stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

394 STRIPPING THE GURUS
In evaluating the actions of their guards, Zimbardo and his
colleagues further noted:
[T]he behavior of [the] good guards seemed more motivated
by a desire to be liked by everyone in the system than by a
concern for the inmates’ welfare.
Guards who thus want to be “liked by everyone,” however, will
not only do small favors for the prisoners and avoid punishing
them, but will equally shrink from offending their own peers.
Thus, they will again avoid speaking out against the abuses of the
latter. (As Zimbardo [1971] himself further noted, allowing those
“bad” guards free reign also makes one look “good” by comparison.
That is, it casts one’s own ego in a positive light, and allows one to
feel like a better person in that contrast.)
Whatever the theory behind the ensuing silence may be,
though—in broad strokes or in nuances—in practice it is a pervasive
feature of human societies, both secular and “sacred”:
It is evident from the testimony of former inmates that by no
means all of [the Irish Catholic nuns and monastic brothers]
behaved brutally towards the children. But it is a common
theme that the “good” nuns and brothers never interfered
with or protested about the activities of their more violent
colleagues (Raftery and O’Sullivan, 2001).
Zimbardo has more recently (2004a) concluded:
My research and that of my colleagues has cataloged the conditions
for stirring the crucible of human nature in negative
directions. Some of the necessary ingredients are ... bystanders
who do not intervene, and a setting of power differentials.
“Bystanders who do not intervene”: e.g., “good” monks who
wonder out loud why their peers and superiors are not behaving
with integrity, but who do nothing to stop it. For, to speak up
would make them “bad disciples” and open them to retaliation/ostracism
from those tougher ones on the same level and “above”
them.
“A setting of power differentials”: e.g., guru-figure, inner circle,
and peon/newbie disciples.