The God-Shaped Hole!

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Milgram and Campbell

The Milgram experiment showed that, even in the worst situations where things are going horribly awry, people prefer to have an illusion of control instead of a total loss of control. Perhaps they feared that the person instructing them to press the switches would take over and press the switches; the instructor had already proven himself sadistic and heartless, and would probably press the switch for longer than absolutely necessary.

None of them bothered to ask "why am I here", to question the assumptions of the experiment and ask why a volunteer who won a lottery had to torture the one who lost.

None of them questioned the established setup - because they were following the Hero's Journey, in which someone takes you out of the world you know and gives you instructions for dealing with your new reality, becoming your mentor in that process, and Horrible Things Will Happen if you step off the path for one moment.

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