Mick Hartley

Inner Heroes

Psychologist Philip Zimbardo has a strange article at CiF:

Over the last three decades, my research and that of my colleagues has demonstrated the relative ease with which ordinary people can be led to behave in ways that qualify as evil. We have put research participants in experiments where powerful situational forces - anonymity, group pressures or diffusion of personal responsibility - led them blindly to obey authority and to aggress against innocent others after dehumanising them.

My recent book, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, describes the radical transformations that took place among college students playing randomly assigned roles of prisoners and guards in a mock prison created at Stanford University. In 1971, I wanted to understand better what happens when you put good people in a bad place, like prison. To do so, it was necessary to conduct a controlled experiment, to select a group of volunteers who were ordinary young men with no history of crime or violence, and then assign them to play the roles of prisoner or guard in a two-week experiment in which we could observe and record everything that happened.

Those assigned to be prisoners lived in their cells and on the prison yard all the time; the guards worked eight-hour shifts. The experiment had to be terminated after only six days because nearly half the prisoners had emotional breakdowns in response to the extreme stress and psychological torments sadistically invented by their guards. The situational forces had overwhelmed many of these good, intelligent college students.

I posted a while back on Zimbardo and his notorious Stanford prison experiment. It's worth quoting a passage from Zimbardo's book to get some context about exactly why the experiment had to be terminated:

Dozens of people had come down to our "little shop of horrors," seen some of the abuse or its effects, and said nothing. A prison chaplain, parents, and friends had visited the prisoners, and psychologists and others on the parole board saw a realistic prison simulation, an experiment in action, but did not challenge me to stop it. The one exception erupted just before the time of the prison-log notation on Night 5. About halfway through the study, I had invited some psychologists who knew little about the experiment to interview the staff and participants, to get an outsiders' evaluation of how it was going. A former doctoral student of mine, Christina Maslach, a new assistant professor at the University of California at Berkeley, came down late Thursday night to have dinner with me. We had started dating recently and were becoming romantically involved. When she saw the prisoners lined up with bags over their heads, their legs chained, and guards shouting abuses at them while herding them to the toilet, she got upset and refused my suggestion to observe what was happening in this "crucible of human nature." Instead she ran out of the basement, and I followed, berating her for being overly sensitive and not realizing the important lessons taking place here.

You get the picture. Zimbardo had set up his "little shop of horrors", and managed to get one set of students to comprehensively - under his guardianship - humiliate and mistreat another set of students: "prisoners lined up with bags over their heads, their legs chained, and guards shouting abuses at them while herding them to the toilet". All part of his little experiment, and hey, he's finding out some important stuff here, and not incidentally making a big name for himself in the world of psychology. And he simply can't see what's happening under his nose; he can't see his own responsibility for the nightmare that he's created. He even thinks it's a good idea to bring this woman down - a woman he's trying to impress - to have a look. He's proud of what he's done. It's not until she points out some home truths that he starts to think that maybe the experiment should be stopped:

"It is terrible what YOU are doing to those boys!" she yelled at me. Christina made evident in that one statement that human beings were suffering, not prisoners, not experimental subjects, not paid volunteers. And further, I was the one who was personally responsible for the horrors she had witnessed (and which she assumed were even worse when no outsider was looking). She also made clear that if this person I had become — the heartless superintendent of the Stanford prison — was the real me, not the caring, generous person she had come to like, she wanted nothing more to do with me.

And now here we are, over 35 years later, and he's still living off the name he made for himself back then - and still believes he discovered some important truths. Not about himself, of course, not about about how individuals, in the name of scientific research and of furthering their careers, can subject a group of young people to the most traumatic and humiliating experiences - "half the prisoners had emotional breakdowns" - and think they're doing something praiseworthy. No no, that's not how psychology works. It's about them, the subjects, and How Good People Turn Evil. That's the students who turn evil of course - not the psychologists.

It's a collection of banalities, though. Back to his CiF article:

This body of work challenges the traditional focus on the individual's inner nature and personality traits as the primary - and often sole - factors in understanding human failings. Instead, I argue that while most people are good most of the time, they can readily be led to act antisocially because most are rarely solitary figures improvising soliloquies on the empty stage of life. On the contrary, people are often in an ensemble of different players on a stage with various props, scripts and stage directions. Together, they comprise situations that can dramatically influence behaviour.

Most institutions invested in an individualistic focus hold up the person as sinner, culpable, afflicted, insane or irrational. Programmes of change follow a medical model of rehabilitation - therapy, re-education and treatment - or a punitive model of incarceration and execution. But all such programmes are doomed to fail if the main causal agent is the situation or system, not the person.

So....people can be led to act antisocially because of peer pressure? - because of their social milieu? And we're to believe that this is a challenging new viewpoint that brave pioneering psychologists have just recently discovered? Rather than, say, a statement of the obvious with which anyone who's studied human behaviour for more than ten minutes would readily agree.

Two kinds of paradigm shift are required. First, we need to adopt a public health model for prevention of violence, bullying, prejudice and more that identifies vectors of social disease to be inoculated against. Second, legal theory must reconsider the extent to which powerful situational and systemic factors should be taken into account in punishing individuals.

Oooh, paradigm shifts! That first one should be no problem at all: "we need to adopt a public health model for prevention of violence, bullying, prejudice and more that identifies vectors of social disease to be inoculated against". Right. It's a wonder that no one's thought of this before. All we need to do is identify vectors of social disease, and then inoculate against them. What could be more straightforward?

The second one - well, this is perhaps not quite as revolutionary as Zimbardo seems to believe. Legal theory already takes into account "situational and systemic factors". But in general, and contrary to the thrust of Zimbardo's argument, it's considered a good idea, in liberal societies, to preserve some notion of personal responsibility.

At the end, he talks of heroism:

I propose a situational perspective for heroism, just as I do for evil: a situation that can inflame the hostile imagination and evil in some of us can inspire the heroic imagination in others. We must teach people to think of themselves as "heroes in waiting", ready to take heroic action in a particular situation that may occur only once in their lifetime.

Heroism, though, does rather depend on the exercise of personal responsibility: indeed it's predicated on the idea that people take responsibilty for their own actions. Which isn't quite what he's been arguing for. Maybe he wants people to take responsibility for their good actions, but blame all their bad actions on "situational and systemic factors". Well, it's a common enough viewpoint.

[Norm has posted on the same article.]

Ruth Brown

Two minutes of Little Miss Rhythm at the Apollo: "Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean".

The Moment Art Changed Forever

I read somewhere a few years back that conceptual art is like jokes without the humour. I was reminded of this at the latest Tate Modern blockbuster, "Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia: The Moment Art Changed Forever".

If it wasn't for Duchamp's urinal, this would be a minor exhibition of three artists who happened to be friends, and who produced some mildly interesting work in the early years of the 20th Century, but were better known for the social milieu they inhabited - which included most of the major figures of Dada and, later, Surrealism - than for their original contributions. Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase" (1912) is a kind of extreme Cubism. Man Ray is probably best remembered as a photographic pioneer. Picabia....well, there's some decent enough work here that I wasn't familiar with, but nothing particularly outstanding.

From the exhibition guide:

Duchamp and Picabia first met in Paris in 1911. They shared an irreverent and anarchistic attitude towards life and art, and quickly became friends. They went to New York in 1915 and got to know Man Ray, who was also searching for an individual form of expression. Together the three men helped to create the Dada movements in New York and, later, Paris, and remained friends throughout their lives.

Although the three men followed their own paths and at times were geographically widely separated, they enjoyed a special affinity. They socialised together, discussed ideas and collaborated on art works and publications. They also responded to each other’s interests with wit and a sense of fun.

Wit and a sense of fun. Which is really what's missing from this show - and to the whole way that Duchamp et al have come to be honoured.

Let's cut to the chase: the heart of the exhibition. The guide takes up the story:

Duchamp set himself the challenge of making art works that were not works of art, as traditionally understood.

He decided that an art work did not need to be either visually appealing or even made by the artist. Accordingly, he chose a number of ‘readymade’ objects, of no aesthetic merit, and gave them the usual attributes of a work of art: a title, a named author, a date of execution, and a viewing public or owner. His Fountain – an ordinary urinal laid on its back – was rejected from an exhibition in 1917. This, and more importantly, the ensuing debate about what constitutes a work of art, is now seen as a turning point in the history of modernism.

Well yes, but isn't there something missing from this account? Something hinted at by the nature of the object chosen? That he was, you know,....taking the piss. That there was an element of, ahem, humour in this.

You won't find humour here, though. No institution outside of a mosque has so thoroughly banished humour as the modern art gallery.

As stated in the guide, the usual significance of the urinal is presented by the art establishment as opening the debate on "what constitutes a work of art", and the self-serving conclusion usually drawn is that - hooray! - there are really no criteria beyond what the artist decides is art. This, as sure as an unmade bed is an unmade bed, has led to the current proliferation of rubbish, and to the "cult of the artist": if you've no criteria to judge by, then a work gains significance simply by having been produced by an artist, just as a cult object gains significance through having been associated with a cult leader. The other side of this - that if art is whatever you want it to be, then it's nothing at all, and we can abandon the whole charade - is somehow forgotten, though it could be argued that this is more what Duchamp had in mind, especially given his subsequent abandonment of art in favour of playing chess.

Duchamp's other main claim to fame is the Mona Lisa with the moustache. Oh yes. It "epitomises the iconoclasm of the Dada era". He paints a moustache on the Mona Lisa, and scrawls LHOOQ on it, which sounds - quelle hilarité! - like "elle a chaud au cul", or "she has a hot arse". Only in France, one is tempted to think, and only by art historians, could such a conceit be deemed to be of such profound significance.

Imagine the Benny Hill exhibition. "With his exaggerated depiction of male lust, Hill slyly subverts our notions of what it is to be a man, and makes us question our preconceived notions of gender. The speeded-up action as the grotesque male chases scantily-clad females across the English countryside - a trope originally constructed in the appropriation of land by the wealthy for their aristocratic pleasures, and now reduced in Hill's subversive vision to a playground of rampant libido - deliberately emphasises the mechanical and stereotypical notion of sexual pursuit as conceived by the dominant patriarchal ideology, and draws our attention to what had previously been hidden in the relationship between sexes, and, of course, between classes."

And it's about as funny as drawing a moustache on the Mona Lisa.

The last galleries chronicle the later years of our chums. Man Ray photographed a lot of female nudes. It was always one of his favourite things, and who can blame him. Picabia painted a series of, as the guide puts it, "what appeared to be kitsch paintings of nudes". These were copied from, um, gentlemen's magazines. As for Duchamp, well, there's Etant donnés, an installation described as a "disturbing piece". As it is, in a way. You go into a room, look through a peephole, and see the lower part of a woman's body, legs spread, shaved pudenda pointing towards you. And that's it. As the blurb has it, this is a "culmination of Duchamp's lifelong interest in eroticism and perception". Ah yes. A lot of people nowadays spend much of their time on the internet exploring their lifelong interest in eroticism and perception.

So....they all turned into dirty old men. Well, nothing wrong with that - some of my best friends are dirty old men - but it's a less than inspiring end to the show. And, to be honest, it's a less than inspiring show.

The Second Danish Boycott

The Danish boycott campaign is slowly building momentum, as reported in Arab News:

E-mails and text messages calling for the boycott of Danish products have been circulating this week in the Kingdom following the decision this month by 17 Danish newspapers to republish defamatory cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).

The cartoons — first published in a Danish newspaper in 2006 — caused outrage across the Muslim world, sparking a boycott of Danish products, which, according to various media sources, led to economic losses of over $1 billion.

Danish newspapers republished the cartoons in support of one of the men who drew the cartoons and who escaped an assassination attempt earlier this year. Calls for a new boycott are also being made on the Internet’s popular networking website, Facebook. Over 20 local and international groups have formed calling for a boycott.

In a move that is thought to escalate tensions, Wolfgang Schauble, German interior minister, yesterday expressed respect for the Danish newspapers’ decision to reprint the controversial cartoons and suggested that all European newspapers should follow suit.

A survey made by the Arab News revealed that people have slowly begun to react against the publication of the cartoons. Unlike the first boycott, grocery shops and supermarkets have so far not hung signs saying they do not sell Danish products.

Ahmad Awad, manager of the Al-Manar supermarket, said that since last week some people have begun to ask about Danish goods.

“Following the last boycott, we have started to slowly bring back Danish products,” he said.

Awad, who did not know of the reprinting of the cartoons, said, “If it is true, then we would certainly stop selling products from any country that have published the cartoons.”

Which suggests that Wolfgang Schauble's suggestion is a good one: let Awad stop selling products from every Western country. Surely a little solidarity with the Danes is called for here.

And, as predicted, Sudan is at the forefront of the protests:

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir declared yesterday that he would bar Danes from Sudan and told tens of thousands of people at a government-backed rally that the Muslim world should boycott Denmark because of a reprinted cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad.

"We urge all Muslims around the world to boycott Danish commodities, goods, companies, institutions, organisations and personalities," Mr Bashir told the crowd outside the Republic Palace in Khartoum.

Mr Bashir vowed that "not a single Danish foot will from now on desecrate the land of Sudan".

Desecrate the land of Sudan??

Towers

The castle at Green Lanes looms over the mean streets of Stoke Newington:

Entrapment Bluster

A follow-up in Arab News to yesterday's story of a professor who was lured into meeting a woman (an unrelated woman!) alone, and was subsequently arrested by members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice:

The head of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice in Makkah has hit back at claims that the commission conspired against a professor who was sentenced to jail for eight months and 180 lashes for being in a state of “khulwa” (seclusion) with an unrelated woman, Al-Madinah newspaper reported yesterday.

Ahmad Kasim Al-Ghamdi, head of the commission in Makkah, said the vice cops had received a number of complaints from several girls about the professor, adding that they had also recorded some of his phone calls and that he was arrested in a state of khulwa.

Al-Ghamdi said that the commission had presented all its evidence to the Board of Investigation and General Prosecution, which took the case to court.

He also said that claims made by Abdullah Al-Sanusi, the professor’s lawyer, to Al-Madinah newspaper that his client had been framed and that the commission had sent the girl to entrap the professor were incorrect.

No surprise there then. It's just a shame that the article is titled "Virtue Commission Refutes Professor’s Entrapment Claims". No they didn't. Refutes implies that they succeeded. Rebuts is the word they're looking for - though a more accurate headline would be "Virtue Commission Attempts To Bluster Its Way Out After Being Caught Red-Handed In Frame-Up".

The Luohan in Room 33

When I used to work near the British Museum I'd regularly pop in during my lunch break. I started out exploring different galleries, with some kind of auto-didactic dream that over the course of the years I'd get to familiarise myself with the whole history of human civilisation, but frankly my enthusiasm for self-improvement didn't last long. The Egyptian stuff, for instance....too many parties of school children, too many mummies, too much bombast. After a while I developed a routine: through the Great Court and up to Room 33, the Asia Gallery, at the back, on the first floor; then a right turn to the end (it's a long room)...and there he was.

He's a luohan, or arhat, from the Liao Dynasty (AD 907–1125). Someone who's realised the goal of nirvana. The description underneath notes his "sombre dignity and power", which seems about right to me, though I'd maybe lose the "sombre" - nothing grim about this fellow. He radiates serenity, calm, and yes, power. Here he is in the British Museum catalogue, and here posing - somewhat unflatteringly, I think - against a white background.

This figure was made in the Liao dynasty, following the sculptural traditions developed in the Tang dynasty (AD 618-906). It was found with seven others, in a cave in Yi county, Hebei province, northern China. All but one are now in Western museums.

A luohan (Sanskrit: arhat) was a disciple of the Buddha. The luohans had magical powers and could stay alive indefinitely to preserve the Buddha's teachings. In China, they were often shown in groups of sixteen.

Sets of luohan figures were placed along the side walls of a temple's entrance, or in groups of pairs on either side of the main Buddha figure. To show respect for the humanity and compassion in their teachings, they were often made to look like particular individuals, with strongly characterized features. This example, with his calm, serious face, represents the aspiration of the educated man to attain enlightenment.

I went again today. I went to see China Late: Birds, Flowers and Insects, which is one of those wonderful free British Museum exhibitions which count among the joys of living in London. But of course, as I always do when I visit, I had to look in to see my luohan.

He's still there, looking down the length of the gallery:

Nothing bothers him: not the laughing colleague on his left, nor the streams of visitors who peer at him, or take his picture, or sit on the bench in front of him fiddling with their mobile phones.

I always found him inspiring. Still do. I'm not entirely sure why.

Near Kamchatka

Frozen shipwrecks, at English Russia:

In a State of Khulwa

Yet another report in Arab News on the nefarious activities of the Saudi religious police - the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice:

The General Court of Makkah sentenced a famous local professor to eight months in jail and 180 lashes for being in a state of khulwa — a state of seclusion — with an unrelated woman.

Abdullah Al-Sanusi, the lawyer representing the professor, said that members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice had fabricated the case against his client to take revenge against him. He said a number of commission members were his client’s students and that the professor had fallen into an argument with them, during a lesson, on the importance of being kind to others.

Al-Sanusi said that some of the commission members had also failed in their final exams and had, therefore, developed enmity toward the professor.

The lawyer said that his client had received a phone call from a girl asking to meet him to discuss a problem, which she said could not be discussed over the phone.

The professor agreed to meet her at a coffee shop on condition that she brings her brother as a legal guardian. When the professor arrived at the coffee shop, he was surprised to find the girl alone. When asked about her brother, the girl said he had not come.

Soon a number of commission members surrounded the professor accusing him of being alone with the girl. The professor was handcuffed and handed into police custody.

The case was then passed to the Board of Investigation and General Prosecution, which did not press any charges, saying it had not seen any evidence of khulwa since the meeting took place in a public place.

During a later conversation, which was recorded by the professor, the girl admitted that the commission had sent her.

After having the case sent back by the prosecution, commission officials, on the advice of their chief, passed the case to the General Court in Makkah, where a judge sentenced the professor to jail and lashes, said Al-Sanusi...

Some of the commission members had also failed in their final exams and had, therefore, developed enmity toward the professor. Somehow this isn't surprising.

180 lashes, it should be said, is no trivial punishment.

Art Latest

Disturbing news on Stoke Newington Church Street: