Learning Resource from Jayadeva de Silva

1. What makes people
Corrupt?
Let me present before you a world famous experiment that reveals the true
nature of people. This Facebook post is titled, “If you think you know about
humanity, you don’t know humanity”.
In 1974, Yugoslavian performance artist Marina Abramovic dared to conduct
a terrifying experiment to examine how people think.
Abramovic would stand still for six hours straight while the people who came
to see her were urged to do whatever they wanted to her using one of 72
objects that she had placed on a table.
Abramovic stood in the middle of the room with a notice board containing
these words:
Instructions.
There are 72 objects on the table that one can use on me as desired.
Performance.
 I am the object.
 During this period I take full responsibility.
 Duration: 6 hours (8 pm – 2 am)
What happened in the next six hours was horrifying, to say the least.
It began tamely. Someone turned her around. Someone thrust her arms into
the air. Someone touched her somewhat intimately.

2. In the third hour, all her clothes were cut from her with razor blades. In the
fourth hour, the same blades began to explore her skin. Various minor sexual
assaults were carried out on her body. She was so committed to the piece
that she would not have resisted rape or murder.
It just got worse in the last two hours.
Abramovic’s own account of what the people did to her was even more
heartbreaking. She recalled, “I felt raped, they cut off the clothes, they
stuck me with thorns of rose in the stomach, aimed the gun to my head,
another came apart.”[1]
When the six hours were over, Abramovic started to walk among the people.
They couldn’t look her in the face. Abramovic observed that people didn’t
want any sort of confrontation with her. They didn’t want to be held
accountable or judged for what they did. It seemed as if they wanted to forget
how they relished hurting her.
This work reveals something terrible about humanity.
 It shows how fast a person can hurt you under favourable
circumstances (when fear of punishment is absent).
 It shows that if one provides the stage, the majority of ‘normal’
people, apparently can become truly violent.[2]

3. The experiment thus proves that the inherent nature of people is evil.
If people behave in righteous way, it is mainly due to
 The fear of socialcondemnation
 The fear of legalpunishment
When these two types of fears are absent, people can do even the most
abhorable things in life.
When society doesn’t condemn the corrupt, but value a person based
on what one has accomplished in life rather than who one is as a person,
people tends to focus their effort to achieve power and wealth to gain the
respect of the society and thus become corrupt.
Once these corrupt people achieve sufficient wealth and power, they can
manage the justice delivery system and escape even legal punishment.
Corruption can be checked only if severe punishment and social
condemnation can be strictly enforced in a society.
If these fears are absent, people would show their true nature and become
corrupt and evil replacing honesty and goodness from the society.
Jayadeva de Silva for Humantalents International