This is a mind fuck.

But I have seen first hand how people with absolute power treat others who they have control over, especially when those others are seen as guilty or “bad” in some way.

At one wilderness program when I was 14, I was yelled at, accused of lying, and denied medical care when I broke my arm. At a later “therapeutic boarding school,” worse things happened. The place got shut down for abuse and academic neglect. Over the years, I’ve used the Stanford Prison Experiment to explain and understand how the staff at these programs acted.

Maybe the experiment was all a sham, but it was designed to show something real.