Props to Leah for suggesting we go and see The Milgram Re-enactment tonight at ACMI. It was this film of this performance art piece thought up by this guy called Rod [can't remember his last name. But he's some major dude] and they were re-enacting the Milgram experiments that took place in the 60s at Yale. You know, those ones where people kept giving electric shocks of increasing intensity to other people, just because a guy in a white coat said they should. It was cool, man. They were like, making an exact copy in real time of what actually happened during the experiments, with the script being a transcript of what people actually said while they were participating. It was quite weird to realise how easy it was to get people to inflict [what they believed was] harm on other people. There was no gun to their heads and only quite gentle urgings to continue. They felt diminished responsibility and any pangs of conscience were easily quashed just by the authority guy saying "just keep going with the experiment" and stuff. The experiment they thought they were a part of had a spurious purpose too, which was made blooming obvious as it progressed, but that didn't deter them much either. They just had to do their bit, and that became the goal. Even though, without their bit, no harm would be done. It's all about, like, how certain contexts will manifest the same behaviour in most people, banality of evil and all that shit. They weren't evil, see. Just acquiescent. That Rod dude was really smart too. He used to make crop circles in England. How cool is that?!