Abu Ghraib, And Beating Your Wife
What do the events at prisons in Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay have to do with plain ol’ garden variety spouse abuse? What do the guards of these places have in common with those who occasionally beat up members of their own families? There are commonalities–if you look in the right places.
Look, for instance, at what motivates the guards. Prison guards generally have a real need to control their inmates. Often it is their psychological makeup behind their need. To show weakness could be catastrophic for them as they would surely lose that control and could suffer bodily harm. Some family members also seem to have a psychological need to control other members of their family. I assume that not to be in control would put them into some form of distress.
These prison guards also have a second need and that is to comply with the wishes of their superiors to gather intelligence about possible attacks on their country. I will assume here that most of the guards would rather not torture inmates to get this information all on their own account. Someone of authority would have to tell them to do so or, at the very least, look the other way. The end justifies the means.
Our garden variety home abuser also needs someone or something to “allow” them to hurt their family. In this case it could be one’s own father who shows his son that the only way for a man to handle a women is with force. “They like it, you know.”
Some parts of the Old Testament also support the idea that “it is a man’s place to discipline his mate.unfortunatelyly this thought is wide spread in our society and is sometimes triggered by peer pressures.
It is my contention that what is happening in our prisons is brought out by social devises already put in place by our social structures. If you don’t think that ordinary decent people can overcome their personal conscience and torture or maim fellow humans just by being told to do so by persons in authority, I refer you to Stanley Milgram’s Experiments of the early nineteen-sixties. A lesson in depravity.
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June 6th, 2005 at 7:47 pm
We were toaught abouth that experiment in my psych class in college. It’s an experiment that I think should be talked about in High School. Everyone should know the results of it so they can realize how low we can go.
June 9th, 2005 at 5:54 pm
I agree and would add— let people learn how our “educational” system turns most people into simpering, obedient morons instead of intelligent, free thinking individuals… That’s strong, but I believe the truth.
They may be nice, well-intentioned simpering obedient morons— but they will follow instead of lead, even when it means going against their morals and ethics. Which is tantamount to having NO morals or ethics.
We need to start raising free-thinking, individualistic, ethical, moral individuals instead of stamping out mass produced images of our “normal” masses.