Nicholas Thompson wrote:
Carl,
I am trying to get my Psych 101 in order: Was the kitty genovese incident
the one that led to that horrendous series of experiments that demonstrate
that if you give people a shock console (or what they THINK is a shock
console) and ask them politely to do so, they will cheerfully use shocks
that they think are lethal, just so long as they are told to?
Unfortunately not - it's about how neighbors ignore horrible things
going on in their insular world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Genovese
What it really might represent is how facts are distorted to make events
look worse than they
are, especially when a newspaper's involved:
http://www.oldkewgardens.com/ss-nytimes-3.html
I use to live across from a bar, and one night I saw two guys squaring
off on a sidewalk and
a third come from behind and break a bottle over one's head. I was on
the phone to 911 in
a flash, and by the time I'd quickly described the scene unfolding to
the dispatcher, the 3 of them
were giving each other hugs and going arm-in-arm back into the bar to
drink some more.
In a similarly bad neighborhood where I flipped my bike and broke my
collarbone, I was
staggering around in a great deal of pain, but got a car to stop
(cautiously) late at night in just a few minutes,
and they were a great help in getting me to a hospital. Good Samaritans
still exist.
I'm intrigued by one line in the article, "But the same department
deliberately avoided teaching the Crusades
at Key Stage 3 (11- to 14-year-olds) because their balanced treatment of
the topic would have challenged
what was taught in some local mosques." It makes it sound like there's a
good balanced way of explaining
the Crusades as anything but a good deal of Euro-thuggery intent on
dealing a good come-uppance to
the well-entrenched local population some thousands of miles away. Would
make for good entertainment
to hear this rationale at least.
Personally, I think most grade school teachers are better off trying to
teach simpler, less contentious topics
well (even if ignoring whether Columbus was actually Catalonian and
other possibly interesting side issues)
instead of being too focused on fuzzy goals of teaching tolerance and
sensitivity, as if there were much
of that in history.
Regarding humor and genocide, I think of the Nazis as a pretty
humorless, mystical bunch.
Somehow it didn't seem to deter them from genocide.
reminds me of the stoners that jg showed us at arrowhead, who would run out
from the crowd, throw a stone, and then sink back into the anonymity of the
crowd.
Thought experiment: if all humor were forbidden, would genocide be
possible??? In the Pleistocene context, with many small groups in
desperate conflict for unpredictable resources, what was humor FOR?
N
[Original Message]
From: Carl Tollander <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 5/24/2007 2:52:28 PM
Subject: Re: [WedTech] Teachers drop the Holocaust to avoid
offending Muslims|the Daily Mail
Nick asks:
>Do we need a science of Comparative Genocideology?
Closest I've seen that starts to address this is Chapter 15 from Philip
Bobbit's book "The Shield of Achilles"
titled "The Kitty Genovese Incident and the War in Bosnia". I'll bring
it by FRIAM.
C.
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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
