Humanity 1200 words fixed $10..
Reet4Humanity task/Banality of Heroism and Evil notes.docx
The Banality of Heroism and Evil, and the Perils of Obedience
Abraham and Isaac
The Death Camps
Dachau
Auschwitz
Belzec
Jasenovac
Maly Trostenets
Stanley Milgram
American social psychologist
Social psychology = how are our feelings, actions, and thoughts affected by those around us?
After WWII, Milgram tries to understand how such a massive atrocity as the Holocaust could have occurred in a modern, Western nation such as Germany
What is the relationship between authority and inhumanity?
The Shock Experiment
Conclusions
All humans have the capacity for evil
We have the tendency to obey orders when we are placed in a hierarchy
We are hesitant to stand out from the crowd
Our deference to authority is one of our most potentially dangerous characteristics
“The Banality of Evil” – Hannah Arendt
The Stanford Prison Experiment
Structure/agency
One of the most important debates in the social sciences
Structure
The mechanisms of society dictate human responses and behaviours (Marxism, behaviourism, and Freudianism are structure-based)
Agency
The human being is free, and is responsible for their own creation through action (existentialism is agency-based)
Who is to blame?
Humanity task/Humanity 101 take home test.docx
Take home test – GNED 101
Instructions:
You will have one week to complete this test and return it at the beginning of lecture on October 21st. Except where you use brief quotations from the readings or other sources, the entire test must be in your own words. Failure to do this will result in an automatic 0.
Answer both of the following questions:
1. Explain the basic idea behind the structure/agency debate regarding identity, and give an argument supporting each. With which side do you disagree, and why? Are we responsible for our identities? Use examples from lecture, the readings, or your own experiences to back up your argument.
2. Which has more effect on your identity, nature or culture? Your answer should include a brief explanation of how the evolutionary process has led to human characteristics that influence your behavior, and an exploration of whether concepts of race, or sex and gender are purely biological, or social.
Each answer should be about 2 ½ pages long, double-spaced, 12 point font. While there are many different ways to produce a good answer, all good answers will demonstrate a grasp of the theory, and an ability to apply it to real-life situations.
First person is acceptable for this test.
No source is required other than the course readings and lectures. If you use another source, you must include a bibliography at the back of the paper. Otherwise, you can simply use last names as a citation method (for example, having endnotes, footnotes, or parentheses that read “Lee”, “Nietzsche”, “Radke”, or “Zimbardo”).
Humanity task/nietzsche notes.docx
· Are We Condemned to be Free?
· The Dicewoman
· 1. Make a sandwich
· 2. Have a nap
· 3. Go to a movie
· 4. Prepare for class
· 5. Punch old lady in face
· 6. Commit suicide
· Nietzsche
Horrible, Horrible Freedom
· Friedrich Nietzsche
· 1844-1900
· German philosopher
· Became alarmed at the way he saw people living, and the direction he thought humanity was going
· Believed people need to re-examine the way they lived
· In particular, we need to examine those ideas and lies we tell ourselves to prevent ourselves from realizing our freedom
· What else prevents us from admitting we are free?
· Herd Mentality
· Slave Morality
· If we consider qualities that would be thought of as “good”:
· Compassion
· Kindness
· Humility
· Honesty
· Loyalty
· They are qualities that are required by weak people. Nietzsche argued that weak people have pulled a trick on humanity
· We must move beyond ideas of good and evil to reach our full potential
· So what is good?
· Power
· We strive for it, risk everything for it, even die for it
· Power is the only true good
· The “Ubermensch” (or “Overman”) would recognize this, and escape both the herd mentality and slave morality
· In so doing, the Ubermensch realizes his or her potential
· Nietzsche gets Badly Misinterpreted
· What Hitler Got Wrong (Partial List)
· Nietzsche did not mean you should try to have power over other people
· Needing other people to realize your ideas is a sign of weakness, not strength
· “. . .the desire to rule has often appeared to me a sign of inward weakness.” - Nietzsche
· Wearing the same uniform, chanting slogans, forming angry mobs = herd mentality
· Nietzsche had a fairly high opinion of Jesus (as a person, not as the son of God)
· So What the %@&#?
· We are responsible for deciding in what kind of world we want to live, and for acting in a way that makes that world
· We should live as if we will have to live exactly the same way, again and again, forever (the “myth of eternal recurrence”)
· Our lives are blank canvasses, on which we paint ourselves through our actions
· Talk is cheap
· Existentialism
· Existence precedes essence
· We are what we do
· Non-existential sentence:
· I couldn’t go into the burning house, because I am a coward
· Existential sentence
· I choose not to go into the burning house, therefore making myself a coward today
· It is “bad faith” (a term that comes from existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre) to say we “are” something, so therefore we “can’t” or “couldn’t” do something
· The last thing Nietzsche did before going insane and wasting away
· He was on the street, and saw a man whipping a tired horse.
· He threw himself between the man and the horse, and then collapsed