A Genocide/ Peer Pressure

So this week in Mr. Sutherland's class, we watched a video about people being put under a sick test that included people thinking that they were inducing shocks one people. It got me thinking, would I do that to someone? Sure I'm CAPABLE of it but I don't think i'd do it without a reason; if the person was a criminal with a record, I'd probably feel more obliged to go ahead with the tests, if the person was just a person though I don't think i'd go far enough as to give them a 'lethal' shock.

I thought it was a bit like the placebo effect, how if you THINK that it's doing something then it'll have an alternate reaction than if you knew it was false. If someone knew that the person they were 'shocking' was an actor then they wouldn't care; if someone knew that they were just getting the placebo then they wouldn't feel any improvement.

I also understood when they talked about how if someone SAW someone else administer the full test before they took it, then the results of the previous person would be similar to theirs. It's kind of like peer pressure. When you see someone doing something, whether you know them or not, you're more obliged to do it (even if it's a bad thing like smoking). This kind of pressure is everywhere. It kind of makes me wonder that if things like torture and killing can be made a 'normal thing' with something as simple as peer pressure, what ELSE could be accomplished with it? With todays economics and state of mind, another genocide is completely possible. Today, with the right mindset, we are capable of doing practically anything. That's why I don't usually understand when people say things like 'the germans were so stupid, blind, and cruel to do something like that to such innocent people. It's not like the holocaust was the first incident of a mass homicide, it happened (and happens) all over the place. When you're raised around a popular judgment of someone else, that judgement grows on you. Just look at the situation with Iran! People are killed and tortured for no decent reason all the time, the Nazis were just the first to really make it a full fledged genocide.