Sir+jaredd

=Mob Psychology=


 * In the past, present, and undoubtedly in the future, deceptive individuals take advantage of the anxieties and fears of society. When a society's insecurities are exposed and raw, a disconcerted mood spreads throughout the people. This contagion can engulf an entire population and become like a living entity, causing people to act rashly and hypocritically. Whether or not the fear is justified, a convincing individual can exploit a certain mentality called mob psychology. Mob psychology involves manipulating the hysteria of a crowd to fulfill one's desires. In Arthur Miller's The Crucible, Abigail Williams and other characters spread a fear of witches in the Puritan town of Salem. The fear that they spread ends up permeating their community and dominating the lives of everyone in the town. The psychological phenomenon known as mass hysteria has an important effect on the events in The Crucible. The Crucible contains many important events that precede the madness that ensues by the end of the play.**

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**Modern Day Witch Trials**
As sophisticated just people of the second millennium, the idea of trying witches seems absolutely insane. All of us are filled with contempt for the judges of old as we contemplate the 40,000 people tried and executed for being "witches" between 1500 and 1600. What were these ignorant savages thinking?

We need to give this question serious consideration because it can shed light on remarkably similar behavior in our courts today. The most important thing to understand about these people is that they did not believe themselves to be ignorant or savage. Witch trials were carried out in courts of law and were given the same serious consideration that trials today are given. Evidence was presented and testimony was heard. Honorable judges would then render a verdict constructed from the information given, the laws of those times, and their basic understand of the world. These judges were more modern than anyone who had ever lived before them. They were the most educated and respected people of their time. So it was given that their current understanding of science and nature was up to date and accurate. One thing that everyone understood at that time was that witches existed and harmed others with magic. Most of the judges who convicted people for practicing witchcraft believed that they were protecting their citizens and acting for the public good. The important thing to understand is that these judges did not see themselves as we see them now. They saw themselves in exactly the same way that judges see themselves now; modern intelligent honorable people acting in the best interests of their citizens. Looking back, it is easy for us to see that these judges were ignorant and hysterical but they had absolutely no idea how crazy and misguided they were.

Moving closer to our time we remember McCarthyism in the 40s and 50s. Here hundreds of people who were suspected of being communist or homosexual were tried and imprisoned. This is classified as a true witch hunt because the courts were used to persecute these people.

So who are the prosecuted now that we will later come to understand were the persecuted?

How about nannies and dish washers and gardeners who are here without papers. We raid their places of work, detain them, and deport these people without any regard for their American children and without any regard for the notion that all men are created equal. It's hard for most of us to imagine that these people should have the same rights we have, but only 100 years ago we didn't believe that black people deserved any rights either. How will we view immigrant workers 100 years in the future? Hopefully we will understand that borders are imaginary but human suffering is real. Why do we prosecute these people? Because we know they are harming us just as surly as olden people knew that witches were harming them.

How about young men. Scary young black men. We put their fathers in prison for minor drug crimes and leave these kids to grow up on their own. And when the kids fall to drugs we put them in jail with their fathers. How will we view these people 100 years from now? I think we will view them as victims of ignorance, hysteria and accidental genocide. I think we will view them as modern day victims of witch hunting.

How about fathers who are falsely accused of domestic violence and child molestation for advantage in divorce proceedings. Judges are very quick deny children access to their fathers when they hear these accusations even if there is no proof. This is because the risk of having even one child abused by a father is just unacceptable. Mothers and lawyers know that judges won't decide with the father so they use this advantage for cash and control. The choice for fathers is paying ransom or never seeing their children. But what about the increased risk that hundreds of thousands of fatherless children face for drug addiction, smoking, murder, dropping out of school, and spending their lives in jail. For every child a judge saves from an abusive father, how many has she sentenced to drop out of school or to die of drugs or to live in jail? In any case, this process is driven by greed and hysteria. Fathers are the witch hunted of our time and their children are the real victims of this practice

When most of us think of witch hunters we imagine people running around with pitch forks carrying off old women and burning them at the stake. But this is not what happened during the witch hunts of the 1600s in Europe and America. Almost all of these 40,000 people were given trials before being burned.The court still exits. Burning witches was extremely expensive. Huge piles of wood had to be chopped by hand and the trials themselves were expensive too. So where did the money come from to do this? Well the money was acquired by confiscating the property of the defenseless widows being tried and burned. A certain amount was given to the courts for presiding over the harvest, expert witnesses (priests) were paid, and the rest the lawyers got to keep. The eye witnesses were usually people with grudges against the widows and they were the ones that brought the cases to the lawyers. The public supported the whole affair because the lawyers were able to exploit the public's fear and ignorance buy creating hysteria. Does any of this sound familiar? How much has really changed in 400 years? Lawyers still need money, but everyone now knows that magic isn't real. So lawyers no longer accuse people of being witches. But hey! Dads have money and everyone hates a wife beater. Further more, we all know that wife beaters exist. When a man harms a woman we are all outraged and very quick to help. This is as it should be. But the mere accusation of a man harming a woman also incites outrage and this is what modern day witch hunters are counting on. When people are outraged, two things happen to them; they experience a high level of anxiety and they're capacity for objective thinking is diminished. In this state of mind the likelihood that man will be convicted of these crimes is related more closely with the level of outrage a lawyer is able to incite in judge or jury then with the actual facts presented. This is because outraged people are eager vent their anger and return to a normal relaxed state. Defendants provide that outlet. .

The point is that all the elements of witch hunting still exist today. Instead of neighbors with grudges, lawyers are hired by unfulfilled wives seeking to cash out of their marriages. Instead of rich widows accused of witchcraft, lawyers now falsely accuse rich men of domestic violence and rape for advantage in divorce. when the women, then the husband bring false charges. Instead of paying priests for expert testimony on the effects of witchcraft, lawyers now pay psychologists to give expert testimony about mental anguish. Some things have not changed. When the relationship between judges and lawyers is adversarial, lawyers are forced to make their proofs, and the legal system generally works. But when judges work closely with lawyers and refuse to examine evidence objectively, a witch trial is the result.

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Modern day witch hunts
=Deadly hunt for 'witches' haunts Kenya villagers=

June 12, 2008 | By David McKenzie CNN

It may be difficult for modern-day Western cultures to fathom, but in Western Kenya, beliefs in ghosts and witches are very real. And sometimes they have deadly consequences. In late May, news outlets in Kenya told the story of 15 people, mostly elderly women, who were murdered in a witch hunt near the town of Kisii. The killings shocked the nation. Villagers said more than 100 people gathered machetes and knives and stormed the village of Kegogi after midnight. "They started banging on the doors, they broke into the house and then they killed our grandmother inside," says Justus Bosire. "The mob was screaming and we panicked. We ran away and they came to our house and burned it to the ground."

GAUHATI, India, Aug. 22, 2006 =Modern-Day Witch Hunt In Remote India=

By Scott Conroy
 * (AP)** Unidentified attackers hacked to death five villagers accused of practicing witchcraft in northeastern India, officials said Tuesday.

The deaths take the toll of people believed to have been killed over sorcery allegations to at least nine in the past two weeks in a remote part of Assam state, where many indigenous tribes believe in witchcraft.

The latest five killings took place Sunday in the district of Kokrajhar, around 156 miles west of Gauhati, the state capital, said Mrinal Talukdar, a senior police official.

In the village of Nandipur, "six men armed with machetes stormed a house ... and hacked three members of a family to death late Sunday accusing them of practicing sorcery," he said.

Another middle-aged couple also suspected of practicing sorcery was killed Sunday after unidentified men attacked them with sharp weapons in the nearby village of Bijoynagar.

The witchcraft suspicions stem from the recent deaths of two people in Nandipur from an unknown ailment.

The killings came a week after four decomposed bodies were recovered from a rice field in nearby Baska district. Authorities believe the people were killed because they were suspected of practicing witchcraft.

"I am planning to tackle the menace by imposing a collective fine on an entire area where people accused of practicing witchcraft are hunted and killed," said the Baska district magistrate, Anwaruddin Choudhury.

More than 150 people have been killed in the northeast in the past five years after being accused of practicing witchcraft or sorcery.

"Deadly Hunt for 'witches' Haunts Kenya Villagers - CNN." //Featured Articles From The CNN//. 12 June 2008. Web. 02 Nov. 2010. .\

"Modern-Day Witch Hunt In Remote India - CBS News." //Breaking News Headlines: Business, Entertainment & World News - CBS News//. Web. 02 Nov. 2010. .

"Free Essay Sample On: Mass Hysteria in The Crucible by Arthur Miller." //Essay Sample. Free Term Papers for College Students.// Web. 01 Nov. 2010. []. Modern Day Witch Hunting - When Ignorance, Fear and Personal Agenda Mix In Our Courts You Get a Modern Day Contemporary Witch Trial." //The Justodians: Fighting Judicial Corruption With Information Technology//. Web. 01 Nov. 2010. [].

YouTube - A Tale of Two Cities --Mob Mentality--

Jun 10, 2007 **...** A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens has several recurring themes throughout the entire story. One of those is the idea of mob mentality **...** @http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWKpLooSPCk YouTube - A Tale of Two Cities --Mob Mentality--

Jun 10, 2007 **...** A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens has several recurring themes throughout the entire story. One of those is the idea of mob mentality **...** @http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWKpLooSPCk