TORTURE -- AN EXCHANGE!

TORTURE – AN EXCHANGE!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© May 20, 2009

“Action is not about results, not about having or even winning. It is, surprisingly, about being, or about not deadening ourselves to the cruelty around us. Thus, being alive, one takes a stand.”

David Shulman, “Dark Hope” (2007)

A READER RESPONDS:

Especially good today, Jim, though I patently disagree with your assessment of the Japanese willingness to surrender before the first A-bomb dropped.

When in high school and college, reading of Milgram and Zimbardo, and having been raised a jingoist gringo and deutchophobe as well, I resisted the lessons of their experiments, that evil is indeed banal.

I've matured a bit since then. Now, I understand the real lesson of value to be taken from these insights into the weakness of the human soul is this: that the very knowing of our moral frailty can protect us from ourselves. Because of these and other lessons from social psychology on a myriad of subjects, students can discuss and explore meaning and options and thus be ready for when situations like this arise - when, for instance, they are assigned to work in an Abu Ghraib or write a memo for the President justifying torture, rendition, etc.

Stay well,

Ted

DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

Thank you for your quick response. I’ve come across both the claim Japan was willing to surrender before the dropping of the atomic bomb, and also the same data that you put forth. Historians I’ve read hedge on the point, which may be moot because the bombs were dropped and we now live in the Nuclear Age with weapons of mass destruction which can erase us from the planet. We must be alive to take a stand. That is the purpose of my little missives – to get people to think.

Be always well,

Jim