PBS The Brain - Episode 5 Why Do I Need You? (how normal people commit genocide)

[Lodestar]

http://www.pbs.org/the-brain-with-david-eagleman/episodes/why-do-i-need-you/

Playing now and tomorrow (11/12th) on PBS. Check your local station for times.

In groups humans have accomplished great things but there’s a darker side. For every ‘in group’ there is an ‘out group’. Dr. David Eagleman’s lab has shown that at an unconscious level our brains care less about members of the ‘out group.’ He journeys to modern day Bosnia to hear about what happened in 1992-1995 when genocide returned to Europe. At Srebrenica he learns that over eight thousand men, women and children were massacred by their fellow Yugoslavian citizens, the Serbs, many of whom had been their neighbors. What could have allowed for such horrific group on group violence? He believes that neuroscience offers an important perspective.
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Also talks about ways to change these patterns. A wonderful story about what a school teacher did with her class after Martin Luther King was killed. So simple and learned experientially for a lifetime.