On Dictatorship, Power, and Corruption
I am certain that you are familiar with the events which took place in Egypt, and with the fact that President Hosni Mubarak finally decided to resign from his position as president.
He was considered by many to be a dictator, as he held on to the power for more than three decades, but he was different than all the other dictators which have ruled over the course of time. It is unknown why he made the choices he made, and why did he want to hold on to the power for such a long period of time. Numerous psychologists and scientists have analyzed him, and they have stated that his reasons might have been different than the reasons of the other dictators. According to the psychologists, he suffered from a certain personality crisis, and as a result he started to see himself as being Egypt, as being the personalization of the country. They believe that he will start to suffer both from a physical and from a psychological point of view in the following weeks, as he will start to realize what has happened. The researchers have stated that the dictators have certain traits in common, and Mubarak has some of these traits. Just like any other dictator, he did not accept the opposition with too much kindness. Just like all the other dictators, he used force and brutality in order to take care of the opposition.
Joseph Stalin was the ruler of Russia between 1924 and 1953, and he ruled the country with brutality. It has been stated that he killed 3 million people in gulags and through executions, but some say that the numbers are actually higher than that, reaching tens of millions. Many have stated that this sort of behavior is the behavior of an insane person, but there are others who disagree. It has been discovered that Stalin was sane when he committed all those acts. When he was aware of his enemies, he killed only them, but when he did not know who they were, he killed a larger number of people. Of course, a normal person would not do such a thing, but this proves that he made those decisions using logic. He was a sadistic, and he was insane, but he made his choices through logical thinking. He did not care about the civilians, all he cared about were his opponents. In order to be able to eliminate them he did what he had to do. His actions are not justified, but this is the way in which he was thinking, the psychologists have stated. Jerrold Post, the director of the political psychology program at George Washington University, said that the people such as Stalin suffer from malignant narcissism. These people care only about themselves, about their dreams, they do not care whatsoever about the other people, and they would do anything in order to reach their dream. They would kill, they would torture, and so on.
Mubarak’s regime did those things such as torture and killing, but the psychologists have stated that even so, he can not be compared with Saddam, Hitler, or Stalin, who were much tougher and merciless. They often killed people without any reasons, but Mubarak was not like that. The psychologists believe that he had an authority problem, as he simply liked to be in charge, without realizing that he is harming the people. Jerrold stated that one of the reasons why Mubarak reacted in the way he did when people started to protest against him was because of his age. He could not comprehend the fact that he was no longer wanted as president, especially since he ruled the country for 30 years. Since he is old, his ruling methods are old as well. He did not realize that the methods he used in the past in order to rule, no longer work nowadays, and that hurts the people. Georgi Derlugian, a sociologist at Northwestern University, who has also analyzed numerous revolutions, has stated that it was very obvious that Mubarak was no longer able to distinguish himself from the country. He considered himself to be the country, and he did not realize that his own well-being is not good for Egypt.
(.knowledgerush.com/kr/encyclopedia/Dictatorship/)
He believes that this is one of the reasons why he attacked the oppression: in order to protect himself, but to protect the country as well. The situation is very interesting, because the oppression wanted to remove him from the power in order to liberate the country from his ruling. They fought for the country, but he believed that they are fighting against it. He was convinced that he was doing his country a favor, there is no doubt about that. One of the most surprising things was the fact that he delivered a very defying speech on 10th of February, only to announce on February 11th that he will resign. He spent so many years at the helm of the country, he has seen lots of changes, and now he has been forced to resign from the position he had. The psychologists have stated that it is very likely that he will wonder about what happened, what he did wrong, and so on. Some said that it is very likely that his health will be affected because of this change. He will feel that he has lost something, but even under these circumstances, the majority of the people have stated that he does not deserve compassion, because he did not show compassion to the people.
The interesting thing is that the mind works in a very strange manner when it comes to compassion. It has been discovered that when we hear about the death of a person, we get way sadder than when we hear about the death of hundreds of people. Of course, the second scenario is much worse, but we can not identify with it, so we do not feel the same level of grief as when we hear about the tragic death of an individual. Joseph Stalin said: “One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.” He might have been right, because the psychologists have stated that this is the exact way in which the human brain sees the killings. Paul Slovic, a researcher at the University of Oregon said that thanks to the evolution of technology we get to hear about these events as soon as they happen. We are more informed than ever, yet even so, we do not care too much about what happens in the world. Sure, we are aware of these events, such as the Egypt one, but seeing it in news does not make us willing to take action. He said that the humans react to a single death, but when the number of victims increases, the compassion starts to fade away.
For example, it would not make a difference to us if we would hear that 90 people have died instead of 89. That one extra person would not make a difference because he would have been a part of the bigger picture. Those people simply become a statistic. We would care about those people if we would have lost a loved one, but even so, we would have cared about our loss more than we would have cared about the other 89 people. Slovic said that we as humans have been indifferent to numerous crimes and genocides which have taken place over the course of history. Take the gulags, the Nazi concentration camps, and many other instances in which we were aware of the deaths, but we did nothing in order to stop them. Slavic said that this is the way in which the human mind is formed; this is the way in which we are programmed. In order to test his theory, Slavic showed two different pictures to a group of volunteers. He showed them a picture of six children who were dying, and he told the volunteers that these children would need $300,000 in total in order to be saved. Then he showed them the second picture, with child who was dying as well, telling them that he needs $300,000 in order to be saved. The interesting thing was that the volunteers were willing to give the money to the single child, even though the same amount of money would have saved all the other six children.
In another study he showed a group of volunteers, three different pictures. One showed a starving boy, the other a starving girl and the third one showed them together. The volunteers were less compassionate about the children when they were placed in the same picture. Slavic said that this is quite disturbing, because it shows that the compassion starts to decline even when we are talking about two people instead of one. As I said, these dictators have certain things in common such as narcissism, paranoia, and the lack of compassion. Because of this, the scientists wondered if a regular person could become a dictator, under certain circumstances. The psychologists have stated that a person would be able to become a dictator, but that it would not happen over night. You see, power has the capacity of corrupting the majority of the people, even if we do not like to admit it or not. There have been various cases and experiments which have proven this, the most important and famous one being the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment. During this experiment, a certain number of students were asked to play either the role of the guards or the role of the prisoners. The “prison” was actually the basement of the psychology building of the Stanford University. Philip Zimbardo was the one who conducted the experiment, and he later stated that he did not expect to see these behaviors. The experiment did not last more than a week because of the rough behaviors of the guards. The guards even resorted to torture, whereas the prisoners started to become passive to the abusive treatments, accepted them. On top of that, they even accepted to brutalize the other prisoners in order to be spared from the brutalization. You should keep in mind that these were students, who were not violent and who did not show sings of aggression in the past. It seems that the experiment really managed to bring the evil to the surface. It is said that we all have a certain dark side, which can be brought through certain situations.
Just think about the novel “Heart of Darkness”, in which a simple man manages to commit lots of awful crimes just to be in command in a certain region. The story might seem a little absurd, but the psychologists have stated that it is very possible for a human being to behave in such a manner in certain conditions. The interesting thing during the Stanford experiment was the fact that Zimbardo himself got affected. He did not see things from the perspective of a psychologist, but from the perspective of a prison guard. He allowed the abuse to take place. This practice is common in prison, or in certain camps, through which the prisoners are encouraged to beat on the other prisoners in order to be spared of certain abuses. People can also be dark in order to protect their own interests. In 2010, a psychological study revealed the fact that people who are in a high position and who have a worry-free life, can not read the emotions of the other people with too much ease. They can not realize when those people are bad. Because of this, a dictator will not worry too much about the people, as he will not realize that they are feeling bad. Since he can not see the way in which things really are, he will not try to make a change. The researchers who conducted the study stated that the reason for the lack of understanding is the fact that the one in charge does not to make connections with the other people. A dictator will use an iron fist; he will not care about making alliances. On the other hand, the ones who are in a lower position will need to make certain connections and alliances, and thus, they will need to be able to read the people they are dealing with.
(shahin121uk.blogspot.com/2009/06/iron-fist-in-colloquial-english-iron.html)
When one has the power, he does not need to be empathic towards the other people because he no longer needs those people. On top of that, it was also discovered that the people who have power and authority, are more likely to be more impulsive and to take certain ill-founded decisions. The researchers also discovered that the ones who have the power tend to isolate themselves from the other people. In an experiment, the researchers asked the volunteers to draw an “E” on their foreheads. However, prior to doing that, they volunteers were asked to think of themselves as either being weak or powerful. The ones who considered themselves powerful, drew the letter on their foreheads themselves, whereas the weaker ones asked other people to drew the letter. The E made by the powerful ones was backwards, than the E from the foreheads of the weaker people. Even if the powerful people had the letter drew in a wrong manner, they did not care, because since they considered themselves to be powerful, they no longer cared about the opinions of the weaker persons.
The researchers also discovered that when they asked people to consider themselves to be powerful, they were under the assumption that they had control over various things, even in situations which they could not actually control. For example they believed that they could control the outcome of a dice throw. As you can imagine, the dictators have all these traits, and this is one of the reasons why they end up controlling people in the way in which they do. They no longer feel sympathy for the people, they no longer care about the opinions of the people, and they are under the assumption that they can control everything, event the events over which they have no control. It is a recipe for disaster, or for tyranny, take it as you want it. There are certain psychologists who believe that the power does not actually have the capability of changing a person, but that it offers the people the possibility of putting into practice their beliefs. These researchers have stated that a person does not become evil because of the power, and that only the people who have had those intentions in the first place will become evil. They said that power magnifies the ideas of a person. If he sees himself as being good with more power, he will be good. It is unknown which of these theories are true, but it seems that the majority of the people consider the first one to be valid, that power corrupts people.
