Friday, February 1, 2013

Short Takes #2: Stephen Dunn - Two, Paul Zimmer - The Trains

     I read Stephen Dunn's haunting and beautiful essay "Two."  He offers his students an anonymous choice:  push a button which kills an unspecified peasant in a foreign country and receive a million dollars.  It's frightening to hear the apathy towards precious life that these students feel.  With the classroom being a microcosm of the world, this extrapolates into the indifference the entire population feels.  Dunn's description of the different types of "murderers" in his class is deep.  The second part of his essay is a study of what it means to be a saint, and it has a lovely gentleness to it and culminates in a nice aphorism.  Pleas Read This Essay!  (Only two pages long)
Posted by at

7 comments:

  1. UnknownFebruary 3, 2013 at 7:05 AM

    I will read this essay-- it reminds me of the Milgram experiment (http://explorable.com/stanley-milgram-experiment) which was created to explain why people follow orders even when they detest the results, whether people will always listen to orders. You should look into it- it's scary much like this sounds.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. DaveFebruary 9, 2013 at 5:49 AM

      Aha! And Mary aces the week by acting as a knowledge multiplier.

      Delete
  2. MLFebruary 5, 2013 at 6:35 PM

    I remember seeing a theoretical like this in a movie trailer a few years back. I flip between feeling confident I would do it, and then getting caught up in my humanity and disavowing my confidence. The Milgram experiment and the Stanford prison experiment both make me question civilization. I think the age of the class would make a difference, my hypothesis is that younger classes would do it for the gratification, where older classes would be more reluctant (and maybe this peaks or even declines as jadedness sets in)

    ReplyDelete
  3. DaveFebruary 9, 2013 at 5:50 AM

    Didn't something like this go down in the second to last Batman? The people on the boat had to decide whether to kill or be killed?

    DW

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. MLFebruary 9, 2013 at 8:45 AM

      2 boats- one had prisoners and one had normal citizens. If either pushed the button, they lived and the other boat was destroyed. The normal people campaigned to push the button because they were sure the prisoners would do it to them. The prisoners never considered it, revealing them to be "more ethical" than the common people.

      I thought it was kind of preachy.

      Delete
  4. DaveFebruary 9, 2013 at 5:53 AM

    Thanks for reminding me of this essay. I do enjoy it, and it's curious that he's just as annoyed by lack of imagination as he is by viciousness.

    DW

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tristan CormackFebruary 13, 2013 at 11:20 AM

      Yes, that was an interesting take on the students; he judged them as much by their rationale as by their answer.

      Delete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)