Last night myself and SuperLisa sat down to watch "The Heist".
It was a show conceived in the mind of Derren Brown (A very dark place indeed).
They put an advert in local newspapers looking for people to take part in a Motivational Techniques seminar.
All the people who applied were whittled down to about 12 people (probably via apptitude and other such tests).
The select few were then told that the seminar would be conducted by Mr Brown himself at a plush Hotel.
Over a few days, Derren implanted ideas and controlling strategies into these peoples heads in order to get these law abiding citizens to commit armed robbery.
He did the usual stuff like having an annoying security guard on the door of the hotel , a painting of the green Security van that would be used and getting these decent people to walk into a shop a steel sweets and stuff.
At one point in the show he set up the old 1960's Milgram obedience/compliance/conformity experiment (you know, the one where Milgram put the subjects in a room with just a scientist looking man in a white coat, who told the subjects to administer increasingly powerful electric shocks to a man next door if he got answers to questions wrong. Of course the man next door was just acting but the subjects didn't know that.
According to Mr Brown , as in Milgrams experiment conducted decades previously, 50% of the subjects kept administering electric shocks to the man next door up to the maximum of 450 volts despite hearing the cries of pain, just because the man in the white coat told them to continue with the experiment.
3 things about this part of the show,
1. One of the girls was so traumatised by what she had done (after being told that it was just to see how far they would go) that she had to have a special session with Derren (I bet she did Derren).
2. One of the lads was complaining to the man in the white suit that there should be higher voltage switches (yes, higher than 450 volts) after he had reached the max. W.L.T.M.
3. How the fuck did Channel 4 get ethical approval for this?
It seems a bit daft but having whittled down the 12 contestants to just 4 (those who Derren thought would be most impressionable) he and his team set up the 4 (on an individual basis) in a scenario where the opportunity had arisen to rob a security guard with a toy gun in a deserted London street.
Astonishingly 3 out of the 4 robbed the guard with the gun and ran down the street with the cash.
It just goes to show how incredibly fucking weak we all are.
Authoritarians say.
We do.
That's it. All through history it's the same.
I know all about the Nazi Nuremberg trials when the judge famously said "every immoral Law must be disobeyed" (or something to that effect).
Sounds easy doesn't it?
Don't get me wrong.
I agree with this philosophy.
I just think that it might get a little harder to make that call with a gun held to your head.
I mean, How the fuck are we expected to live up to the high moral standards which we have created for ourselves when a man such as Derren Brown and Joe public in a white coat can get us to do unspeakable acts.
Humans are pathetic.
I am human.
