Over on the Book of Face, this appalling thing is circulating around:
During a study at Harvard in 1957, Dr. Curt Richter placed rats in a pool of water to test how long they could tread water.
On average they’d give up, sink and drown after 15 minutes.
But right before they gave up due to exhaustion,
the researchers would pluck them out,
dry them off,
let them rest for a few minutes and put them back in for a second round.
In this second try, how long do you think they lasted?
Remember, they had just swam until failure only a few short minutes ago…
How long do you think?
Another 15 minutes?
10 minutes?
5 minutes?
NO!
60 HOURS!
That’s not an error.
That’s right!
60 HOURS of swimming which is 2.5 DAYS!
The conclusion drawn was that since the rats BELIEVED that they would eventually be
rescued,
they could push their bodies way past what they previously thought impossible.
I will leave you with this thought:
If an Unstoppable Belief can cause exhausted rats to swim for that long,
what could a Belief in yourself and your Capabilities Do for You?
Remember What you’re capable of.
Remember Why you’re here.
Keep swimming and
Never Ever Quit.
It reminds me of this:
Precisely.
I have only two takeaways from this “inspirational” tale.
My first takeaway is that if this story is true, Dr. Curt Richter was a cruel man.
My second is that this could very well be one of those “inspiring” urban legends told in order to make the victims of a radically dysfunctional system acquiesce to the malice, cruelty, and selfishness of their victimizers rather than compelling the victimizers to stop inflicting selfish cruelties on victims.
This is how an awful lot of MAGA antichrist religion propaganda workss. It tells the sheep, “Keep trying very, very hard, and you too will graduate into the ranks of alpha predators like the Orange Messiah you worship.” It’s a form of Stockholm Syndrome that keeps the prey identifying with the predator and ashamed of identifying with the rest of the prey. Its goal is to blind us to the predators as predators and make us either not see them at all or see them as moral exemplars to aspire to. Sort of like those, “Workers pool their sick leave so mother can have time off to give birth” inspirational stories that never ask why mom’s employer does not give her leave to have a child.
This is why the MAGA cult is so easily manipulated by Trump’s racism. LBJ nailed it 60 years ago:
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
And it is likewise why predatory MAGA enemies of a living wage always call the people that need a living wage selfish,
…but never remind their prey of the fact that it is the employers who don’t pay EMTs a living wage who are the selfish ones, not the people who are just asking for sufficient money to live and support a family. The real solution to the lying meme above is not to punish the poor for needing a living wage, but to punish the people who pay neither the McDonald’s worker nor the EMT enough money. Getting your prey to look down on fellow prey is an excellent way of distracting them from looking up at the predators who prey on both of them.
“Inspirational” lies that teach their victims to champion victimizers and despise their victims are parodies of the gospel. That is why denying workers a just wage is one of the four sins that cry to heaven for vengeance in the Catholic tradition.
The real Jesus called down “Woe!” on those “bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with their finger.” (Mt 23:4). In that, he stood foursquare in the Jewish prophetic tradition:
Hear this, you who trample upon the needy,
and bring the poor of the land to an end,
saying, “When will the new moon be over,
that we may sell grain?
And the sabbath,
that we may offer wheat for sale,
that we may make the ephah small and the shekel great,
and deal deceitfully with false balances,
that we may buy the poor for silver
and the needy for a pair of sandals,
and sell the refuse of the wheat?”
The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob:
“Surely I will never forget any of their deeds. (Am 8:4–7)
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8 Responses
I love not having to think about the evil. For the last 5ish years I did a politics fast during Lent. Now I’m thinking about doing the opposite.
Thanks for fighting the good fight.
Anyone who would thinks minimum wage should be kept low should be made to live on it for a full year. No access to their savings, credit or any outside assistance at all. Only what they take home on minimum wage.
Typed up a long comment and WrdPress ate it. *sigh* Short answer is, this is some jackwagon on LinkedIn misrepresenting the study. Rats can normally swim about 60-80 hours. They’ll drown quickly if you chop off important sensory organs, but rescuing them a few times restores their natural ability. The first rat tested just decided to hang out at the bottom of the tank and drowned after two minutes because it didn’t bother coming up for air. There was also a “tweak” to the experiment that involved replacing domesticated rats with ones cross-bred with wild rats.
The comments on the post are worth reading, especially Anik Samiur’s. I found it via a post on Psychology Stack Exchange, which is also worth reading.
LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/power-hope-rat-experiment-dr-curt-richter-santosh-swamy
StackExchange post: https://psychology.stackexchange.com/questions/28219/curt-richters-rat-hope-experiment-why-did-the-first-nine-rats-survive-for-days
Study (abstract only unless you have money): https://journals.lww.com/psychosomaticmedicine/abstract/1957/05000/on_the_phenomenon_of_sudden_death_in_animals_and.4.aspx
Typed up a long comment and WrdPress ate it. (Maybe twice, or maybe this is a duplicate. Sorry.) Short answer is, this is some jackwagon on LinkedIn misrepresenting the study. Rats can normally swim about 60-80 hours. They’ll drown quickly if you chop off important sensory organs, but rescuing them a few times restores their natural ability. The first rat tested just decided to hang out at the bottom of the tank and drowned after two minutes because it didn’t bother coming up for air. There was also a “tweak” to the experiment that involved replacing domesticated rats with ones cross-bred with wild rats.
The comments on the post are worth reading, especially Anik Samiur’s. I found it via a post on Psychology Stack Exchange, which is also worth reading.
LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/power-hope-rat-experiment-dr-curt-richter-santosh-swamy
StackExchange post: https://psychology.stackexchange.com/questions/28219/curt-richters-rat-hope-experiment-why-did-the-first-nine-rats-survive-for-days
Study (abstract only unless you have money): https://journals.lww.com/psychosomaticmedicine/abstract/1957/05000/on_the_phenomenon_of_sudden_death_in_animals_and.4.aspx
Typed up a long comment and WrdPress ate it. (Maybe multiple times, or maybe this is a duplicate. Sorry.) Short answer is, this is some jackwagon on LinkedIn misrepresenting the study. Rats can normally swim about 60-80 hours. They’ll drown quickly if you chop off important sensory organs, but rescuing them a few times restores their natural ability. The first rat tested just decided to hang out at the bottom of the tank and drowned after two minutes because it didn’t bother coming up for air. There was also a “tweak” to the experiment that involved replacing domesticated rats with ones cross-bred with wild rats.
The comments on the post are worth reading, especially Anik Samiur’s. I found it via a post on Psychology Stack Exchange, which is also worth reading.
LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/power-hope-rat-experiment-dr-curt-richter-santosh-swamy
StackExchange post: https://psychology.stackexchange.com/questions/28219/curt-richters-rat-hope-experiment-why-did-the-first-nine-rats-survive-for-days
Study (abstract only unless you have money): https://journals.lww.com/psychosomaticmedicine/abstract/1957/05000/on_the_phenomenon_of_sudden_death_in_animals_and.4.aspx
Ah, sorry about the dupes. Feel free to delete those.
Long ago, when I was taken in by laissez-faire capitalism, I agreed with the notion that it’s better that rich people give to charity than to tax people and run a redistribution system.
The argument went that more money would stay in people’s pockets and everyone would have a better chance to get rich and there would be less poverty.
It went on further to say that rich people would have more money to help poor people and poor people wouldn’t be forced to pay taxes to help themselves (and no money would be lost in the administrative machine).
Of course, the argument never addressed two obvious glaring holes in the reasoning:
– Why would there be poor people if they claim it reduces poverty?
– Why would poor people not have enough money to help other poor people?
And it became pretty obvious that this is a sick “modest proposal” that pretty much exists to manufacture poverty in order for the rich to give a tiny proportion of their money to charity that they would never even feel and they could parade themselves as the good Christian that helps the needy (in direct mockery of the Parable of the widow’s mite). In direct contempt of Jesus condemning those who trumpet their almsgiving, they further perversed the Scripture by granting themselves a tax break for giving to charity.
It makes me think that the whole point of Protestant rejection of Church Tradition was so they could throw out St. John Chrysostom and say that Jesus’s words are meant to be taken metaphorically (while at the same time saying that the metaphorical parts of the Bible are to be taken literally).
Starting this year we (New Zealand) have a new National Party government, replacing the 6 years of Labour. They are doing “trickle down” with a vengeance.
Sigh!