www.secfive.org

One perfect and beautiful day while i was talking to a a girl called Elizabeth (and heres a link to her blog) , she informed me of something called the Briggs-Myers Personality Test, and so i took a look at it on wikipedia and a few days later i actually took the test. And here are the results my dear readers. Apparently, i'am a very rare breed and i probably belong to the hitler type.

All this from similiarminds.com,

Extroverted (E) 55.56% Introverted (I) 44.44% Intuitive (N) 52.63% Sensing (S) 47.37% Thinking (T) 79.41% Feeling (F) 20.59% Judging (J) 56.25% Perceiving (P) 43.75%

Your type is: ENTJ

ENTJ - "Field Marshall". The basic driving force and need is to lead. Tend to seek a position of responsibility and enjoys being an executive. 1.8% of total population.
Enneagram Test Results

The Enneagram is a personality system which divides the entire human personality into nine behavioral tendencies, this is your score on each...

Type 1 Perfectionism 56%
Type 2 Helpfulness 23%
Type 3 Image Awareness 60%
Type 4 Sensitivity 20%
Type 5 Detachment 40%
Type 6 Anxiety 40%
Type 7 Adventurousness 80%
Type 8 Aggressiveness 73%
Type 9 Calmness 63%

And this is taken from keirsey.com

Of the four aspects of strategic analysis and definition, it is marshalling or situational organizing role that reaches the highest development in Fieldmarshals. As this kind of role is practiced some contingency organizing is necessary, so that the second suit of the Fieldmarshal's intellect is devising contingency plans. Structural and functional engineering, though practiced in some degree in the course of organizational operations, tend to be not nearly as well developed and are soon outstripped by the rapidly growing skills in organizing. But it must be said that any kind of strategic exercize tends to bring added strength to engineering as well as organizing skills.

As the organizing capabilities the Fieldmarshal increase so does their desire to let others know about whatever has come of their organizational efforts. So they tend to take up a directive role in their social exchanges. On the other hand they have less and less desire, if they ever had any, to inform others.

Hardly more than two percent of the total population, the Fieldmarshals are bound to lead others, and from an early age they can be observed taking command of groups. In some cases, Fieldmarshals simply find themselves in charge of groups, and are mystified as to how this happened. But the reason is that Fieldmarshals have a strong natural urge to give structure and direction wherever they are -- to harness people in the field and to direct them to achieve distant goals. They resemble Supervisors in their tendency to establish plans for a task, enterprise, or organization, but Fieldmarshals search more for policy and goals than for regulations and procedures.

They cannot not build organizations, and cannot not push to implement their goals. When in charge of an organization, whether in the military, business, education, or government, Fieldmarshals more than any other type desire (and generally have the ability) to visualize where the organization is going, and they seem able to communicate that vision to others. Their organizational and coordinating skills tends to be highly developed, which means that they are likely to be good at systematizing, ordering priorities, generalizing, summarizing, at marshalling evidence, and at demonstrating their ideas. Their ability to organize, however, may be more highly developed than their ability to analyze, and the Fieldmarshal leader may need to turn to an Inventor or Architect to provide this kind of input.

Fieldmarshals will usually rise to positions of responsibility and enjoy being executives. They are tireless in their devotion to their jobs and can easily block out other areas of life for the sake of their work. Superb administrators in any field -- medicine, law, business, education, government, the military -- Fieldmarshals organize their units into smooth-functioning systems, planning in advance, keeping both short-term and long-range objectives well in mind. For the Fieldmarshals, there must always be a goal-directed reason for doing anything, and people's feelings usually are not sufficient reason. They prefer decisions to be based on impersonal data, want to work from well thought-out plans, like to use engineered operations -- and they expect others to follow suit. They are ever intent on reducing bureaucratic red tape, task redundancy, and aimless confusion in the workplace, and they are willing to dismiss employees who cannot get with the program and increase their efficiency. Although Fieldmarshals are tolerant of established procedures, they can and will abandon any procedure when it can be shown to be ineffective in accomplishing its goal. Fieldmarshals root out and reject ineffectiveness and inefficiency, and are impatient with repetition of error.

Well i dont really know what to say about all this, but i guess i'd take what the personality test has offered me as a compliment. Afterall, according to it, an administrative or executive post befits me to most and apparently i'am special in the sense that theres only 2% of people like me in the population. Furthermore i also think that the tests describes me rather accurately. I do get gravely impatient when mistakes are repeated by either myself or any other people, and i do love to run some sort of a racket or organization. I love to create, to implement, to design and to produce. I also rarely give a damn what other people feel. I'd prefer that people act along the parameters of reason and rationality rather than feelings and emotions. We all do things for a purpose, a reason; for in doing so it has meaning, and relevancy - without which all else is naught.

Apparently, i'am also not a very helpful, or a very sensitive person. I guess its obvious why. To be helpful means to lend assistance to those who are less competant. I would give help in the form of guidance, advise, but never directly in terms of aid, monetary or otherwise. It is my philosophy that aid creates dependency, rather than encourage change, growth or improvement. The weak and incompetent needs to improve themselves, not to depend on others. As for being sensitive. I guess i'd concede that i'am a pretty cold and unforgiving person sometimes. Life is deterministic, causal. I dont see how being sensitive, loving and emotional can be considered positive qualities in life. Rather perhaps i see them to be the harbringers of friction, conflict and disagreement. We are humans, we cannot surpress our urges and emotions. To be sensitive would mean to take into consideration another person's thoughts and feelings and perhaps mask or present our own thoughts in a better form. This is a form of concealment, or even dishonesty. And being the causal and deterministic world that we live in, concealing and being dishonest with our thoughts and feelings have repercussions over time. Ultimately this erupts in an orgy of conflict and argument. How is that desirable ?

It can be argued that sensitivity here relates more to the ability to perceive and read people, rather than accomodating them. In the context of my environment and the usage of the term sensitivity, this is rarely the case though. Usually the word to describe the ability to perceive and read people, is called empathy instead. And for that i concede hands down, certain times i just cannot read and perceive what a person is thinking or feeling. Perhaps i should work more on that. This thing called empathy.

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The average teenager nowadays is almost always angsty and angry at the world, feeling impotent at the perceived faults and failings of society and yet feeling doubly gay about themselves for the fact that they have the capacity to think that way. That perhaps one day when they grow up into adults, they will exert enough impact and influence on society to actually change it.

It seems to me that everyone thinks somehow, in some sense, one way or the other , they are superior to their average fellow men. That their views and opinions seemingly hold more weight that their compatriots, and that somehow they are more human than the next guy and so we judge, we judge everyone we meet, everything we see. We find obvious faults with almost everything not realizing when instead the fault inherently lies in the fact that we are all but only humans and that by definition we are fundamentally flawed and imbued with the vices of greed, sloth, wrath, pride, lust, envy and gluttony. My dear readers, that is the crux of the problem with society and in humans in general - we are not perfect, we are only human. Imperfection exists not due to the lack of design or implementation in society but due to the inherent human condition. Dont blame the people who generalize, dont blame the rascists, dont blame the politicians, blame the human condition.

How convenient is the observer, he who sits on his glass throne and critiques everyone else, yet does nothing to avail it. His arrogance grow, as does his isolation and ultimately he turns narcissist and feels omnipotent. For who else judges mankind. Yet they know not the scores and scores of people who have walked through the same path, and that they ultimately belong to the largest common denominator in the sense that they form the core group of what it means to be human. In an ironic sense, the people who think they are special, or superior are just simply the mediocre people that make up human society. They walk a coerced path, they actively blame but passively accept - they conform to peer pressure, to suggestion and to the authorities and are satisfied with merely placing blame and believing in the ideals that one day, somehow, someway, as long as they believe hard enough , reality will bend their way.

Perhaps this is the new religion of the 21st century. I dont know what people would like to call it but perhaps it should be called delusion. People nowadays have much less free will and thought than say the people in the 18th or 19th century. Sure we are more educated, sure we have cars and planes to bring us about and mobile phones to communicate but do we actually innovate more in terms of thought and philosophy ? do we think about all the other things in life and find a way to live them out - to live out our own lives ? absolutely not. What we do today, is follow what is conventionally accepted. If the scientist in country X says this stuff is good for you, you eat it. Everyone goes to school and learn the same stuff that everyone else is learning. There is no expectation by the people in position for you to actually innovate, to talk back and to discuss what you've learned. Instead rather it is usually discouraged, the teachers of our teenagers mostly just wish that their students accept whatever ideas that are being taught and reproduce it at the exam. Nobody truly gives a damn about religion, they have no faith. We worship objectivism. And life falls into a mere mechanical process. We grow up, take our exams like everyone else, perhaps go to university and are finally supplied to the body called economy as fresh meat to turn the cogwheels of our modern society. Peace has given us complacency, and people have become nothing more but intelligent farm animals. We've lost our individuality, in its stead , the voice of human society and the one conciousness of the system speaks to us. It beckons us to accept, beckons us to produce, beckons us to consume. And amazingly, its these nitwit bystanders who stand passively alongside the course of developing human history, finding fault and critiqueing anything and everything they find, yet never putting in enough effort to change the status quo - that fuel the stagnant society they so wish to change.

Society needs change, and its supply of change comes from its influx of healthy young adults with their spontaineity, radicalism, extremism and fresh new ideas which today are increasingly being stifled and streamlined by the secular and selfish institutions that aim to mass produce well manered, pro-society and obedient straight A students, that are easily incorporated into society. Petty people who practice double standards. Practicing their individuality in the mere form of thought. Satisfied as long as their needs are met and through superficilities like preferences in music, clothing and food. What ever happened to the passion, the vigor that people had for their various causes and believes.

No one truly fights for anything anymore. We all just follow, and accept, not the leaders but the system. Perhaps we are all just mere cells that make up the one organ called the human society. We are in effect a living entity. Like the cells in our bodies, we have become cells in society. Functionally believing our own state of autonomy and uniqueness while actually faciliating what is actually the human society. One singular body made from inter-dependant units which believe they have individuality where in reality they do not. Is this evolution ? forging organisms together to produce a whole greater than its sum. Or is it a devolution of the human individual - its reduction to a mere machine.

[EDITED - to correct obvious vocabulary and grammatical mistakes]

Posted by sec5 at 07:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Today i'am going to tell you a very personal story about a girl whom i've knowned for quite a while.

Just when i woke up at about 3:30pm today, a girl whose actively been in my msn for about 3 or 4 years messages me. Apparently she has also messaged me on the mobile yesterday, the messages run along like this. For the sake of both simplicity and privacy, we shall just name this girl KM

[MOBILE MSGS]
KM : hey can i request something ? can you be my guitar teacher or something ? haha. =P..
sec : aha umm whose this ?
KM : ****** (thats her name) this is sector right ?
sec : yeah. I'am not very good and i play the classical guitar, so if you should get a proper teacher instead.
[MOBILE MSG SESSION ENDS]

So today again, she messages me in MSN. However in the painful fit of being backstabbed by someone whom i've helped so much, i've accidentally closed the msn window - so this following conversation is being pieced back by memory instead, to the best of my ability to recall.

[MSN MSG SESSION]
KM : Can you teach me how to play guitar ?
sec: I'am not very good, you should try to get some tabs and learn from there.
KM : where can i get them ?
sec : google
KM : My guitar is out of tune
sec : there are online tuners from the internet too, you just download them and they will play notes on your speakers. you then tune the guitar to those notes.

*** brief pause ***

KM : which way does it start first ? from the first string or the last string?
sec : it starts with the thickest string first, and ends with the thinnest string. i know both of them are E, but i dont remember the stuff in between
KM : (i dont really remember what she said, but i believe she expressed confusion)
sec : the thickest string is the lowest sounding one, the thinnest string has the loudest pitch
KM : can you just tell me which string is B ? it is the 2nd string.
sec : i dont know
sec : google for it
KM : asshole
sec : :)
KM : (some other offensive sentence/word/phrase i cant really remember)
sec : you want me to help you, and i've helped you out to the best of my ability.
sec : why dont you stop asking me for shit here and there if you want to be such an ass
sec : i'am sorry to say this but you suck
sec : you'll be blocked
KM : you too ~~
KM : (some other profanity that i dont remember)
[MSN MSG SESSION ENDS]

... and she changes her msn name to something along the lines and to the effect of " sector is gay , is such an asshole (profanity profanity) "

Now thats what i would call, a rude awakening. What a bad way to start a day :(

Throughout perhaps these 3 or 4 years, she's been asking me on msn questions about O'levels maths and biology, to which when i am not seriously preoccupied, i would give in effort to help and teach her. So i'am rather sort of like an online teacher to her. She's also worked at my dads company for a while and recently shes been asking me to get her employment, to which i've told her to get and fill in application forms from the showrooms. But shes hesitant and is lazy to get the forms, to which she asks if it is alright if her parents got it for her. I said it was alright and suddenly shes now interested in guitars.

Personally i feel quite devastated for someone whom i've helped so long to throw profanities at me. But shit happens and i've seen enough of that in life to know that this is but the fundamental essense of the human condition and i accept this as part of life.

I guess sometimes in life we give in to the people we are fond of in life, and they do not give back. That is call unconditional love. But sometimes rather than giving back, they bite back. And I guess thats call backstabbing. Thats one aspect of life we all have to accept.

P.S: So dear KM, i forgive you for being only human.
But your still blocked on my msn :P and i'am not going to help you out anymore :P
I too, am but only human.

Posted by sec5 at 04:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (131) | TrackBacks (0)

[INTERMISSION]
Give me a sec while i put on my earbuds.
*adjusts & adjusts* alright its smooth
Damn, low batt.
*hooks it up to the pc, yadda yadda yadda*
*puts on forever today by dj tiesto*
alright
[INTERMISSION ENDS]

These few days have been wacky, as you can obviously imply from the title of this entry. Strangely i cannot recall much without the sheer use of willpower. So let me think realllly hard.

Lets start off with Dec 31, New Years Eve. I was at marco's place and he has a huge place. Apparently he speaks either spanish or portugese and he has these really great friends, and makes really great alcoholic fruit punches. Thats all i can remember though.

Between 1st and 7th of Jan, i've been out with random people, mostly playing cs and dota at a cybercafe and then hanging out for snacks at the local hawker stores. Somewhere between then, i also went to labi and i met a few folks, most of which were scuba divers on our second trip to labi. On our second trip to labi, we went to another place instead, and apparently this was the _one waterfall_ that everyone was talking about. Here was a beautiful waterfall and directly in the path of the water falling, there exists ropes for people to climb up the waterfall, in the waterfall. To get up a waterfall with water falling hard on you is a rather interesting experience. You'd think that it would be difficult with all that gravity and water acting on you, but that wouldnt be the case. Rather the water hits you so hard and loud on your head and face, that you can hardly see or hear anything but water. It also messes with your sense of direction so half of the time people just slip and fall back into the water. 3 of us, out of 7 or 8, managed to climb up this liquid monstrosity, and we explored the rapids up till a sharp corner.

And this was probably among one of the most beautiful and amazing nature experiences i've had in my life. Up the rapids, the water was flowing on smooth bed rock filled with pot holes, it broke off occasionally to form two vertically seperated but converging currents - each on two alternating levels. I'am not too sure if you can imagine that, but its really something really astonishing. Further up on the rapids, there were these natural seats carved perhaps by time and rocks into human fitting bedrock where you could actually sit in it and have currents pulsating on your back for the ultimate spa/jacuzzi experience. I swear, one session in these nature spas would restore you by atleast 10 years back to when you feel like you just got your first erection or turn on. And just when you think you heard it all, theres the monkeys.

Not only do they have natural jacuzzis up there, there were also monkeys who served you alcohol. Once you made yourself comfy on these bedrocks, half a dozen monkeys would jump down with pen and paper to take your cocktail order and serve you anything you fancy. We all ordered a few coronas and san miguels and just chilled out at the ultimate nature chillout lounge.

Nah i was fucking joking about the monkeys.

After the monkeying session and other random stuff that i'am feeling lazy to write about, we went back. Luckily this time there were no leeches. Thank the reinvented god.

The next thing that comes into my mind was the 7, 8 and 9th of January. Thats sunday, monday and tuesday. We had a huge party at adams place, and i got really high on redbull and vodka. The strangest thing ever was that when i puked, there were leaves in my puke. These were full leaves about 2 cm in length, and they looked like oxidized tea leaves. I didnt really know what the hell they were but i sure was surprised that theres leaves in my stomach. Perhaps they were something else and perhaps i was high. I did eat satay before i puke though but i swear to god, they had the exact look, shape and consistency as tea leaves. Either the satay was cooked with some sort of herbal leaves or i was actually eating grass. But oh well, i'am still alive so thats a great thing.

Before my great puking session there was also a snake wine drinking session. More specifically cobra snake wine from Vietnam that our hosts obtained from a certain minister in Vietnam.

Now let me describe this intriguing object.

In a very general sense, it is a typical ~600ml whisky bottle, with the typical double arched slender shape at the sides and a flat bottom, the wine bottle has a larger width then its height , but this width slowly decreases and tapers off to form the neck and the cap section of the bottle. The bottle can be described as fat and flat. What was inside it was a baby or adolescent cobra, coiled at its ends which rested at the bottom of the bottle, with its head rising spectacularly into the typical cobra agitated stance - with its head spread horizontally out and its jaw opened slightly to reveal a forked tongue. Surrounding this spectacle was ginseng roots and what was probably rice wine. The hosts saw our iminent fascination with this and brought us shot glasses. I had 2 shots of this rather flavourful wine, on which the second shot i nearly puked. The wine didnt taste that bad, tequila and vodka straight up is much much more worst, but the psychological image of the snake and everything really does make the typical non exotic wine drinker feel like shit.

[EDIT - i found a picture of this online, dont you just love the internet]

After the snake debacle, we chilled out and listened to assorted folks playing the guitar and singing. We had a few slighly morals and philosophy debate. This (rather cute) british girl believed that it was the innate function of every person to be materialistic and want more, and that those people who are not inherently materialistic are ignorant. I argued that people have a choice to be materialistic or not, and that people are merely forced to conform by peer pressure from branding and the media to have the idealistic notion that more stuff is better. That the happiest people, are indeed people from the undeveloped nations (Statiscally, happiest people are the Filipinos), and whether relevant or not, i would gladly choose to be happy than to have more. Though between being happy and knowing more, I would choose the latter. Cause i do agree with her that happiness does require abit of ignorance about human affairs and the human condition.

Apart from that, I also told them that humans have the largest dicks among all primates, much to their amusement. Perhaps this is no small feat if the word primate conjures up images of chimps and bonobos in your mind, but think of the gorilla, usually 2 to 3 times the average human in size and weight, yet only having 4 cm of erected wang for sex. This is unrelated but, personally i think that sex is an integral part to human evolution, and that evolution favours those who give better sex to their partners.

Apart from that, we jumped into the pool at the party which was awesome. After that, we just socialized and talked alot. Roger took lots of pictures which i will probably be posting in another seperate entry. At about 5am, we went to serasa beach to look at the stars which were awesome. It was a perfectly clear sky, visibility was awesome and you could see a whole 360 degrees worth of stars. Later, we went to Shahbandar, which was a recreation park, and hiked up a hill or two to look at the sunrise, and that was awesome too. Stars and sunrise - very nice combination. After that, we had some indian and malay food and went home.

I remember i had to do this wacky christian praise music video-audio editing for one of our customers. With all due respect to religion, this was 5 mins of few hundreds of people singing and coordinating hand movements along the lines of world peace, love and breaking the chains of mistrust and selfishness. To see a few hundred people with their faces so full of awe and abandon to me is a very sad image. I find it very hard not to correlate such an image with that of nazi soldiers, maoist-styled communism (everyone with their little red book) or george orwell's 1984. Also the sheer idealism these people have with the one-sided ideals of hope, love and peace borders on the obsessive and fanatical.

I slept after i finished my work, and we went to the border when i woke up. This was the 10th. We had awesome chicken wings, stingray and fish, and then after that we went home and i slept early.

Then today or atleast, 3 hours ago, which was the 11th. We .. hmm lets not talk about today :)

That much be such a spoiler. But oh well, shit happens.

Life is fun. Someones gotta enjoy it, why not you.

Posted by sec5 at 01:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

These are somethings i've came across while i was reading one of francis fukuyama's book and various internet and wikipedia articles. I dont really remember it very well but these must have been some of the most interesting things that i have come across in reading.

Disclaimer: These are just my own interpretations and definitions of the experiment, based on what i have read and my ability to recall most of them. I have included their appropriate links in wikipedia so that readers who are more interested can futher fully explore the topics at hand. Man i fucking feel like a lecturer.

Prisoners Dilemma

The theory basically starts with the analogy of two men , both prisoners, who are trying to bargain their way out of jail term. They can choose to either cooperate or defect. If both prisoner defects, both of them go to jail for a shared sentence of 5 years each. If both prisoner cooperates, both of them go to jail for 6 months. If a person cooperates while the other defects (backstabbing of sorts), he gets what is termed the 'sucker's payout' and he alone carries the full penalty of the sentence which is 10 years while the other prisoner runs off scott free. Both of these prisoners are not allowed to talk to each other and makes his choice individually and it is assumed that both prisoners are trying to avoid or lessen jail sentence.

To summarize a person (the prisoner) can choose to either play nice (cooperate) or defect (be an ass);

If he cooperates, there are two possible outcomes.
1. His opponent cooperates, and he gets 6 months in jail
2. His opponent defects, and he gets 10 years in jail

If he defects, there are also two possible outcomes.
1. His opponent cooperates, and he gets off scot free
2. His opponent defects, and he gets 5 years in jail

By comparing the two possible choices a prisoner can make and its subsequent 4 outcomes. The most rational choice for any person to make is to defect. And this is interesting because it models life alot - it always is a logically sound decision to make selfish choices and to backstab people you come across in life. But if everyone was truly a logical person, they would all choose to defect and everyone would go to jail for 5 years, instead of the obviously better alternatives (getting scot free, or 6 months in jail). Therein lies the crux of the prisoners dilemma, of thinking what the other prisoner would choose.

Iterated Prisoners Dilemma

In the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, the game is replayed an X number of times with a large number of computer programs, where X is known only to the game master and unknown to the participating programs. X is a huge number, so that each program gets to play another program much more than once. Instead of penalties, the computer programs get points if they win. And the method to win the most amount of points - as proven experimentally - is to follow this set rule:

1. Be nice
2. Retaliate
3. Be forgiving
4. Non-envious

Which is completely antithesis to the methods and mindset required to win a single prisoners dilemma game. This also mirrors life much more accurately, as when you backstab people, there are obvious repercussions. Ultimately since humanity is effectively a collective whole and are interdependant on one another, the obvious choice is to cooperate with one another.

The game of Reason and Logic

This is a game played between two participants and one experimenter. The two participants do not meet face to face and the experimenter gives the first participant a fixed sum of dollar notes to which he is free to divide in two sets of any amount. This participant we will call the splitter. The splitter presents the other portion of the dollar notes to the other participant. And this other participant whom we will call the decider gets to decide whether or not to accept or reject the offer. If he chooses to accept the offer, then both the splitter and the decider pocket their respective portions of the money. If he chooses to reject the offer, both the splitter and decider get nothing.

Those are the technicalties of the game.

In a hypothetical solution, the amounts given are usually 10 pieces of 10 dollar notes and the splitter splits 90 dollars for himself and offers the decider 10 dollars to which he would either reject or accept.

Now for the decider, he has two outcomes:
1. He rejects the offer and gets nothing
2. He accepts the offer and earns himself 10 bucks

If he was playing against a machine, or a monkey perhaps, he would readily choose option 2. Against humans however, an overwhelming amount of people in experiments conducted worldwide choose option 1 - prefering to get nothing rather than let the splitter get away with 80 dollars more than him. Reason and logic predates that 10 dollars is better than nothing. but morality and ethics tells us that everyone rather get nothing than let another person get an unfair share of the money. It is as though we are preprogrammed to 'educate' other people to be fair, if not to everyone, then atleast to us.

Another interesting fact is that if the decider was offered 90 dollars while the splitter reserves 10 for himself, overwhelmingly, deciders choose that it was alright for themselves to pocket an extra 80 dollars more than the splitter. It can be interpretted that since the splitter offers 90 dollars for the decider, he agrees to the fact that he will pocket only 10 for himself, and this forms the rational basis for the decider to accept the deal. Or the decider can just be a selfish person who practices double standards and use that as a convenient excuse to pocket much more money. Readily, people would choose to accept the deal almost instantly.

The bottom line is that humans are intrinsically selfish creatures yet are dependent on one another to survive and flourish. However if they feel that there would be no significant repercussion, they will readily betray people to gain profits for either themselves or their affliations at the collective cost of other people. This forms the basis for corruption and graft in society.

Milgram Experiment

In this experiment, 3 people are involved namely the actor, the participant and the experimenter. The participant is drafted by the experimenter and introduced to the actor as another participant. The experimenter then tells the participant that they will be conducting an experiment to gauge the learning ability of people under physical punishment.

The the participant and actor then seats in between an opaque screen that seperates them visually. After that 45 volt shocks are administered to the participant for him to appreciate the severity of the punishment that will later on be applied and used in the experiment against the actor - which the participant believes is another participant.

The game starts by the experimenter having the participant ask the actor a set list of complicated questions to which there are 5 answers. Everytime a wrong answer is given, the participant is required by the experimenter to provide a punishment in the form of increasing electric shocks (from 45 to 400 volts). As the electric shocks are applied, the actor plays prerecorded audio sessions shouting and pleading for the participant to stop. At voltages beyond 120, the actor bangs on the wall and cries for help. At voltages beyond 300, the actor stays silent and stops yelling.

From wikipedia, If at any time the subject indicated his desire to halt the experiment, he was given a succession of verbal prods by the experimenter, in this order:
1. Please continue.
2. The experiment requires you to continue, please go on.
3. It is essential that you continue.
4. You have no choice, you must continue.

If the subject still wished to stop after all four successive verbal prods, the experiment was halted. Otherwise, it was halted after the subject had given the maximum 450-volt shock three times in succession.

Those are the technicalities of the experiment.

Before the experiment was conducted, it was reviewed by other peer psychologists who unanimously agreed that only true sadists would give shocks above 300 volts and these made up about 5% to 10% of the sample population.

However after the experiment was conducted, Milgram observed that 65% of the participants administered the strongest and final 450 volts shock to the actor. Similiar experiments carried worldwide also gave a similar outcome and the number of people administered the final 450 volts shock fell in between 61% and 66%.

This translates to that ~63% of us would readily harm or injure another human being under the suggestion of an external body. A subtler interpretation would be that ~63% of us and possibly much more, will simply just take the suggestion of an external body. This means that we as humans pretty much just absorb whatever ideas, ideals and philosophy that we learn in the 12 years of compulsory schooling, society or peers and mindlessly accept them in our lifes, regardless of our own belief systems and reasoning. We are a generation that readily conforms to thoughts and ideals taught to us and we readily accept them and model our lives on them.

Science has seen a revolution in that thought is done methodically, empirically and logically. However social science and civics is still stuck in the communist 1940s where ideas and thoughts are simply ingrained into us. Children are born and led through a path of suggestion and design, they are not taught to have independant thinking. Rather they are taught not to question the authority. To accept things as they come. Being different in a community where there is a preset norm, is to be an outcast and treated differentially and this acts as a leverage to force people back to accept preset norms. Its a very Orwellian picture. It is no surprise how german military workers read shakesphere and listened to mozart while they gassed their Jewish counterparts and buried their rotting bodies with ease, perhaps even grace. Scientifically, they were sound, but civically, they were nuts. This sets up the argument for the double standardness of human morality and ethics. Verily, it is just used as a convenience. There is no such thing as morality and ethics, these are just preset social norms.

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