Lucifer rising: Can fallen angels bounce back?



(Lucifer in Paradise Lost) 

The original association with the name “Lucifer” was the planet Venus.  When Venus appeared at dawn, it was called

Lucifer (shortened from the Latin words lucem ferre, meaning “light-bearer”).  These days, Venus is more often called “Day Star” or “Morning Star,” due to a later association of the name “Lucifer” with the fallen angel, Satan-Sataniel (aka the Devil, Satan, the Adversary, the Enemy).

Eons after Lucifer’s alleged fall from the heavenly realms, a

psychologist on planet Earth wrote a book called The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil.  This psychologist, Philip Zimbardo, was himself quite notorious for a good long while.  That’s because he conducted the “experiment from hell” back in 1971.  In this experiment at Stanford University, Zimbardo created a simulated prison in which those who played the guards became so sadistic and violent that the experiment had to be

stopped.  This Stanford Prison Experiment showed that otherwise-good people tend to conform, even when that means doing horrible things.

Now, forty years later, Zimbardo is embarking on a whole new project.  Rather than settle for a legacy based upon horror, Zimbardo is now probing (and hoping to enhance) the goodness of human nature.  He is basing this Heroic Imagination Project on the upbeat premise that “heroes are not extraordinary people,” but rather “ordinary people who do an extraordinary thing, step out of themselves, put their best self forward in service to humanity.”  He believes that what prompts “ordinary” heroics is the "internalizing of heroic imagination” (telling oneself “I could do it”).  He has therefore (heroically) set forth to teach heroics at a charter school in one of Oakland, California’s tougher neighborhoods.

Hopefully, Zimbardo’s latest project will have a happier ending than many of Lucifer’s.  And yet, even Satan’s journey “ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”  If Zimbardo’s latest theory is correct, then perhaps there’s hope for even this most rock-bottom of angels.  Perhaps it could work like this:  The harder the fall, the higher the bounce…

Resources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Zimbardo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucifer

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/04/137531649/evil-scientist-wants-to-teach-people-to-do-good

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satan

Copyright September 16, 2011 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved