Peace Research

Dehumanization is at the heart of most, if not all, violence. Turning situations into "us vs. them"—when "us" is good and "them" is evil—is the simplest way to ensure that we are always in the right. But it is this division of people into devils and angels that allows for behavior that is less than human. You are either the angel (doing nothing wrong and avenging evil in others) or the devil (evil incarnate, deserving death or any other misery that can be handed out). You hear it often: "They deserve it," "I was right," "I didn't do anything wrong, they caused it." "Idiot!" as the car cuts you off. Or, as I heard this week, "They aren't my enemy, they are the devil."

 

There have been books and books written on this subject and countless experiments trying to understand the psychological phenomena of dehumanizing others. I am going to look at three of them.

 

The Milgram Experiment
The most famous is probably the Milgram experiment, conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram. This experiment started as an attempt to prove the morality of the Nazis during the Holocaust. The question was, "Were the millions of accomplices in the Holocaust simply following orders and violating their own moralities?" In the experiment there was a teacher, a learner, and an experimenter. The learner and the experimenter were "in on" the experiment; only the teacher was not aware of what was going on (the teacher was an ordinary person like you and me who volunteered for a memory experiment).

 

Basically, the teacher was to teach the learner sets of words. Each time the learner said the wrong answer, the teacher was to give him an electrical shock, and the voltage of these shocks would increase with each wrong answer. The experimenter took the learner into another room to start learning the word sets and the experiment began. With every wrong answer a harder shock was administered, up to 450 volts with the learner screaming in the background pleading for it to stop.

 

Now, here is the interesting thing. At this point most people assume that most of the teachers wouldn't give electric shocks—and certainly not ones that were labeled "dangerous level of shock" or even "terminal level of shock"—but they would be wrong. Over 90% of people administered the deadly shocks. A simple "Please continue" from the experimenter was often enough to cause the teacher to ignore the screams from the other room and continue to administer the shocks. (No one was actually hurt in the experiment; all the shocks were faked with a tape recording.)

 

This experiment has been repeated several times in many different contexts. But it always shows the same thing—that it takes very little to bring out "evil" in each one of us.

 

The Stanford Prison Experiment
Or consider the Stanford Prison Experiment. Here Dr. Zimbardo took normal college students and made some of them prison guards and others prisoners. Within two days, the "guards" (normal college students volunteering for the experiment) were abusing the "prisoners" and had to be repeatedly reminded not to engage in abuse. But the abuse continued until "the study ended after six days because it was out of control. Five kids had emotional breakdowns." (Zimbardo) Dr. Zimbardo recalls, "I had been conducting research for some years on deindividuation, vandalism and dehumanization that illustrated the ease with which ordinary people could be led to engage in anti-social acts by putting them in situations where they felt anonymous, or they could perceive of others in ways that made them less than human, as enemies or objects." (Zimbardo speaking to the Toronto symposium in the summer of 1996.)

 

A Study of Anonymity and War
The last study I want to share is one on warriors and anonymity. It is a fascinating study on dehumanization and violence/conflict. The anthropologist John Watson performed a study on 23 different cultures to determine if changing their appearance played any role in the way they treated their victims. Some cultures paint the faces of the warriors, others simply wear uniforms. "So this anthropologist, John Watson, found 23 cultures that had two bits of data. Do they change their appearance? 15. Do they kill, torture, mutilate? 13. If they don't change their appearance only one of eight kills, tortures or mutilates. The key is in the red zone. If they change their appearance, 12 of 13—that's 90 percent—kill, torture, mutilate." (Zimbardo)

 

All of these studies show that increasing the space between people (either in thought, proximity or role) allows for violence to take hold and spread. The role of anonymity and dehumanization in violence is clear. If people don't see me as a person, I can treat them inhumanely. And the same is true in the reverse: if I see people as objects or things, I am capable of treating them as objects with little attention to their humanity. So the question becomes, "How can I increase humanity, or erase dehumanization?" And this is where Stories of Our City comes in.

 

Bringing Humanity Front and Center
It is our goal at Stories of Our City to replace these categories and labels of "us" and "them" with voices and stories of real people. To bring humanity front and center, where it can't be ignored. Because it is only when we begin to see people as humans, not objects of good or evil, that we can begin to take steps to end conflict.

 

This project is based on the fact that sharing stories, in human voices, with common experiences will erase the dehumanization that easily creeps into our minds and hearts. It is hard to understand people (or groups of people) that you see as "other" and "evil"—but a personal story allows you to enter into that person's life and see life from his/her perspective. It allows you to see people as people and celebrate the humanity of all of us. It no longer sees places as items on the news that "deserve what they get" but as real people with dreams, hopes and frustrations. It allows you to break through the labels placed on people making them objects in these conflicts—it forces you to see people as fellow humans. We can no longer simply make distinctions between "us" and "them" because we see the similarities that we all share and the things that unite us—not simply the things that divide.

 

And the crazy thing is that the more you see others as human, united with you on this planet, the more you see your role and responsibility in making a difference. When we see the beauty that each person brings to our community, we realize that we too bring something unique to the world. So actually by uniting, we all see our own individual role in our communities, our world. And these celebrations of our humanity will change the world in ways we can't even imagine.

 

The stories we share here at Stories of Our City are so much more than stories—they are the building blocks of conflict resolution and peace. The foundation for a just and humane world. The first steps in erasing the "other" and embracing humanity. The preparation for creatively solving the world's complex conflicts. The first layer of action that will change the world.

 

Although we are not under the assumption that our project will solve all the world's problems, we are confident that if the world took more time to listen, more time to see each other as human, more time to unite, the world would be a very different place. The empathy that would come with this new understanding would propel many to become active in changing their communities. The increased understanding of the globe would allow many to be creative in solving some of the deep issues of conflict. And the list could go on and on.

 

So, yes, we believe our project is essential to the global peace movement. But we also believe that it is a foundational step in this movement. There is much more to be done. Go out today and treat everyone you meet with the honor and dignity that is their right, listen carefully and see how you can be involved in the solution to the problems in the lives of your family, friends and community…and let's live the story of peace and hope and love today!