The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo

A few months ago, I read a book called The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo. This book looks at human nature and why good people turn evil.

It is actually a fascinating read. Zimbardo held an experiment that was supposed to last for 2 weeks. He took healthy college-educated males and randomly assigned them to either be the prisoner or the guard. Zimbardo's team basically gave all power to the guards in how they wish to run the Stanford Prison Experiment. They gave them a few guidelines to prevent abuse, such as making physical abuse intolerable. Other than that, they were allowed to do whatever they wanted to the prisoners.

Nevertheless, the guards turned into power-hungry people who exploited and abused the prisoners. They failed to give them decent bathroom breaks, failed to feed them in time, and humiliated them in front of everyone, and even made them strip naked in front of their peers.

The prisoners fell into despair, and felt absolutely helpless. Yet, surprisingly, even though they knew they could drop out of the experiment any time, they stayed, almost like they forgot that was an option. Even in their cells at night, instead of talking about themselves and getting to know each other, and finding out what they did outside of this experiment, they talked about escape, and how to overturn the guards. They talked about revolting when they could have easily just walked out of the experiment. It is surprising that they even take this abuse, even when they knew that the punishments were unjustified.

I bring this up, because the whole time I was reading this book, I was thinking about us undocumented immigrants and how we are like the prisoners. It's like we were randomly chosen to be undocumented. We are stripped of our rights and are embarrassed and humiliated in society. It was a fifty-fifty chance for us. We could've easily been a guard, and we've easily become the prisoners too.

Why are we undocumented? Just like the guards and prisoners, why are those the roles they were given? It seems so random and arbitrary, how we are labeled as undocumented too. It seems so surreal, because we never expected to be the ones dehumanized for being so innocent. Are we just role players in life too? Because that's what life feels like. Life doesn't feel so real when you are given a role not of one's choosing.

I sometimes wonder how life would be so different right now if I weren't undocumented. And it's crazy how that fact alone rules our lives. Like the prisoners, it's crazy how random chance that made them a prisoner led them to have miserable lives. Random chance made us the ones fighting for a normal life.

There must be a really thin line drawn between what separates the oppressor from the oppressed.