We Need to Have an Opinion on Things Matter
By: Midori The Sea
Tags: Police Brutality, Science, History, Military, Violence

The first lesson: it’s the uniform

I think the first and most important thing any military or police school must teach their newbies is the Stanford Prison Experiment.

It was 1971, in the basement in one of the Stanford University buildings was turned into a mock prison. A group of students was split into prison guards and prisoners. In their uniform, the guards forgot they were merely students and the prisoners were also their fellow peers.

They became hostile, started to torture, dehumanize, and abuse the prisoners. The experiment was cut short from 14 days to 6 days only, halted by extreme depression and torture inflicted on the prisoners. Back to reality, both groups were traumatized for life.

Because the guards were placed in a position of power, they began to behave in ways they would not usually act in their everyday lives or other situations — Zimbardo et al.

There are queries on the validity of Zimbardo’s experiment until today, but as seen with what happens with the world right now, we can’t deny that tension and identity do escalate a person’s sense of belonging, which in turn, dominate their rationality and behavior.

I wonder what will happen to every single police and military officers when they have taken off their uniform. They have hurt people out there or have seen brutality happened. They were once hyped up in that uniform and brainwashed by the extreme and obscured morale and culture within the force. It’s all a psychological game.

The second lesson: History Repeats Itself

When the Japanese army was defeated during the Second World War, many of them committed suicide before returning to Japan. There were first-hand accounts and newspaper clippings to prove that the Japanese army had lost themselves to cruelty and pure hatred against their enemies during the War.

There was a contest between two Japanese officers as to who could kill 100 Chinese first, and it was treated as heroic efforts/entertainment by Japanese civilians at the time.

The cruelty of course also happened across the ocean in Europe, with Nazi Germany systematically killed a massive number of innocent people in concentration camps (or even before they arrived at the camp).

Massacres are not a thing of the distant past, they just happen on a different scale until today. During the Bosnian War, the Bosnian Serb Army of Republika Srpska killed over 8,000 Muslim people during the Srebrenica massacre in 1995. The Chilean police shot a bullet into the eye of a protestor in January 2020. The list goes on and on for the numerous killings in the Middle East, Africa, and also countless mass shootings in America.

Someone smart enough to compile a list of police brutality:

Why do we still give the military and the police that much power? Because that’s the only thing human knows to do.

Just look at China. Power struggles started since 465BC when China was split by 6 military warlords during the Warring State Period, then similar things happened so many times with one dynasty being taken over by another army leader who had too much power, until Warlordism in Qing dynasty, quickly followed by the end of emperor rule. What happened next? Another long and difficult time of social suppression and police terrorism AKA the Cultural Revolution.

Same with Japan, an invisible emperor (that still exists today) when the real power has been held by Tokugawa Shogunate, a feudal military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1600 to 1868, that’s over two centuries of military rule. But before that, local power samurais had been (called Daimyo) became regional lords and exerted control since the 1300s.

Everyone must know that, by joining the military or police force, they are risking to be a war criminal, as much as they could be a hero. They must understand that there’s nothing heroic about being a law enforcer, only humility, responsibility, and massive risks.

The third lesson: Diverting cash from military to medical and technology research

Whilst some argued that wars have now declined significantly and became a thing of the past, police violence, massacres and shootings still happen every day. Just two weeks ago, tens of civilians were killed in what’s called the Nigeria Massacre.

What’s true is probably that warfare has also now moved to intangible places from the internet to the germs. Bioterrorism and/or viruses and cyberwars also govern our unsafe future. Bill Gates has warned of this a few years ago:

Policymakers, activist groups, and governments must now realize that not only their military and police force are overpowered, psychologically malfunctioned, and potentially traumatized. Their countries are facing attacked not just from the outside, but also potentially from within, from the internet, and even from the air.

We must divert money to medical and technology research, from how to truly train law enforcers, to dealing with pandemics, traumatized civilians coming out of either violence or lockdown, and know what to do in a world where information is spreading very fast, especially the false ones.

Academics need to stop being ring-fenced as academics, we need to bring civilization up-to-speed by applying knowledge-backed policies to eliminate violence, rather than emotions and politics-backed policies. Otherwise, the world described by George Orwell will come very soon.