The Heroic Imagination

Read this http://edge.org/3rd_culture/zimbardo07/zimbardo07_index.html before reading any further (warning: lengthy but interesting)

I recently came upon this website which features "dangerous thinking"... in which every era has one. Remember that famous person (his name escapes me now...was it Isaac Newton?) who was considered a heretic during his day and age. He was imprisoned because he proved the science behind a rainbow when the acceptable "answer" in his era was that rainbows are miracles of God.

Anyway, what's interesting about the article above is that it talks about how social situations can be transformative, making really good, normal people into so-called monsters, as we get too used to seeing what is normally not acceptable, and accepting them as "normal".

Then again, doesn't the definition of acceptable or normal, or even what's right or wrong change too? Scary dont you think? Makes me wonder how the things we consider acceptable might not really be.

Prime example, like seeing the daily corruption going on in the streets, agreeing to pay off cops for simple traffic infarctions and saying its just normal because that's what we're used to seeing and doing.

Or say the simple freight forwarder who regularly deals with customs to bring in shipments, which then means he agrees to paying off customs brokers regularly because he needs to, as it's part of his job and it's the only way he can bring in his shipments or else he loses them because paying people off "is just the way things are done".

So till when can you compromise? Or should you at all? It's not that I'm taking the high road and saying I've never bribed a cop. I did once. And never again. Because the first and only cop I ever tried to bribe had the heroic imagination to say "Ma'am, masama po yan kasi kung ganyan na lang ang lahat ng pulis e wala pong mangyayari sa atin."

I mean bribing is like peanuts compared to the people who condemned thousands to die in Auschwitz, but still, you know.... am I just thinking too much?

This is what two days of having classes called of does to me.... think think think.....