Learned Helplessness

I’ve been reading books about prison. The best one so far is probably A Bit of a Stretch, the prison diaries of filmmaker Chris Atkins.

Here’s Chris Atkins on self agency, the ability to steer your own course through life:

Much has been written about whether we have a hand in our own destiny, but at least in the outside world it feels as if we have some involvement in our fate. Prison not only robs inmates of control, but also denies them the illusion of agency. They are constantly reminded that they have no impact on anything, which has long been cited as a cause of mental illness.

He goes on to describe Jay Weiss’s 1971 psychology experiments in which rats were trained to avoid electric shocks by pressing a lever. The rats became vigilant of this, but then Weiss changed the rules so that the levers no longer worked. The rats went through a period of pressing the lever regardless (“but… but.. it always worked in the past!”) and then they fell into a period of depression.

Atkins says this has a striking similarity to the effect of “call bells” on prisoners, which supposedly exist for inmates to call a guard for help or attention. Much of the time, however, their calls go ignored due to low staffing levels caused by politically motivated funding cuts.

When Atkins was in prison, the call lights on the outside of cell doors would flash ineffectively almost all of the time, their occupants becoming steadily more desperate and then hopeless.

This is known as “learned helplessness.”

Learned helplessness exists in other areas of society too: in childhood, university, jobs, hospitals, visas and immigration. It is designed to prevent escape.

Escape, hope and agency are intertwined. Dare to dream of escape, dare to hope, dare to act.

*

For ideas on how to escape, try I’m Out (formerly published as Escape Everything!) and for a shoulder to cry on, try The Good Life for Wage Slaves.