The Wave

Add this to Philip G. Zimbardo's Stanford Prison (got to check Zimbardo's website; it is the rage) experiment and Stanley Milgram's Obedience to Authority experiment.

The Wave, a 1967 classroom experiment by teacher Ron Jones of  Cubberley High School in Palo Alto, California. In 1981 a teleplay by Johnny Dawkins of the short story by Ron Jones was produced by Fern Field and directed by Alex Grasshoff.

I just watched the 2008 German version of the story, directed by Dennis Gansel and with Jurgen Voggel and Frederick Lau. It makes you understand how easy we can get sunk in the wave. Uniform never looked so beautiful.  By the way, the trailer doesn't do justice to the movie. Now, the long German feature is different than the American teleplay. You may want to watch both of them to compare. The questions that arise are fascinating and complex and they all have to do with the dichotomy individual/group.

If you want to go deeper into the philosophical political implications of The Wave you should read about Utilitarianism. To keep it short, utilitarianism measures happiness in society by the amount of members being happy, the more members happy, the more just a society is. We all love the ideals of community, discipline, self- control and power, but the problem with utilitarian thinking is that individuals who have a different idea of happiness are excluded, slavery arises and minorities are discriminated. That is the reason why democracy still is the best way of government.

Community, discipline and power are beautiful goals and that's why is so easy to get carried by the wave . How to navigate it without discrimination, exclusion and destruction of the other is the true ideal.