Psychology of Evil - 2

We publish the second part of the decoding of the performance of the famous sociopsychologist Sergei Enikolopov in the Proscience Theater on June 22, 2014. Sergey Nikolaevich Kand. Psychol. sciences, head of the department of medical Psychology of the Scientific Center for Mental Health of the RAMS.

(Ending. Beginning in the TRV-HUNDER No. 159)

Sergey Yenikolopov: Now - about the bad ones. It is clear that people have a kind of anxiety, the feeling "God forbid someone will be ahead." Non -accurate elections in the genocides that we mention. The Armenian genocide in Turkey, the Holocaust accompanied the feeling: “This minority lives better than us. It occupies some position. They became officers, engineers, financiers, someone else. ” It is striking that in societies where genocide occurs, there are many people who are ready to jump into the “modernization train” or changes. Cambodians destroyed not only the intelligentsia, but in general all reading Cambodians. Just one half of the nation fought against the other.

We are not very loved, and in the West they do not really like to remember that when the French left Africa, almost all teachers and people with higher education were killed there. Several million people died there. Educated people were perceived hostile. And here the question arises: how so? The layman, who had previously been a quite normal person, went to work, did something, suddenly begins to participate in this movement.

And here there are two very different "schools". One of which is more popular thanks to Zimbardo: she says that the situation is important. The second is that there are still personal characteristics. In the works of Zimbardo, by the way, his more attention to situations is striking, but he never hid that there is a small group of people who are ready to commit these crimes just like that. This is a crowd of bandits and criminals who were mercenaries in the old days. The most interesting is that most of the people who perform these actions are not such villains, generally speaking. They do not have such a high level of aggressiveness, they are not so evil, and the term that Hannah Arendt proposed is completely incurred. After she was present at the trial of Eichmann, who was responsible for the destruction of the Jews, she called it the "banality of evil." An official was sitting on the bench of the defendants, for whom these people were the same as for another - the number of nails, for example. He was more interested in how many echelons should be submitted to be transferred to one point, then to the other, as it is with the gas, how many furnaces ... It was easy to imagine exactly the same that is responsible for metallurgy - how to transport coal, ore, and so on. She was so shocked that such a banal, small man performed so much evil. The most interesting thing is that many people at this time did not accept her point of view. She was accused of getting him out of the blow, because everyone would like to see a person with fangs, with dripping blood from her mouth, with her hands in blood-then everything is clear. How can an ordinary official commit such killings? But all further studies show that a large number of simple, trivial people can perform crazy and ugly acts.

There is a wonderful job in which the battalion of reservists of the German army is analyzed, according to which documentation has been preserved. It is interesting in that the battalion turned out to be just a tracing of Germany's socio-demographic characteristics. By age, by education and so on. (It happened so by chance.) They served in Poland. The commander received an order that one Jewish place needs to be destroyed. It is clear who is there: old people, women and children. At the same time, everyone was reported that they have the right to refuse. And several people refused, they did nothing. The rest went, killed everyone there, burned everything. And the commander noted, and they noted in the documents: it was unpleasant, many cried, someone shot into the air, then they all drunk, vomiting ... In general, they were translated. Then they received a second order, then the third. They did everything and already cried less. When after some time they were transferred to Ukraine, the commander noted that several people approached him and asked: “When we are transferred to Ukraine, we will be able to do the same thing in Poland?” Other works also show: getting addiction. And during the war there is this. There are work where the participants in the fighting were interviewed. The generals really do not like these works, because they show that about 10% remember and know for sure that they aimed and shot at a particular person, they wanted to kill him. But very many note that they shot in the air: almost a biological ban on murder is triggered. And then - yes, they got used to it, became good warriors, and this does not contradict the fact that well -prepared military units experience post -traumatic stress disorder than military units abandoned into battle, which are not very well ready.

But the first thing that turns a person into a killer is addiction. The second thing, which is very important to note here is the lack of responsibility. There is a description of how the meeting was held in Vanze. At the same time, the American journalist was present. Hitler told the generals that the army should participate in the destruction of Jews. The generals do not like this, they are still army generals who do not want to participate in this operation. Everyone crumbles, steps from foot to foot. And suddenly Hitler says: "History is written by winners, no one remembers the losers and will not remember." And here is the famous phrase: “No one now remembers the massacre of the Armenians of 1915. I take on all responsibility. ” The journalist notes that everyone was immediately amused, Goering performed some kind of Zulus dance, a pleasant, complacency state immediately came. Because the responsibility was removed from them.

And the fact that Milgram later received in the experiments (Stanley Milgram), if you can shift the responsibility to someone, you can make a huge number of bad acts, this is present in genocidal readiness. And, of course, one cannot exclude people who are looking for such situations. There are not many of them, but they are. These are people who are ready to participate in any act of violence. The third element is evil.

We see that in such an area as terrorism, all three elements are closed. Yes, terrorism is not genocide, this is something else. But when for the happiness of some people, some layer, some group, some religion, people are ready to sacrifice representatives of the same group, religion, etc., when for the happiness of the working people you can send a train with this very labor people, it is clear that some shifts are taking place in psychology. And here is the reverse side of what happened in Germany. After the war, they cleaned their brains in the opposite direction that all Germans were guilty, that most of the German terrorists in the 70s, the whole company of the “Army of the Red Army”, Rote Armee Fraktion, Raf) accused their parents of the destruction of Jews and Hitlerism.

As the researchers later found out, the parents of RAF members were dissidents. Either they sat or were deprived of the right to work - for example, the preacher was deprived of the right to preach and so on. But the children did not accept all this. They saw only black and white. And in this black and white thinking they went to commit their crimes. Therefore, when we are talking about this core of people who are ready to commit mass killings, we must understand that one of the most serious problems is the problem of black and white thinking.

Alexey Muravyov: Thank you for the wonderful presentation that raises such a number of questions that it is even difficult to cope with them. The first emotional reaction that I personally arise: does this mean that, since there is a connection between transient, transition states of society and the level of cruelty - does this mean that cruelty cannot be avoided?

S.E.: No, it does not mean at all. This means that transitions in society should be more serious in society.

A.M.: What to do?

S.E.: Firstly, society must control the state so that the culture of violence is not taught in schools. And this is quite real, this is not utopia. An interesting thing: there are tragic events in history, which are actually changed in the interpretation. After all, the Russians lost Borodino’s battle, Moscow was taken by the French. But this story emphasized the victory of the spirit. Hence the poem of Lermontov, hence the historical meaning of Borodin, which is noted. For the country, this becomes a symbol -forming thing.

I will give another example from Armenian history. The fifth century, the Persians are fighting for the Armenians to abandon Christianity and become fire worshipers. The battle of Avarair - Armenians are trampled by elephants, they lost. But the commander who commanded in this battle was canonized and became a saint. This battle in the history of Armenia is symbolic.

Why am I talking about this? Because the consequences of all these mass killings and genocides are important. How do the victims react? One part of the victims follows the path of revenge and revenge terrorist organizations arise. Since we lived our lives, we do not know Jewish history, the history of Israel of the state, generally created by terrorists. There is almost every leader, he was called the Prime Minister, when the state already appeared, and initially a terrorist. And Begin, and Ben-Gurion, and everyone else. But this is what formed the basis for building the state of Israel.

So, some people go to revenge, some to revenge.

But revenge can be different. If someone remembers the film “Maria Brown’s marriage”, then the end of the film, when life is getting better, the meeting of Maria Brown and her husband takes place against the backdrop of the 1954 World Cup, when Germany became the world champion. It was a symbolic act, despite the fact that Germany realized that it was a symbolic act. Life has improved. The devastation has ended, the Germans champions and the proud nation. You can be proud of such symbolic things, and it seems to me that this is better, it is better to be champions in football than to fight.

But the question of whether we can lead the processes that will mix or reduce the possibility of genocidal ideas in the person of the state, in the person of society, seems quite realistic to me.

A.M.: We go to the third part. Small blitz questions of our public.

Question: What are the psychological features of the victims of the genocide? Did they provoke the beginning of the genocide?

S.E.: It is clear that from the point of view of those who arranged genocide, the victims provoke the very fact of their existence. They have more noses, the color of the eyes is not like that ... But here it is very important, in fact, as the victims later interpret their sacrifice. Many of them begin to promote precisely this side of their life, they try to find the answer to the question “Why did they choose me?”. And they are easy to find. This is Victimity.

But why did I say that very often, when researchers are engaged in this, they seem to begin to equalize victims with rapists; I emphasize . Because you need to understand what the victims did why they did not escape violence. The most important, in fact, very much at one time surprising me that most of the victims did not even understand what could happen to them. They were firmly sure that they were so rooted in this culture, so much did for the country, so everything is good that individual excesses should not play any role. You never know who insulted it on the street by chance. And then it turns out that everyone was destroyed.

Question: Is there a gene of aggression?

S.E.: There. There is an aggression gene. But you know how many genes we have? This does not mean at all that if you have found a gene of aggression, then everything, the end. With such a genome you can become an athlete, to be a swimmer. At one time there was a multiple Olympic swimming champion Matt Biondi, who said: "I hate all the backs that are floating before me." When I read it, I laughed for a long time, because he won all the gold medals-it is clear that at some point there were no heads ahead of him, because then he would be the second at least. The orientation of this gene can be to win, or maybe to destroy the enemy.

Question: You mentioned the biological ban on murder. Is there really such a ban for the human form? Maybe it will be more correct to talk about the cultural ban - for example, about the commandment?

S.E.: With the commandments a little later, first about biology. In general, the guru in the study in the field of aggression is Konrad Lorenz. He received the Nobel Prize just largely for studies of aggressive behavior in animals; He argued that aggressiveness is instinct. By the way, the psychology of aggression in the USSR was prohibited due to him. The ideological department of the Central Committee decided that we were fighting for the world, and it is pointless to fight the instinct, so it is better to prohibit the Lorenz. And there was such a funny situation when, on the one hand, Lorentz’s children's books were published, and on the other hand, the ideological department ordered a book to one Marxist that Lorenz was a fascist. Lorenz was not a fascist, he was an ordinary military doctor.

So, Lorenz just showed that the most part between and intraspecific aggression-it is clear that we are not interested in people-hunters, but people who commit aggressive actions against other people are the most aggression in animals is due to the fact that these intermotes and other battles are largely an indicator of power. The fact that animals die from wounds, from bites, scratches is rather a consequence of the absence of septic tanks in living nature.

In order for no illusions - everything that Lorenz said is only related to wild animals. 14 species of domesticated animals are the same bastard as humans.

Animals have no persecution. She left the individual to the territory that another individual protects - no one will pursue it to the end to finish it off. In principle, you can even name the symbolic image of a violation of this ban: David, who realized that you can spin a stone on a rope and launch Goliath’s head, and if you miss, then the distance is that you can run away. Lorenz just noted the occurrence of distant weapons. I pressed a button - and damn it, with Holland. You can’t see who you are destroying. By the way, if we talk about post -traumatics, there is a very interesting thing: the farther the military is from the real clash, the less manifestation of post -traumatics. The pilots who were bombed from a height have practically no. There may be some remorse for some very conscience of bold people. And the helicopters already have post -traumatics. And especially among those who participated in hand -to -hand combat.