Evil starts with 15 volts

In his talk on the processes which influence people toward evil or heroism, Philip Zimbardo used the phrase in the title of this entry. His larger point was that evil (dehumanizing or unjust acts) often appears in the midst of a dysfunctional system in which people can comfortably renounce their responsibility to a higher authority or otherwise refrain from engaging morally in prevention of evil acts. He was referencing the Milgram experiment in which 15 volts was the starting level on a scale that ranged to 450 with the point that in the right circumstances it is quite easy to ignore one ethical guidelines - especially if the consequences can be reasoned away as negligible. That step is a desensitizing first of many and is what, ultimately, separates those who do evil - actively or passively - from everyday heroes.

The larger most interesting question concerns how to recognize, evaluate and change (or dismantle) those systems that encourage or permit immoral behavior. I will not be pondering that one. Instead, I've been trying to pin down all those 15 volt shocks that I deliver daily - consciously or subconsciously, intentionally or inadvertently. Where are those tiny acts of obeying systemic norms to the harm of the individual or ignoring the needs of others for my own comfort that eventually snowball?

Unsurprisingly, I guess, this has been harder than I initially imagined.

As people we are quite skilled at absolving ourselves from responsibility in a great many situations. We say to ourselves that we probably have misunderstood, we're not aware of the circumstances, that it isn't our business or that intervention would probably just escalate the conflict. This is what I say to myself, at least. If I can escape the discomfort by just enough then out of sight, out of mind takes over and I can sleep soundly.

That is a less-than-heroic coping mechanism for dealing with uncomfortable (unjust) situations, however small they might be reasoned to be.

I am going to make a concerted effort to be mindful of those times when I try to reason my way out of responsibility for the well-being of others, not just in the major headline-making cases, but in those that will never be mentioned. I really hope that the easy and comfort of passivity doesn't win out.

On the Peace Corps

The article is several months old, but it hits some topics I've discussed with fellow PCVs recently and so I'd like to make some comments and dust off my soapbox for a spell.

I'm quite torn on pieces like this, my judgment obviously clouded by feeling a little bit defensive. I agree with the man, on the face of it, and with all his major points that I have any frame of reference on which to comment. However, I also feel I am one of the young, unqualified, inexperienced applicants who has performed to higher standards than some with more years and a thicker resume. I can compare numerous colleagues and predecessors and their varying degrees of impact based upon age and work experience - both developmentally and in cultural understanding - and not always favorably for those with more gray hair than youthful impudence.

Granted, providing anecdotal cases does little to prove any point that would assert that it is unfair to characterize in a general manner younger volunteers and their relative weaknesses in their respective program areas when compared to people with richer histories of such work. And it may well be the case that were we to look at straight percentages of Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) who could be considered to have been effective in both those roles that those over 35 may have the more impressive numbers. However, we've seen spectacular failures from a range of backgrounds and ages as well as great successes from people who appear incredibly average or green on paper.

A greater emphasis on recruiting only those with the shiniest accolades will not adequately address the issues raised in the article - not only because casting a more selective net may not be realistic, but because it does not take into account significant contributing factors to ultimate success in service.

More needs to be done to judge the character of applicants. A friend of mine said that she imagined being surrounded by a group of people who all held the same values dear. This is sadly not always the case and even in short conversations with the most abrasive amongst us (I would arrogantly hope to include myself in that demographic) it's not hard to get a glimpse into those who take the work seriously and those who simply do not. The volunteers who have made the most impact have been those who exhibited the most courage, perseverance, and love of their work and their community. Those who didn't have the requisite knowledge or skills acquired them if they had the passion to do so. Those who came with aforementioned tools could not always use them because they were unable to deal with the diverse and often hilarious walls that must be overcome, circumvented or demolished.

Since the recruiters are often not philosophers, psychologists, car salesmen or any other profession that learns to quickly and accurately see the character of men, we can't - in the short term - hope that the problem will be stopped at the first interview. Upon several weeks of training, however, work ethic, values and ability to cope with transition and compromise should manifest to Program and Training Managers and to the more seasoned PCVs who assist with their training. If there is doubt then they should be removed before swearing-in. If they make it past that filter, then administration should take a firmer hand in requiring volunteers to accomplish what they have agreed to do. The current effect is that many PCVs kill time - quietly or brazenly - until they have something to put on their resume. It hurts the goals of the organization, wastes money, is embarrassing for those who do put in the effort, and ultimately is harmful to those volunteers who effectively go on the longest vacation they'll ever hate.

I am well acquainted with some of the hardships that PCVs go through and have myself looked for relief in most of the places that the Medical Unit has warned us about at one time or another. I know that some volunteers are placed completely inappropriately and so have more obstacles or fewer chances to thrive or even make beginning steps in accomplishing program goals. But if these things are used as excuses for irresponsible coping mechanisms and a failure to attempt to build the bridges necessary to truly love and want to contribute to the community in which one finds him or herself then that person would be better off in the States.

Age and work experience ought to carry some weight in the selection process. But I believe that optimistic and passionate people can learn the skills and motivate their counterparts into new directions in progress regardless of the level of deterioration of their birth certificate or thickness of their resume. Because of the demands the PC places on its volunteers, character of the applicant is ultimately the best predictor of level of success. While it is the hardest quality to measure in a person, there are numerous check-points that ought to be more strictly controlled and enforced to ensure high quality volunteerism both in promoting understanding between the two peoples and in affecting positive change in the host community.

Creativity and the Moldovan Situation

When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: 'Only stand out of my light.' Perhaps some day we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light.

John W. Gardner

I have asked my students what that light is, where it comes from and how and when is it blocked. Answers have ranged. Diogenes jealously guarding the spotlight of fame, loathe to share it with rulers of the time; the path we choose to follow in our life and the people around us - friends, family, teachers - who either quietly dissuade the cultivation of it or overtly extinguish the flames that light this path; the inner light that we all possess and that, ultimately, depends on us to stay lit or to be blown out.

These responses reflect, I think, the Moldovan situation in a rather illuminating way and show the intellect possessed by its youth that all too often goes ignored. Lately I've been struck by the question:

What role does Creativity play in Moldova and what role should it have?

I frame it as such, though I am sure it has global implications.

All such things must start out with a motivating paragraph that gives some glimpse into why the situation made need to be addressed. Something to capture the attention of the gentle reader and trick her, if only for a little while, into reading further.

• In 2004, Moldova ranked 5th in consumption of alcohol. In comparison, Russia ranked 19th, the US ranked 41st.
• 25% of Moldova's 4.4million natives are working abroad. Of those it is estimated only 80,000 are doing so legally. Many of those who escape legally do so through qualifies for international exchange and work programs, leading to significant brain drain. Those who do not qualify do so in the black, exposing them to the highest rates of trafficking in persons in Europe.
• The economy is stagnant; the population is disenchanted with the political system left to them after the fall of the Soviet Union.

These are not the statistics of a healthy and functional society or of a population trained and eager to rise to the challenges of the future. In a land where the phrase "Hope dies last" is heard daily, people spill across the borders searching for that hope elsewhere.

The roots of these problems are legion and it will take a legion of bright minds to overcome them. One of the greatest barriers towards that progress was being created while Moldova was still a part of greater Romania during the industrial revolution.

At that time also arose, in much the same form, our current system of education. People were educated in order to meet very specific and limited needs in arising industry and one can still see that reflected in how parents react to the grades their children bring home. The classes thought most important are mathematics and the hard sciences. After those follow the humanities, and laughably bringing up the rear are the arts - if they are offered at all.

A factory manager has little need for a workforce that is able to competently express the human condition through poetry or of one that can gracefully carry itself across the dance floor. In fact, too much time thinking about poetry or dancing between rotating gears is a fairly efficient way of trimming one's workforce of appendages. Certain divisions of labor need to be filled and it is the job of education to prepare citizens to fill them.

That may work, to some degree, when the intellectual demands placed on a worker are limited. However, the amount of human knowledge today is said to double every seven years. Manual labor is being transferred from industrialized nations to industrializing nations leaving economies that depend heavily on the individual's ability to work with a rapidly progressing set of technological standards. Citizens are also being confronted with increasingly difficult moral problems as the limits of science are pushed back and culture and religion react to the newly opened doors.

This system of education, in which students are required to learn and recite lists of information while neglecting the cultivation of their creative faculties, fails in several ways:

1. Information is being updated at such a frantic pace that by the time it is published it is out of date, leaving our youth clinging to incomplete theory as scientific gospel. It is rare to find teachers who teach students to question instead of find concrete answers and this inability to question effectively leaves obsolete dogmatists in its wake.
2. The emphasis on learning facts over promoting the creative self cripples student ability to think and work critically with the problems that are confronting us.
3. The inner death suffered by children as they learn that it's better to not call attention to themselves rather than risking being wrong and actualizing themselves limits their chances for a fulfilling and happy life, increasing rates of detrimental coping mechanisms which only further complicate efforts or social reform.
   

We, as parents, community members, and educators have very few years to prepare our youth for the rest of their lives and we are failing.

Any solution to a problem consists of two main parts. One is using existing knowledge in order to create a platform from which to launch a solution, the other is the ability to combine old ideas in new ways and view issues from a different vantage point in order to resolve them with any sort of finality (in so far as this is possible for the given problem). Moldova is in a particularly precarious position due its economic standing and inheritance of unresolved political questions from the former USSR. Still, there seems to exist the idea that the same thinking which has gotten us into this mess will eventually get us out of it if we just have patience.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Albert Einstein

Such logic is silly.

A drastic shift in curriculum and educational system in Moldova (or anywhere, for that matter) is unlikely. It is, therefore, left up to parents and teachers to encourage the minds of our children to develop in their creative faculties. In order to do this with any sort of emotional honesty, we ourselves have to begin taking the same steps we would require of our students.

Activity: Rushed artistry
-Prepare the room with a blank piece of paper, pencil, and a writing surface for each participant.
-Ask each participant to look at their colleagues and then, in 30 seconds, draw a picture of them. If they protest, remind them that they now have just 25 seconds.

Debrief:
"Done? How did it come out? I hear lots of laugher, a couple of apologies. Are you enthusiastic to show it to the person you drew?

"This is a fairly good demonstration of our fear of judgment by our peers. This activity always ends the same way in groups of adults and adolescents who do not know each other very well (and in many cases even those who are quite close). The interesting thing to think about is how children of a much younger age would take to this. No hesitation to show what they have drawn, mangled though it may be. Picasso said that all children are born artists, the trick is to remain so as we grow old. We learn that it is not permissible to be artistic (unless it involves the skilled imitation of a work contemporarily thought of acceptably artistic). The rather melodramatic fact of the matter is that most people are dead long before they are buried or have even stopped eating.

"These barriers to expressing our pictures, ideas, thoughts, sentiments are learned through a rigorous assault of laughs, smirks, criticism, lack of appreciation, indoctrination of manners and etiquette, and the unintended violence of well-intentioned advice to the point that by the time children reach adolescence many of them have been convinced that their best hope and only realistic shot in life is working in low-skill, low-creativity entry-level positions. I have worked these positions. I have worked these positions drunk. The latter is preferable. It might be said, as it so often is here, "Asa e viata" - such is life - but such a life does not leave much room for actual living."

Well-intentioned advice is, quite possibly, far more destructive a force than any malevolent mockery. "Don't worry about singing, you'll never be a singer. You can't go dancing until you finish your math, you'll never be a dancer." It gently dissuades our youth for using their innate talents and shies them from those things they love to do. I am not here proposing that mathematics be removed from the curriculum, but that students be guided into improving their strengths and passions, wherever they may lie and whatever obvious opportunities to paying the bills we may (or may not) see in them.

The truth of the matter is that no person learns, thinks, or understands the universe in the same way. We now talk in terms of multiple intelligences, people who think kinesthetically, visually, verbally, logically, musically, interpersonally, intrapersonally and naturalistically. Our system trains us and our students to believe that only those who function at superior levels of logic and linguistics are truly intelligent. Others are simply amusing detractions from serious work and this is, I assert, a serious mistake.

Our system is designed to teach to the test, to get our youth from high school into college with the highest grades possible. We run our classes and our businesses with the idea that to be mistaken is the worst possible thing we can do. This does not have the effect of making us right more often, but of encouraging us to exercise our powers less out of fear of punishment. By teaching such a value our children retreat into themselves and forfeit any chance at greatness. We as a culture must learn to love our mistakes for what they are. I am not here saying that mistakes are equivalent with creativity, but that we must be ready to make mistakes in order to take the chances needed for creating something truly great.

Activity II: Circles
-On the flip side of the paper given to each participant for the first activity, have drawn 30 circles roughly the size of a quarter.
-Instruct them that they must complete the circles by transforming them into objects - give them the examples of a happy face or a sun.
-Quantity is what is important here, not quality. They need fill out as many as they can in 1 minute.

Debrief:
-Who had more than 5? 10? 15?
-Who used the examples I gave?
-Who used variations on a theme? Happy face, sad face?
-Who tried to combine several of the cirlces into one?

-Who didn't use my examples?
-Who blocked up and couldn't think of anything?

-Why?

The responses I have gotten here have generally been of the flavor that they weren't able to draw nice things quickly, that they didn't think they were allowed to use my examples, or that doing just small changes (or the same image repeatedly) wasn't sufficiently original for the exercise. I have amusingly even had students argue with me that I told them that each circle had to be unique, even after stressing several times that quantity was all I cared about. This beautifully illustrates just how indoctrinated we become to the idea this activity hopes to show:

We learn a hesitation to take even the smallest steps towards a goal due to the belief that our actions or their results will not be creative enough to be worth pursuing. This effectively freezes us in place and prevents any attempt whatsoever. While brainstorming may not be the pinnacle of creative outlet, it can be incredibly useful in its proper context. The theory behind it says that from quantity can come quality. With enough freely spoken ideas, some sparks may grow into a fire with the proper direction and cultivation. The key is creating an atmosphere in which all participants feel free to say whatever comes into their minds. The immediate rejection of ideas or impatience shown at not finding the best answer immediately closes students (and adults) within themselves and kills the attempts before they have begun in earnest.

Evolution does not happen over a short period. Evolution does not always (or even usually) produce changes that are immediately apparently useful to life. Many changes which lead to nothing and may or may not be passed on occur before something of wonder appears. Through selection of vast variety of mutations cells that began as merely light sensitive grow to have the power of spotting a mouse from several kilometers overhead. Were the hawk to sit in the factory of God and refuse to hunt or eat until he was given these perfect eyes, he would die before they were ready. We must lose this fear of not creating a masterpiece. Not every show will be to a sold-out crowd and to work only with the assurance that it will is to never work at all.

Children, and indeed all people, are creative in much the same situations in which they feel free to play. It must be productive play, it must be play inspired by certain laws informed by science or the human experience, but it is play. To be afraid to play, to create, due to fear of judgment of others or worry that it won't floor people with its brilliance is to stifle the creative spirit and deprive the world of solutions to those problems which plague us.

In fact, no country in the world can afford to douse its bright minds, but Moldova is in a particularly hard position and has more need of innovation and progressive thought than most. The global school system is well-entrenched and unlikely to chance in the foreseeable future, and so parents and teachers carry the responsibility of encouraging creative thought and fostering a supportive atmosphere for students to explore their faculties.

We must learn to see our creative capacities for the richness that they are and our children for the hope that they are.

What I have written here is a rough outline for lectures on Creativity in Schools. I'm using this as my chalkboard to line up the points I want to hit and tone I want to set. I have pulled heavily (or ripped wholesale) from the following sources. Any misunderstandings or inconsistencies in application of theory are my own. I highly recommend both the linked videos.
Ken Robinson: Schools Kill Creativity
Tim Brown: Creativity and Play
Sidney Hook: Education for Modern Man