stand out as by far the largest such act that I am aware of and in that way, is chilling in its scale and calculated efficiency.

What I do take from it however, is that we must always hold ourselves to account and check in with others as to the impact of our actions on them.  In my mind, the end does not justify the means.  So, if we are hurting people, we need to take stock.  One of the great sadnesses I feel about what happened in WWII and in these other horrors is that I believe that many - if not most - of the people committing the atrocities thought they were "doing the right thing" and that this was "a good idea".  Otherwise,  how could they have lived with themselves? Professor Milgram's provocative experiments sheds some light on how they could live with themselves - the majority of those people may have absolved themselves of responsibility, as they were acting on the instructions of others.  And, in this group, I believe there were many in the first group who knew that it was wrong, but simply could not get past their own fears enough to stand up to it.  However, the remainder must have truly believed they were doing a "good or right thing", which for me, is even more troubling and important as a realization.   

Here is my wish:

May we always be vigilant of our own actions and may we always hold ourselves accountable to others for the impact of our actions upon them.  I believe this is perhaps one of the most useful compasses we can use to guide us through life in a way that minimizes the pain we inflict on others and maximizes the chances that we can coexist well with each other.