John Muller Blog 2: Discussion Reaction

Nothing scared the crap out of me this week more than the two clips we watched in class on Thursday. The first clip was from the show “Roots,” and it was a scene of a runaway slave being whipped until he accepted that “Toby” was his name. The disturbing thing about the clip was that it was a slave who was whipping the other slave and everyone, including all the slaves, were watching on and not questioning what was going on. Clearly the slaves outnumbered the non-slaves yet everyone went along with it just doing their part and not questioning the status quo. Similarly, in the Third Reich propaganda video we saw a number of people spreading Hitler’s word graciously and people in the streets hailing him. These videos made me wonder why people are so content with the status quo and if I was in the situation would I be any different.

What is it that makes people just accept the atrocities going on around them? How could a man, such as Hitler, skew an entire countries’ moral compasses. Germany was in a broken state and Hitler was a charismatic guy and a brilliant speaker, but how could that influence an entire people? I think that the bias to just accept the status quo is stronger than most people believe and I thought the two clips revealed this. If everyone is doing one thing and has been doing this thing for a long time it is very unlikely that a person will stand up and do the opposite. Likewise, it is very uncommon for a person to have different political and religious views of their parents and this is because it is all they know. If your parents say it is right you will think it is right. This tendency to accept the status quo and not ask questions is one of our greatest flaws and has led to tragedies brought on by people in the two clips.

The biggest question that remains is how do we take the lenses off and see things from an unbiased perspective. How can we be the ones that see that our society or loved ones are flawed and are doing the wrong things. I believe that 100 years from now people will look back at our society, much like we look back at the slave owning societies, and be disgusted by how we treated certain people and some of the things we believed in. Just how we know now that slavery is wrong people will look at things we are doing now as wrong. Ultimately, I am just raising more questions but I want to end with one more. How can we remove the biases of society, status quo, and our family and have the courage to stand up for change and have the power to stand against laws or beliefs that will be viewed unjust 100 years from now.