Saga of Tanya the Evil

AD 1971, August 14th, United States

On the 14th of August 1971, after receiving an investigation request from the Office of Naval Research (ONR), Dr. Philip Zimbardo's research group began a certain experiment.

The experiment was designed to run for only two weeks. The aim was to collect data and to derive some basic understanding regarding the problem that marines often faced when put into Navy prison.

The participants that were selected for this experiment were all average healthy university students, both physically as well as mentally.

However, just by the second day of the experiment, they had already encountered a major problem on the ethical level.

The students who were acting as prisoners had already began to suffer from severe scolding and shaming done to them by the students who were acting as guards, and it even resulted in the guards directly engaging in acts of violence.

Such morally and ethically wrongful behaviour repeated frequently throughout the duration of the experiment, leading it to be cut short in just 6 days.

This experiment was later known as the "Stanford Prison Experiment." While despite the widespread controversy and ethical dilemmas it had caused, the results of the experiment when looking from a pure psychological point of view, had ironically produced many rich and enlightening content.

When grouped together with a previously conducted "Milgram experiment", these two experiments had revealed many interesting notions regarding human nature.

In this isolated environment people obey power and authority; and people with authority will exercise it without limits. After analyzing this "Obedience to Authority" situation, the conclusion seemed to have quite some impact.

The surprising thing was that, this phenomenon had nothing to do with a person's reason, conscience, or personality; but was rather brought forth by the persona of the role which was being acted out.

In other words, these two experiments clearly showed that humans will obey their environment, going so far as to willingly ignore their own reasoning and conscience. To say it in a more extreme manner, it is that anyone is capable of being a prisoner guard in Auschwitz.

Thus, speaking from a logical point of view, humans would always be affected by their environment, causing them to behave far from that of their own original nature.

After having learned of such matters regarding what kind of creatures mankind truly were during my time in university, the first thing which I felt wasn't discomfort but rather it was more of a natural acceptance as if I had expected it to be like that.

During elementary school, I guess everyone was taught that all humans are equal under the state's compulsory education.

We learned that all humans are equal and irreplaceable. However judging from this, we could also easily find out that some situations were unequal.

Why is the student sitting in front taller than me?

Why are some of the students in the class good at dodgeball, while others are not?

Why can't the student in my neighbouring seat solve such a simple question?

Why can't the student seated behind me stay quiet and listen to the teacher?

However, elementary students are placed in a "Be a Good Child" environment. Even if everyone is different, there is still the need to say that everyone is an important existence. The fear is that if they do not follow this rule, they would be labelled as "Bad Children".

So "Good Children" work hard to not become "Bad Children".

Then when preparing for middle school exams, "Good Children" start to despise "Bad Children" in their hearts, avoiding interaction with them.

Successfully getting into a good middle school, followed by a entering a high school with a high university enrolment rate, lastly into a well known university, they strive for perfection under these rules and conditions while going down the shortest path to success.

To continue acting as "Good Children" in this environment, it is required to keep on fulfilling other people's requests and not betray any expectations.

Constantly reading reference books and textbooks every day, then comparing their results with other students, feeling as if they have been placed in the middle of some sort of examination warfare, these students treat those who play games every day as losers.

In this environment, where results are everything, they naturally look down on those students with poor academic results.

On the opposite side, the poor students do not believe that they themselves are smart. After all, what little pride they had were already crushed by the aforementioned group of geniuses long ago.

While those students were still immersed in studying, those geniuses had already taken up the rights to join the international Physics or Math Olympics.

To study with these genius students who treat the correct answer as a natural part of life in the same classroom, it was impossible to keep up with just extraordinary hard work.

Still, even though they were looking at this through a twisted view, they have only managed to learn the bare minimum in order to understand reality.

The other people taking the exams, even if they were unwilling, also understand that. To have parents with that amount of income, the minimum was to get into an excellent university and find an outstanding job.

Thus they became just like other young people, filled with the passion to improve oneself. Their fear of falling behind would be crippling, so they hanged on to their study desk with tight grips.

Placed in this world where they struggle to safely breakthrough this exam warfare, after getting into the so called famous university, the game rules change. Willingly or not, most people among the group will realize that the world will start to judge you by "What you have done" instead of "Excellent results".

Facing this changed rule, only those who are able adapt well in this new environment are able to handle it.

On one side obeying, abusing the loophole and ridicule the rules, while on the other side being bounded by the rules.

In the end what they learnt was that rules were an irreplaceable presence for the optimization of the system. Unbound freedom is just pure destruction; rules that have no freedom is just a pure tyranny.

Therefore, although he hated being restricted, at the same time he was worried about having unrestricted freedom.

He was unable to understand what are the people who were late for class thinking, unable to understand what kind of values do the people who got drunk lying beside the road had, unable to understand the brain of the PE department people who kept advocating about spirit.

Relatively, he was overjoyed for being able to give a reasonable explanation by pinpointing the relationship between rules and freedom at the Chicago school meet up. As long as one obeys the rules, you will be able to continue on the right track.

All the while acting like a diligent student but actually hiding the fact of being an otaku. In his opinion, this is what it means to be free of the restriction of rules.

Friends who had pleasant interactions with him, other than his high school friends, are those people he met in university who had the same interests. Building relationships and ability with others, at the same time wasting some of their free time before going out to society.

Of course there was also the need to invest diligently in honing your skills, study vigorously till you reached an adequate standard of language and etiquette. After that along with the signalling theory, he will soon become a well praised excellent student.

Just that the demand for these kinds of people, surprisingly isn't for their ability, but more emphasis on what was on their resume. I guess for those who got excellent results for entrance exam, graduated from a famous school, plus were familiar with the interviewer, they were the best candidates available for the recruiter.

Based on this reason, the unemployment tide for university graduates also couldn't really be counted as an obstacle.

After all the starting point is different. If you want to go according to the facts, it's a handicap race. Visiting the seniors in the company before going for an interview is a must. And not just that, you will still need to invite the HR recruiter for a drink and have a chat.

Don't even mention the senior from high school, or the senior during university who are now in charge of hiring people. They would just straight away give him advice "That company's HR department just happens to be looking for this kind of talent, it would be best to use this during the interview".

With this kind of opportunity, even if you were only at an average standard, there would be no trouble finding job. As long as one was not picky about jobs, you would be able to get a decent salary.

Becoming a cogwheel of society, submissively executing orders and just ensuring that its own part of job is completed. Then unknowingly, the referring of oneself from "boku" have turned into "watashi".

Work ethics? Personal style? Creativity? As long as there was a proper salary for that amount of workload, a useful member of society will never question about the job content. And for the companies, they will pay the best talents that could do their assigned task to a satisfactory degree.

Following and obeying the business theory without a single doubt, putting profit as priority. Getting used to this corporate lackey lifestyle, actually isn't that difficult.

Heartless? Cyborg? Cold blooded? Inhuman? You will only be worried about these things at the start.

It is hard to understand such pathetic yelling, and I felt afraid of people who are in this crazy state, on the verge of using violence. But I got used to it, just like when I was schooling.

Humans are adaptable living beings. The so called environment adapting, is to act out the roles that were given to you, if you are a guard do your guard role well, and if you are a prisoner, do the prisoner role well.

He was just like that, switching between the world of work and interest, living a peaceful life. Of course, work was conducted in the most efficient way possible, so as to prevent his own precious free time being wasted.

Thus he obeyed all sorts of business requests, trying his best to avoid failure in his job.

Because of this, he caught up to both his parent's salary after thirty years old, and was well on his way to become a successful person.

After that, due to his commitment to business and his loyalty to his superior, he was promoted smoothly in the HR department and lastly gifted with the position of section chief as his touchstone.

Oh, right. I still have an important job. No matter how big this misunderstanding is, I have absolutely no reason to let this nun stuff a spoonful of stewed vegetables into my mouth.

And she is calling me Tanya-chan, which is really annoying. I'm qualified to be called a gentleman just by not screaming in rage regarding this matter.

Just when I became restless and was ready to get up and protest, "Why do you keep calling me….."——

A sharp pain in my brain made me recall unpleasant memories suddenly.