Perverse Rewards
Ehrenreich, Barbara
Flip Side Barbara Ehrenreich Perverse Rewards Typically, experiments involving the administration of random rewards and electric shocks are conducted on rats in laboratories. These experiments-all...
...It is too soon to say what the results of this first-ever experiment on humans will be...
...Jane Mayer revealed in the July 11 New Yorker that Seligman's results with tortured dogs have been of interest to the military and may have influenced the bizarre treatment of "enemy combatants" in various detention spots around the world...
...Barbara Ehrenreich is a columnist for The Progressive...
...CEOs routinely see their earnings rise by millions while their companies' stock plummets...
...Condoleezza Rice has been promoted to Secretary of State...
...That when it comes to U.S...
...But we are all being subjected to the same sort of experiment-and will be until we overcome our "learned helplessness" and get up on our hind legs again...
...Now they are rewarding people who fail...
...And what about the war itself...
...Her latest book is "Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream...
...Of the top perpetrators in the various prisoner abuse scandals, Donald Rumsfeld still holds his post as Defense Secretary...
...Four years ago, a Saudi militant, based in Afghanistan, engineered the 9/11 attack, leading the United States to invade . . . Iraq...
...And never doubt for a moment that our leaders are capable of conducting such experiments on humans...
...In a classic study undertaken by psychologist Martin Seligman, dogs subjected to unavoidable shocks for no reason at all developed a condition called "learned helplessness," and lost the ability to avoid future shocks even when avoidance was possible...
...What message does this send to Norway or Lesotho...
...But Rove carries on with his vicarious presidency- continuing to promote Bush's voterrepelling Social Security plan and playing a visible role in the selection of the new Supreme Court justice...
...Similarly with rats: After being subjected to undeserved torments, they simply give up and huddle in a corner of their cage...
...Meanwhile, at lower levels in the hierarchy, white collar folks get laid off simply because they have been successful enough to make their salaries a tempting cost cut...
...Moving into the realm of politics, take the case of Karl Rove, the man who-all the current evidence suggests-outed CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson in retaliation for her husband's refusal to go along with the myth of an Iraqi nuclear threat...
...Contrast that to the person who cleaned Crawford's office during his brief tenure and is likely paid far less than $30,000 a year for doing first-rate work...
...That's $32 million for screwing up, or, if we generously assume he put in ten hours a day at this task, about $30,000 per hour...
...At least no one is attributing Morgan Stanley's problems to a buildup of dust bunnies in the executive suites...
...I'm not saying "we're all in Guant?namo now," or anything as melodramatic as that...
...and torture-memo lawyer Alberto Gonzales has moved up to become the Attorney General...
...Butifyou look outsideofthe cage-I mean, the box-you will see that the same kindofexperiment isnow being conducted using human subjects, andona population-wide scale...
...forces in Iraq, is being considered for promotion to four-star general, and Major General Barbara Fast, his head of intelligence-gathering in Iraq, has been given command of an Arizona army base where soldiers are taught interrogation techniques...
...Within the corporate culture in general, achievement is no longer connected to reward or failure to punishment...
...Consider the case of Stephen Crawford, former co-president of Morgan Stanley, who was rewarded for three months of presiding over the company's decline with a $32 million pay-off...
...Wall Street has traditionally rewarded people who succeeded," a consultant on executive pay told The New York Times...
...Ricardo Sanchez, former commander of U.S...
...These experiments-all hellish enough to serve as PETA recruiting material- have revealed much about rodents' reactions to cruel and totally arbitrary environments, in which there is no "right" or "wrong" and consequently nothing to learn...
...Thus, the relationship between accomplishments and success seems to have been inverted...
...Animals subject to "noncontingent" punishments and rewards-i.e., those unconnected to any prior choices or behaviors-tend to get a little psychotic...
...Only one general with a hand in the abuse-Janis Karpinski, the former head officer at Abu Ghraib-has suffered a demotion...
...Not to mention the fact that being held indefinitely without charges is itself a supremely non-contingent punishment...
...If a Democrat were to reveal the identity of a CIA agent or otherwise leak classified material to the press, you may be sure he or she would be tarred, feathered, and suspended from a lamppost within hours of the crime...
...Most of us, after all, enjoy infinitely more comfortable day-to-day living conditions than those offered to detainees...
...Far more serious crimes are no less amply rewarded...
...foreign policy, there is no connection between crime and punishment or even cause and effect...
Vol. 69 • September 2005 • No. 9
