Letter to some fuckwad.

Last night whilst I was pondering over the information I had gathered today in your classroom and munching on some delicious strawberries I had picked from my own garden, I came upon some interesting thoughts. It occurred to me that if you can condition a dog or a pigeon to react a certain way either by way of punishment or reward, what is the effect on the human who is performing the experiment? Are they not also being conditioned to provide information about these animals to the scientific community by receiving a reward when they come up with something new? Or maybe they receive an “A” in a class for completing well known experiments themselves. Either way I figured we are all being conditioned by society to perform in certain ways weather we realize it or not. And then I started thinking about desensitizing people as a product of conditioning. I started breaking down in my head the number of steps an individual must go thru in their mind to become desensitized to either something that is happening around them or something that they are doing. I came up with four.
Say, for instance, you were working in a laboratory that tested on animals. Say these animals were being starved and shocked to perform some menial task that helped demonstrate vocabulary words to college level psychology students. If you believed in animal rights, or you just thought animals were cute, you would at first be appalled and frustrated with what you were doing. Then as you went on working there you would most likely become numb to what was happening and you would try not to think about it. Then, the third step (as some evidence shows) you might find humor in what you were doing to cope with the reality of what was happening. Humor is a known defense mechanism in uncomfortable situations. The last step in this equation is to become interested in what you are doing to the point of actually wanting to carry out the task. You may even begin to find pleasure in torturing your animals at home, or bullying your friends, or even, in some cases, get so excited by violence and torture that you may even kill another human being. Think about gas chambers for a moment. Wouldn’t someone in the German army go through the exact same steps in their mind to be able to cope with killing Jewish men, women, and children every day? I do not necessarily believe that people who perform torturous experiments on animals for the benefit of the human race bad people. Nor can I compare this situation to that of genocide, but I do believe that those people have come to the same desensitized state in their minds as German soldiers who laughed as they were pushing Jews into the gas chambers. I think they are the same as people who find it incredibly exciting when someone gets their head blown off in an action film, or enjoy shooting people in video games and watching blood gush out everywhere. Do you suppose that people who have come to this desensitized state in their minds be allowed to roam free on the streets with normal people? Shouldn’t they be imprisoned or even executed just like German soldiers? Shouldn’t something be done to put a stop to desensitization? Shouldn’t people care more about how their actions are affecting others? Shouldn’t the guy who is having fun poking a monkey in the brain with an electrode or finding faster, easier ways to slaughter an animal be treated with the same disrespect as someone who bullies or tortures other human beings? I do believe that left and right, every day in our world, people are doing horrible things to animals, other people, the environment, themselves, that they would not have done unless they were conditioned to enjoy it or simply to just not care. I wanted to share all of this with you because I believed these thoughts to be fairly interesting observations and I know you want us to communicate with you more during this semester but I have been conditioned by society and especially my sister, who talks non-stop, to be extremely shy and quiet. I would also like to hear your opinion on this matter.