5 Steps to Tyranny
A Different Way of Looking at the Five Steps to Tyranny Concept
James Turner
PSY 400
4/12/09
In week 5, we watched a television program called “The Five Steps to Tyranny.” It explained how five different steps that take place can lead to conflict and tyranny. The program used a variety of examples, from the Holocaust to an exercise used in a third grade classroom, to explain these steps and also how they lead to tyranny. When people talk about the “5 Steps to Tyranny” concept, they usually associate it with war. The five steps are, “us and them”, “obey orders”, “do them harm”, “stand up or stand by”, and annihilation. When we think about these different steps and come up with examples for them, we think about the Holocaust and other forms of genocide like Rwanda. It comes natural to us to think that these steps have to do with war and they do make a lot of sense when examples are used to describe the different steps. However, it appears that these steps could be used to describe how conflict occurs in other aspects of life. It is true that some of the steps cannot literally be used to describe certain everyday situations that lead to conflict. What we can do instead is use alternate meanings of the steps to describe situations, such as friendship or divorce between couples that lead to conflict. When we say, “do them harm”, instead of doing physical harm to someone, we may mean that we do harm to someone emotionally. Some people may believe that the “5 Steps to Tyranny” concept should only be associated with war and genocide, but I believe that this concept goes deeper than that. It is pretty easy to find examples from the Holocaust that coincide with the different steps from this concept, but it is very challenging to do the same and use an example, such as friendship to describe how different steps can lead to conflict. I believe that there are other aspects of life that we can apply the “5 Steps to Tyranny” concept to. In order to show how
James Turner
PSY 400
4/12/09
In week 5, we watched a television program called “The Five Steps to Tyranny.” It explained how five different steps that take place can lead to conflict and tyranny. The program used a variety of examples, from the Holocaust to an exercise used in a third grade classroom, to explain these steps and also how they lead to tyranny. When people talk about the “5 Steps to Tyranny” concept, they usually associate it with war. The five steps are, “us and them”, “obey orders”, “do them harm”, “stand up or stand by”, and annihilation. When we think about these different steps and come up with examples for them, we think about the Holocaust and other forms of genocide like Rwanda. It comes natural to us to think that these steps have to do with war and they do make a lot of sense when examples are used to describe the different steps. However, it appears that these steps could be used to describe how conflict occurs in other aspects of life. It is true that some of the steps cannot literally be used to describe certain everyday situations that lead to conflict. What we can do instead is use alternate meanings of the steps to describe situations, such as friendship or divorce between couples that lead to conflict. When we say, “do them harm”, instead of doing physical harm to someone, we may mean that we do harm to someone emotionally. Some people may believe that the “5 Steps to Tyranny” concept should only be associated with war and genocide, but I believe that this concept goes deeper than that. It is pretty easy to find examples from the Holocaust that coincide with the different steps from this concept, but it is very challenging to do the same and use an example, such as friendship to describe how different steps can lead to conflict. I believe that there are other aspects of life that we can apply the “5 Steps to Tyranny” concept to. In order to show how
Cited: 1. Argyle, Michael. The Social Psychology of Everyday Life. London: Routledge, 1992. Print. 2. Five Steps to Tyranny. BBC. 1 Feb. 2001. Youtube.com. Web. Transcript. 4 Dec. 2009. .