Why is guard duty so apt to be abused? Perhaps for the restless, the tedium of guard duty requires some sort of entertainment/task to dispense. In the case of prisoner vs. guard or slave worker vs. guard relationships, the question is not only of unequal dispersal of power, but an unequal dispersal of activity. For example, in Blood Diamond, why do the guards mock and abuse the already assiduous diamond shifters? They do it not only because they have the authority (bestowed by weaponry) to do so, but because they are required to keep a watchful eye on them. Most humans who are made to focus on a subject find it easier to focus if they interacted with the subject. Since it is not a guard’s duty to play tea time with the prisoners, a less amicable relationships ensues.
Imagine you were left alone in a location with an insect; there was nothing else for you to do – no book to read, telly to watch, weights to lift…etc. It is your duty to stay in that rather flat location for that part of the day. What would happen?
Most people would have the insect (unless it was a very limber creature) herded all about the place and perhaps dismembered by the end of the allotted time. Even if you are a female who claims fear of such creatures, there is no one to observe your damsel in distress squeals. You’ll drop the act after a while (many times I have observed that there is nothing to fear but fear itself – considering harmless insects, that is) and start toying with it. There is no intellectual stimulation in the vicinity to lift your mind to higher stuff. Thus, your sense of child-like curiosity (or plain playfulness) will be aroused, and you would have put behind all those years of lady-like behavior and discourse to meddle with the wee buggy’s business.
What is a distraction for you would be, of course, torture to the little fellow.
Likewise, guards are put into an occupation of observing a subject who is by status forced to be dumb and submissive, similar to some of the less exciting insect specimens. If there is no higher authority with set moral standards to observe them at hand (have you noticed that the offices in prisons don’t seem to have monitors?), they are at liberty to exercise any sadistic whim that happens across their minds. And, believe me, as a normal human being, I am all too aware of the numerous varied, ‘uncivilized’ impulses that constantly need suppression when one is not otherwise intellectually occupied.
Reading material: The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo
