Julie Gillis grapples with three questions about good and evil and how to affect change in the wake of Steubenville.
This weekend, something odd happened, odd considering all the news about Steubenville. My own son came to me worried about something that he felt embarrassed about. He shared with me a (minor and non-sexual) situation with some friends that left him uncomfortable, but that he didn’t know how to get out of it. He didn’t want to lose his friend, he didn’t want to look…well, he didn’t know how or what to say.
That’s the thing. He wanted the situation to stop. He’s 12 and faced with the group pressure, cognitive dissonance and lack of skills, he froze. He asked me for help.
The young men accused of rape and sexual assault in the Steubenville case have been declared delinquent. Still questions remain such as:
How Could Good People Do Such Evil?
There has a been much talk about good and evil, there has been blame placed on the shoulders of the girl, death threats to her, and CNN’s shameful piece about how sad it is that these boys lives are ruined which I believe was an attempt to humanize the boys, but instead it seemed like a a white wash job, pity and media attention, like a tv reality show.
Real humanization is a different thing altogether and one that Heather Norum examines well in her piece here.
The question of “how does evil occur” is something I’ve struggled with, mostly because I’m like everyone else; I want to KNOW how evil happens, I want to be able to see it and recognize it and “other” it away from me. But I know that being human is more than being one or the other, it’s being both or having the capacity for both, sometimes, yes, at the same time. The realization can challenges the very sense of self. I know who I am! I’m good! I do good things! I’m not like THEM!
Our modern concepts of good and evil as a duality we fight between, trying to listen to our Angel selves, while denying the Devil, this is old stuff. We want to believe evil is a monster, that we can shun it and shame it and kill it and keep it from us. We don’t understand, or want to understand, how good people can do evil things.
Are these boys just rare sociopaths in a world of good people, influencing others to join in the badness? Is the entire system sociopathic with all it’s members somehow infected with a devaluation of women as human beings, mixed with a culture of hyper masculinity and shame, topped off with a high tolerance for violence?
I do personally think it’s the latter, an emotional field set up over time and with multi-layers of support, from our general culture to the arrogance of the town, but it’s bigger even then a town undergoing crisis. It’s all over.
The Why Evil Exists question is best answered, in my opinion, by Dr. Philip Zimbardo. He was the lead of the Stanford Prison Experiment in which ordinary people played roles of prisoner and officer, and the study broke down due to the abuse and distress of the prisoners.
I hope you’ll watch this whole Ted Talk video, which discusses what he calls The Lucifer Effect in which ordinary “good” people turn evil, though I will note there are very triggering images.
This work is tested, witnessed and seen. He gives great notes on exactly HOW the situations come about where people slide. It’s so hard to take in, though, because we cling to a morality that some are good and some are evil and that we can tell the difference and magically, mystically protect ourselves from that evil by shaming, shunning. We allow only so much empathy, blaming the evil on “others”. In doing so we continue a cycle of dehumanization and violence.
Another question is:
Why Didn’t Anyone Step In To Help?
This is in some ways a harder question to grapple with, but the simple answer is: because it’s hard and we only just started teaching people to do it.
It’s not as if we haven’t ever studied it. There are real reasons we don’t. This wiki on The Bystander Effect is long, but it’s so very detailed.
In short, a few things have to be present in order to take action:
1) You have to notice the problem.
2) You have to interpret the situation.
3) You have to feel capable of action and responsibility.
All those things may or may not happen depending on levels of empathy, situational safety, fear of retribution or shunning in group membership, or support from authorities.
Children are no different than adults, and in order to intervene, they need to be capable of:
(a) noticing that something is wrong (b) interpreting a need for help (c) feeling empathy (d) processing the school’s moral frames – …(the definition of a good student, tribe caring, gender stereotypes, and social-hierarchy-dependent morality), (e) scanning for social status and relations, i.e., students were less likely to intervene if they didn’t define themselves as friends of the victim or belonging to the same significant social category as the victim, or if there were high-status students present or involved as aggressors – conversely, lower-status children were more likely to intervene if only a few other low-status children were around, (f) condensing motives for action and (g) acting, all of the above coalesced into a decision to intervene or not. It is striking how this was less an individual decision than the product of a set of interpersonal and institutional processes.
Not individual decisions, but a product of interpersonal, group and institutional norms.
Think about that when we call out again and again and again for more education on consent, more education on compassion and empathy, which it’s noted causes more people to intervene even when there “isn’t anything in it for them”, more education on intervening in bullying.
We have to teach everyone that ability to share, to ask for help, to know how to follow the instinct that something is wrong. More than that, we have to reward it on a large scale cultural level.
The final question has been:
How Do We Change Things?
You know my take.
We have to figure out a way to inoculate us all with more empathy, more ability and courage to stand up, and more public awareness on how this IS NOT OK, this hazing, this bullying, this violence of body and soul, this sexism which hurts both men and women, this use of sex as a weapon of dominance no matter who is utilizing it.
We have to start looking at this just like drunk driving. It’s a public health problem.
And though I’d like to take credit, that’s not my idea, that’s pure Zimbardo:
“It’s a paradigmn shift away from the medical model that focuses only on the individual, and the shift is towards a public health model that recognizes situational and systemic vectors of disease. Bullying is a disease, prejudice is a disease, violence is a disease. And since the Inquisition, we’ve been dealing with problems at the individual level and you know what, it doesn’t work.”
He also thinks that heroism is the antidote to evil, and as such started a non-profit to promote the heroic imagination.
And this is why, as I said above, it’s hard to do, even when you know you should do it.
But we have to do it, even if it’s hard. I’ll teach my son how to do step in, and I’ll keep learning myself.
Julie, just wanted to say ‘thanks’ for the article and especially for the Zimbardo video (definitely worth the 23 minutes – glad I sat down to watch it – Thank-you).
We have to start looking at this just like drunk driving. It’s a public health problem. I think that’s a helpful way to look at it. For one thing, while completely eliminating the problem would be great, even a reduction in frequency is a success of sorts, right? That is, we don’t think campaigns against drunk driving have failed even though it still occurs, often with tragic results. We keep trying to reduce it further, but we don’t look at statistics that show there are still drunk driving fatalities and injuries and chalk it up to Drunk Driving Culture. What’s… Read more »
I’m not sure that I was clear. My message isn’t don’t party and drink. In fact, were I to advocate for less drinking it would be about the fact that people use alcohol to numb out and that it’s bad for your body. My PSA would involve that there is something going on wherein gang violence and abuse of people is a public health issue. And that consent and bystander intervention both are public health needs. In as much as drinking lowers inhibitions, there are lots of people who drink to excess and never wind up raping people, beating up… Read more »
I cannot speak for Zimbardo, but in his quote he says that bullying and violence are the disease. I’d say that drinking is a way people try to cope with the illness in our culture. Only that drinking sometimes releases the toxins out in a bad way. But while it may help some of those symptoms to encourage people not to drink, it would be more helpful to teach that rape, sexual assault, bullying are all things we need to look at at a core level. I often wonder if people would point to drinking if it was a gay… Read more »
In as much as drinking lowers inhibitions, there are lots of people who drink to excess and never wind up raping people, beating up gay kids, or abusing their spouses. Or driving. Mostly cause that’s not in them to do. Many people drink, not to excess, get behind the wheel, and don’t kill anyone or even get in an accident. That’s most drunk drivers, in fact. What distinguishes them from the ones who have fatal accidents is luck, not that it’s “not in them to do”. It was in them, they rolled the dice, and they got lucky, so no… Read more »
I don’t have much to argue with you about Marcus, but I do want to draw attention to how much media, tweets, etc were focused on her drinking. And how stupid she was for doing it. And how many victims of crimes like this get picked apart and it becomes one more thing that can be used. “If she hadn’t been drinking etc.” I’ve seen this so much my head is spinning and it angers me deeply. And one thing that cannot be proven in this case, but is quite possible is that she also had ingested date rape drugs.… Read more »
“Drinking and drug use are perhaps symptons of the bigger illness we are dealing with.”
This! Yes! Using drugs and drinking to try to form connections with other people, because our culture has not properly taught us how to connect to others while sober…totally part of the systemic problems we’re facing.
But you don’t combat that by telling people not to drink or do drugs. You combat that by teaching people who to interact with others better…how to be better social creatures.
This was a gang rape, more akin to group bonding through extreme humiliation, possible use of date rape drugs, and not entirely the same situation at all. The physical act looks the same in each case, but the message is completely different.
The don’t let friends message….is more “don’t let friends bully, humiliate, and assault your other friends. Stand up for them.
Are these boys just rare sociopaths in a world of good people, influencing others to join in the badness? Why do you jump to the conclusion that they are sociopaths? There is nothing about what they did that even begins to suggest they have any sociopathic tendencies. Is the entire system sociopathic with all it’s members somehow infected with a devaluation of women as human beings, mixed with a culture of hyper masculinity and shame, topped off with a high tolerance for violence? Sociopathy is a human condition, so no system can suffer from it. Secondly, the vast majority of… Read more »
Some people do violent things.
And we, as a culture, have typically ignored or even endorsed the behavior.
That’s how BOTH of those things are true at the same time.
Neither are examples of sociopathy.
Julie, what’s “shameful” about feeling bad for these boys? It’s ironic that from a base of media and thought leaders supposedly in favor of tolerance and love, there’s incredible intolerance for any sympathy toward these guys. How cold do you have to be to not feel for the previously-jailed father saying “I love you to his son” for the first time and then that son breaking down as he apologized. Recognizing the emotion behind this is not a neglect for the victim, and it isn’t a defense for the boys–they made their own terrible choices and have to live with… Read more »
I don’t know if you noted but I said that humanizing them was vital to understanding how to avoid such situations in the future. I feel deep deep sadness for the loss of their hearts, their lives. I don’t how CNN handled it was humanistic but sensationalistic, maudlin, as if it were a reality show or a fiction. I think they have violated themselves and been violated in their emotional and spiritual upbringing by a system that let them get to place where they did what they did. I think their families are torn apart and possibly lacking the tools… Read more »
“It’s ironic that from a base of media and thought leaders supposedly in favor of tolerance and love, there’s incredible intolerance for any sympathy toward these guys. ”
Funny how everyone wants wants to “humanize” these guys and not, say, Jerry Sandusky. I think people just hate Sandusky because he likes boys. If he raped women or girls, most men would bend over backwards to defend him, just like you are defending the Stubenville rapists. In the minds of most men, any man who rapes women or girls is human, but a guy who rapes boys is EVIL, EVIL, EVIL.
I really like that quote from Zimbardo. The medical model/public health model distinction is something that I’ve tried to explain to people before, but I never came up with that metaphor for it. I’m going to have to read his book.