Self-organization -- it happened at Abu Grade Prison in Iraq with the help of the conditions being created by the system and the culture of an army and country.
Susan Sontag's article in Sunday's NY Times magazine is powerfully clear and insightful. Although her focus is on the photographs and their deeper meaning there are some connects to the discussion I was reading on the List earlier today. Using the language of our discussion -- the "self-organizing" related to the digital photos being taken by soldiers and being shared by the internet gives us images that the world cannot forget. That has enabled us to put this "in the centre of the room" for discussion. (And why now the US government is trying to block further distribution.) The conditions for the "self-organization" of the torture by young folks was certainly created by military and CIA injunctions (and experience) and by a broader NA culture. Zimbardo described what can happen in his prison experiment 30 years ago. When the right conditions are created, the emergent behaviour of college students will be the kinds of things that happened in Iraq. Larry Larry Peterson Associates in Transformation Toronto, ON, Canada 416.653.4829 [email protected] www.spiritedorg.com * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected]: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
