The Blog Group That Roared

Well, if I may depart from the normal perspective, I thought the little “social experiment” we acted out on Friday was very telling regarding human nature. To be perfectly honest, I feel as though, despite our adversarial actions, we all would have made more or less the same decisions. However, I would have acted differently on a few key occasions:

For one, I would not have consented to the decision made by my group to voluntarily relinquish one of our chairs to another group. If we, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Pamba, had extra resources, they should have been deployed in a more strategic manner. Had I, the Pambese defense minister, not been away procuring weapons for the defense of our fair republic, I would have held onto the chair and waited until an opportunity presented itself.

And, as I anticipated, one did. Before long, those good-for-nothing Propranololitans tried to cut a deal with us. However, once we rejected their Skittles-for-table offer, they launched a preemptive Nerf Vulcan strike against our motherland. I was forced to return fire, which temporarily halted their assault.

Now, had we still possessed that extra chair, we could have used it as a bargaining chip. I would have offered to trade the chair to the Duchy of Girl-Gangstania, where the Vulcan’s owner, Phil the Strong, resided. I would have persuaded him to cease his weapon sales to the Propranololitans in exchange for the extra chair, which their group was in desperate need of. Such a tactical move is exactly what extra resources should be used for, as I and many others have elaborated on in our blog posts.

The reason that our actions in the class differed from the values we stated in our blogs was due to the largest difference between our simulation and reality: the lack of actual consequence for our actions. The tables and chair were not “real” resources, and no group would have starved or been attacked another group if they failed to allocate resources properly. With this in mind, we were able to take more charitable measures than we would have had our well-being been on the line.

Later in the class, my group reached a deal whereby we would absorb our former enemy, the Principality of San Propranolo. This was done with no further bloodshed. Instantly, we both shared supremacy in both resources and military firepower. However, there were some outsiders who tried to break up our newly-found union by questioning whether our agreement constituted a merger or an annexation. Balderdash! Großpamba was formed through annexation, you fools!

Nevertheless, our merger was seen as a success by the other groups, and we considered expanding our borders to include the Duchy of Girl-Gangstania and the Emirate of A.

So, in retrospect, I would like to take this opportunity to forgive the group that was picked first to enter the room. Despite our “thought embargo” against them, I feel that the people of the Wordian People’s Jamahiriya acted more or less as we all would have in spreading chairs. In fact, on the topic of how the exercise started, I want to give credence to Catherine…sorry, Athkor’s method of assigning resources, which she put forward at the end of the class. This plan would have one person set up the tables and chairs however he or she wants, provided that they choose which spot to take after everyone else. I feel that if our aim is to promote equality, then this method is near-foolproof. However, I must also admit that I was among the “random selection” crowd at the outset of the class, because I, like many others, was more eager to simply get into the room than to divide up chairs and tables in a fair manner.

At the end of the class, one particular question still pervaded me. We had mentioned the Stanford prison experiment, during which about fifty people were assigned statuses as either “prison guards” or “prisoners”, and were told to interact according to their roles. Within six days, however, the experiment had to be shut down because the participants became too involved in their roles. We spoke in class about how this type of artificial psychological separation affects how people and groups interact, and how the same principle can be applied to nation-states. I wondered during the course of the discussion, “What if the experimenters at Stanford hadn’t applied the labels of “prison guards” and “prisoners”. What if they had been labeled something more tranquil, such as “hotel employees” and “hotel guests”, or if they hadn’t been given a label at all? Would they still have acted in a hostile manner?" Perhaps it was simply the perception that they were adversarial groups that caused them to oppose one another. The same idea, therefore, can be seen among states; we had spoke earlier about how the “limits” of what states can and can’t do are constantly being pushed. What if states behave in ways that they think states are traditionally supposed to behave? The same mentality grips those in power as those in the prison experiment: the model of what the group should be, what their aims and values are like, and the nature of their relationships to other groups. It is a fascinating idea, the possibility of stripping away all previous notions of how a state is supposed to act, but what results would it bring? Would the state be more responsive to the needs of its people, and people around the globe, or would it be used as a vehicle to further the interests of the ruling elite? Just what do traditional notions of a state protect?

On a final note…a gun ban? The nerve! Where’s Antonin Scalia when you need him?