Psychology of Genocide
"Conformity was key to understanding how people were seduced by the power of the situation."
This is a very interesting quote as it explains that people will usually follow the norm of the society. Therefore, it explains how people who would never normally be part of something terrible can become seduced into doing it if they see that many people are doing it, they will simply try to just "go with the flow" as they say. With this quote the author is showing evil can prosper if many people get on board with the evil ideology because of the reason that for every person that gets on board there will be more people who will accept the ideology in order to be part of society's norm, no matter how ridiculous the idea may be. Therefore, this quote is implying that an important part to understand why genocides occur is to understand why people act upon social standards and why they act upon the norm of the society rather than think about their society. They may act upon social standards rather than think for them selves as they may think think that since such a majority agrees with the same ideology they should too as they may think that what they think is incorrect. For example, this was seen in WWII, as people agreed with Hitler as many people did therefore they went with the norm. Also, during that time Europe was very Anti-Semitic therefore, rather than thinking for them selves and understanding that Anti-Semitism was quite frankly a stupid ideology they simply hopped on the racism boat, which caused them to have hatred in their heart against the Jews for no particular reason. This then lead to the very unfortunate WWII.
"Conformity was key to understanding how people were seduced by the power of the situation."
This is a very interesting quote as it explains that people will usually follow the norm of the society. Therefore, it explains how people who would never normally be part of something terrible can become seduced into doing it if they see that many people are doing it, they will simply try to just "go with the flow" as they say. With this quote the author is showing evil can prosper if many people get on board with the evil ideology because of the reason that for every person that gets on board there will be more people who will accept the ideology in order to be part of society's norm, no matter how ridiculous the idea may be. Therefore, this quote is implying that an important part to understand why genocides occur is to understand why people act upon social standards and why they act upon the norm of the society rather than think about their society. They may act upon social standards rather than think for them selves as they may think think that since such a majority agrees with the same ideology they should too as they may think that what they think is incorrect. For example, this was seen in WWII, as people agreed with Hitler as many people did therefore they went with the norm. Also, during that time Europe was very Anti-Semitic therefore, rather than thinking for them selves and understanding that Anti-Semitism was quite frankly a stupid ideology they simply hopped on the racism boat, which caused them to have hatred in their heart against the Jews for no particular reason. This then lead to the very unfortunate WWII.