ToK Prescribed Essay Titles (November 2014): Question 5

Click picture to go to a site which discusses the idea of 'The Banality of Evil'

“The task of history is the discovering of the constant and universal principles of human nature.” To what extent are history and one other area of knowledge successful in this task?

The idea of ‘constant and universal principles human nature’ implies, somewhat strangely, that knowledge about humans can be encapsulated in general laws which could in effect allow us to predict future behaviour. Given the conditions of a specific situation and how most people behave within it, most of the time and in most places, we can, with a high degree of probability, assert that an individual or group will behave in the same way should those conditions ever come about in the future.  Here is an exploration of examples within History, Ethics and H Sciences that span between the 1940s to the present day...

During the post Second World War Nuremburg trials, the prominent writer Hannah Arendt observed how some of the most notorious Nazi war criminals appeared to be just normal citizens of whom we wouldn’t take much notice in the street; often, some of them just seemed plainly nice on the surface.  She coined an expression to embody this observation about the paradox of human nature: ‘the banality of evil’.  The implied thesis is twofold: first, that in spite of being educated, intelligent and civilised, we all have a dark, monstrous side to us and can turn to it at any moment of our lives, especially when our consciences are influenced and undermined by those in authority.  And second, the common sense belief that some of us are simply born evil and these ‘bad apples’, so to speak, are the cause of all the nastiness in the world. But is this a ‘constant and universal principle of human nature’? And how do we know the difference between good and bad apples?

TOK students often present in their essays the psychology experiments undertaken by Stanley Milgram who set out to test the theses in the early 1960s.  Milgram’s ‘Obedience Experiments’ or “shock” experiments, as they came to be known, explore the tension between conscience and authority and offer a staggering conclusion: most people find it emotionally easy to ignore their sense of moral responsibility, especially when they see themselves as part of a chain of evil action and far away from the final consequences of it.  The idea is that good or evil isn’t entirely in our genes or brains or spirit (as some religions might have us believe), but our environment can deeply influence us to act in evil ways. Again, is this ‘a constant and universal principle of human nature’?

In 1971, Philip Zimbardo attempted to test the conclusions reached by Milgram through another experiment: the notorious ‘Stanford County Jail’ experiments which were reminiscent of situations described so vividly in Golding’s Lord of the Flies. The results of the experiment are arguably more shocking than Milgram’s. The scheduled two week experiment was shut down by Zimbardo after a matter of days because of what Zimbardo came to call ‘the Lucifer effect’: how an individual’s character can become so transformed that an otherwise ordinary person can commit extraordinarily monstrous acts.  To extend a former analogy: a good apple can become bad when placed in a bad barrel.  In short, context is all.  Where Zimbardo’s conclusions go further than Milgram’s is in the insight that very often we don’t need an authority figure to manipulate us to do evil acts; good people can turn evil simply by adopting, or being assigned, a particular stereotype or role and put in a situation where the rule of law is not enforced fully.

Two relatively recent examples from vastly different cultures serve to illustrate how both Milgram’s and Zimbardo’s experiments seem to have discovered a ‘constant and universal feature of human nature’ as far as morality is concerned.

In 2004, we learned about the atrocities committed by US soldiers at the Abu Graib detention camp – acts of evil which were strongly reminiscent of the results of the Stanford Prison Experiment.

In 2008, we learned about Shin Dong-hyuk, a North Korean man born in a detention camp, who, being allegedly the first person ever to have escaped from such a place, tells stories of some of the most terrible atrocities that are committed in the name of ‘democracy’, including his own act of condemning his mother to death by telling guards of her plans to escape.

So we evolved into moral beings who also have a capacity for immoral behaviour.  Most people, most of the time and in most places choose to be moral, but in certain situations, even the most ordinary person can be driven to unspeakable acts of evil.

If this sounds like a dark and miserable story, read up on the experiments conducted by Steve Sherman, the results of which suggest that education can help strengthen our consciences against the vagaries of authority; especially education that directs and guides us in creative enquiry into moral dilemmas and how we might resolve them…

ToK Prescribed Essay Titles (November 2013): Question 5

“…Our knowledge is only a collection of scraps and fragments that we put together into a pleasing design, and often the discovery of one new fragment would cause us to alter utterly the whole design.” (Maurice Bishop)” To what extent is this true in History and one other Area of Knowledge?

 

Following on from the last post, imagine you’re a historian living a thousand years in the future and that you came across this remarkably well preserved written document:

Don't start me talking
I could talk all night
My mind goes sleepwalking
While I'm putting the world to right
Called careers information
Have you got yourself an occupation

CHORUS:
Oliver's army is here to stay
Oliver's army are on their way
And I would rather be anywhere else
But here today

There was a checkpoint charlie
He didn't crack a smile
But it's no laughing party
When you've been on the murder mile
Only takes one itchy trigger
One more widow, one less white nigger

CHORUS

Hong Kong is up for grabs
London is full of arabs
We could be in Palestine
Overrun by a chinese line
With the boys from the mersey and the thames and the tyne
But there's no danger
It's a professional career
Though it could be arranged
With just a word in Mr. Churchill's ear
If you're out of luck you're out of work
We could send you to johannesburg

CHORUS

And I would rather be anywhere else
But here today
And I would rather be anywhere else
But here today

If very little or no knowledge existed of that distant world, then you would have to piece together what knowledge you can from the ‘scraps and fragments’ which you possess – this document being one of those scraps.

However, can you see that the document in itself is built of ‘scraps and fragments’ which seemed important to the writer (look at the highlighted expressions)?  Presumably, at the time it was written, someone considered it to have a pleasing design – consider the rhyme and repetition implied by ‘CHORUS’, as well as the organisation of the words into four main blocks (excl. chorus).

What sort of questions need to be answered about the text?

How would you go about answering them?

Can you piece together some sort of meaning from the details you have?

Are the writer’s intentions an important consideration when reconstructing this meaning?

Of course, today you can easily google the key words and work out the meaning of the whole – you can even discover that the text is a song and when it was written and what inspired it.

Nevertheless, the key point about historical knowledge is that even then, the narrative of meaning you construct will always be open to further interpretation – a better, more refined narrative might come along at any point.  To this extent, any historical narrative is similar to a scientific theory that explains how the world works...

To read more about the recent political controversy regarding this song, see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9940194/BBC-criticised-for-censoring-Elvis-Costello-lyrics.html

ToK Essay Prescribed Titles (November 2013): Question 5

“…Our knowledge is only a collection of scraps and fragments that we put together into a pleasing design, and often the discovery of one new fragment would cause us to alter utterly the whole design.” (Maurice Bishop)” To what extent is this true in History and one other Area of Knowledge?


 

Click on picture to go to 'Guardian' article on the novel


This novel explores the meaning of history and the role of scepticism in building historical knowledge.  Set over a thousand years in the future in the ‘ideal republic’ of London, a timeless city of made of light, Plato is an ‘orator’ (which includes being a speaker, a teacher, a lexicographer  and a compiler of historical documents) whose key job is to reconstruct the past through reasoned inferences based on physical relics or ‘scraps and fragments’ unearthed in the city.  The narratives Plato builds of past civilisations do not, however, always please him or the ‘Guardians’ of the city: while Plato doubts the truth of his historical storytelling, the Guardians fear that he’s corrupting the minds of the young with his outlandish tales.

 

There is especially one tale which threatens to disrupt the harmony of the City: Plato’s story of a journey he took into an underground cave which exists simultaneously to that of the world of light above.  Plato relates how he discovered a realm of dark shadows which appear to live their lives out from birth to death without question.  The experience makes Plato question the nature of reality: is the true reality the material world of the shadows in the cave, or the eternal world of light above?

The novel explores the paradox at the heart of this question – there’s an element of Alice through the Looking Glass in its reversal of Plato’s well known allegory of the cave.  In a further reversal of the death of Socrates, the novel's Plato is judged to be not guilty of corrupting the youth, because he's such a dreamer and fantasist.  Plato, however, passes judgement on himself.  True to the real Plato's ideas in the Republic, the novel's Plato insists that as a dreamer, he should (like Plato's artists) be banished from the city limits forever...

Examples

History

The Death of democracy

This is a talk given by an American writer, Naomi Woolf author of The End of America: Letters of Warning to a Young Patriot, Chelsea Green Publishing Co, 2009, 192p. It’s interesting for TOK purposes for the way in which it analyses a common myth we have about history: we study history to learn from our mistakes.

Woolf argues that history actually enables those in positions of power (especially budding tyrants) to extract a template for the policies and laws they create to organize their people; a template, moreover, which is designed to reduce the democratic rights of people. She calls it a ‘blueprint’ for the death of democracy. Dramatic language, but she appears to have cause for using such a tone. The message appears to be: we surely do learn from our mistakes, but only to reinforce that other tenet of historical truth – history repeats itself.

Look out for the following phrases and examine how they relate to knowledge and its use and abuse:

‘the blueprint is predictive’

‘it was human nature to abuse power’

‘the fascist shift’

‘tipping points’

‘the patriots' task'

The full talk was given at Kane Hall, University of Washington, Seattle, October 11, 2007, but you can also watch it in small chunks with visual representations of the arguments and examples presented by Wolf:

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFYZDVUVQ1U

2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY4N_xnvWjw&feature=related

3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCJPSxgi2WA&feature=related

4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pV5wmBf4C20&feature=fvw

5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb6jITXmdGE&feature=related

6. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUGyijkYqA8&feature=related

7. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5tu_7Dd1a8&feature=related

8. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIJgSB_IJmU&feature=BF&list=QL&index=2

Examples

Human Sciences (Economics), Natural Sciences, Ethics and History

Watch the following videos to sum up our excursion into the territory of 'peak oil' and the new world beyond. Richard Heinberg speaks extremely eloquently about the issue from a historical and economic perspective which has tremendous ethical consequences.

There are SIX clips in total, entitled "Richard Heinberg's 'Peak Everything' ", but we have given you the first and the last clip - fill in the gaps yourselves through the 'youtube' reference.

Finally, here's a reference to a website listing a range of towns and cities that are taking the message of 'peak oil' seriously and attempting to do something to prepare themselves for the aftermath in a post-industrial, post-oil era:

http://www.transitiontowns.org/

You might be surprised to see that most of the 255 listed towns and cities are in the UK.

Examples

History and The Arts

Following on from the last post and what Gerald Celente said in his interview about the so-called 'revolution' that is coming and will transform not only the United States, but also the world economy, consider this statement:

"Revolutions don't happen from the people that are going to be watching American Idol or waste their time away playing video games and their minds lost in celebrity culture, in pop culture..."

That's you and I he's talking about, folks! Are you going to take it lying down?

Either he's just another old man who's tired of life and especially young people, or he's expressing a sound truth. But what evidence does he have to suggest that the general public who are fed on a diet of reality TV and fast food, fast money and fast fame (and so many other fast things!), have become apathetic, self-satisfied, spoilt and, the shame of it, especially for those of you passionate about TOK, unthinking, unquestioning wretches?

Before you answer that, have another look at Max Keizer and his analysis of something that you all might be fascinated by at this time: 'Twilight' (you only have to watch the first 2 minutes to get the idea):

Keizer argues that "The Establishment - and that is the Hollywood-Washington-Wall Street Axis of Evil - is trying to train this next generation to be Goldman-Sachs Bankers and J P Morgan Derivative Traders. How better to do that than to introduce them to the wonderful world of vampires and zombies..."

Like begets like, it seems, in the political and economic rat-race of the world and the social impact of this is to perpetuate the values of greed, exploitation, get-rich-quick and don't care over whom you trample in the process.

Is this your future inheritance? The world into which you are heading after your studies? Perhaps our question should be: how far do you want to go into that world with closed eyes and an unthinking mind?

We'll leave you with a historical thought over which to ponder: it was the Roman Emperor Nero (who had as many flaws as the power-hungry people who allowed the present world crisis to take root), who said that the best thing for the general public, so as not to upset them into revolution against the Holy Roman Empire, was to ensure at all times that they had two things: food and games...

Examples

History, Natural Sciences and Human Sciences (Paranormal Phenomena)

Is the truth out there?

Last October, the Government's MoD released its own 'X'Files' on UFO sightings in the UK since the late seventies. One refers to a case in 1980 which is being dubbed as Britain's 'Roswell' in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk (click the above image). Another batch of files released this month has renewed interest in the UFOs and the central questions that are related to this phenomenon such as, are we alone in the universe? Is there a conspiracy relating to the use of alien technology? Are world governments covering up the fact that aliens have visited, or are indeed already inhabiting, the earth?

Read this article in the Guardian and have a look at the National Archives and MoD website for further information, especially if you decide to base a presentation around this topic or write about it in your essays.

You will need to consider the common assumptions that people make about UFOs and the assumptions we make about those who claim to have seen them. Consider the definitions and concepts used to discuss the subject: what do we mean by using the word 'UFO'? Consider then the problem of perception and common sense: can we relly believe all that we see? Consider also the various arguments and counter-arguments relating to the phenomenon: the physical evidence relating to the existence of aliens compared to the psychological evidence which suggests that humans are strongly affected by the power of suggestion.

While you delve into your researches, you might like to consider these question too:

1. What is the difference between 'good' and 'bad' science?

2. To what extent is the paranormal experience of seeing a UFO comparable to the mystical experience of seeing God?

Examples

History

When you're asked to reflect on the nature of history or to draw examples from historical sources to support your arguments, you tend very quickly to point to the Second World War and the atrocities committed by those infamous dictators of the time, especially that very familiar one, Adolf Hitler.

Now, the Germans have pushed themselves through over sixty years of guilt for their recent past, quite rightly many may argue, and only recently has their most important news journal, Der Spiegel, stopped printing articles on the consequences of the last World War. In order to enhance your essays and presentations, however, try to think of other relevant examples to support your historical arguments or counter-arguments.

Take for example, the massacre at the Golden Temple, Amritsar in 1919, where British troops fired on the thousands of people who had gathered to commemorate the start of the Sikh New Year. The scene was filmed dramatically in Sir Richard Attenborough's film Gandhi:

Watching this clip makes you rethink your whole understanding of what terrorism means and the atrocities that are carried out in the struggle to assert so-called 'democracy' upon citizens.

This is not to minimise the impact of the Second World War, but to make ourselves more keenly aware of what is happening (and has happened) under our very noses. So make the most of your freedom and research into this area for yourselves.

Think about what the Russians did to the Afghanistanis; what the North Americans did to the indigenous Indian tribes and what the Australians did to the Aborigines...

Examples

History/Human Sciences

It is now just over 40 years ago that Enoch Powell gave his infamous 'rivers of blood' speech in which he made certain knowledge claims about what would happen if the Conservative government did not tightened up U.K.'s immigration policy . One such claim was a projected figure for the number of Commonwealth immigrants that would be living in the UK in the year 2000: "...it must be in the region of 5-7 million." The census figures for 2001 show the figure to be 4 and a half million. Coincidence? Rationally justified? Brilliant guesswork?

In his new book, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe (the link gives a review in the Guardian), the writer Chris Caldwell reflects on the nature of immigration in Europe over the last century. We heard a BBC Radio Five Live interview with Caldwell, in which he claims to have evidence to support the idea that when two cultures come together, like the western European and Islamic, the one that has no strict principles or set moral rules which all its citizens follow (the Western culture) usually changes in the face of the culture that sets a code of behaviour for all its people. In short, the argument seems to be that the European cultures have been too insecure in their moral, political and social values and this has made the assimilation of immigrants increasingly difficult over the years.

Is this change necessarily a bad thing? Should we actively encourage the change? How do we overcome our cultural insecurities? What is the status of 'Britishness'? Is their a coherent and stable entity that can be called the 'British national identity' or European identity?