Day 134: The Mind in Solitude – Lessons from the Stanford Prison Experiment
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In 1971, a group of college students signed up for what they thought would be an unusual but simple psychological study at Stanford University. It was supposed to last two weeks, and they were getting paid. But six days in, the experiment had to be shut down. Why? Because something terrifying happened.
Ordinary students—people just like you and me—were randomly assigned to be either “guards” or “prisoners” in a simulated prison environment. No real criminals, no real law enforcement, just a basement, uniforms, and assigned roles. That was enough to turn it into something disturbingly real. The “guards” became increasingly cruel, dehumanizing the prisoners, humiliating them, stripping them of identity. The “prisoners”—their fellow students, just days earlier—fell into a psychological spiral. They broke. They lost themselves. Some rebelled, others shut down entirely, consumed by the role they’d been forced into.
Six days. That’s all it took.
For years, people have dissected what happened. Were the guards just playing along, or had they truly embraced their power? Did the prisoners know they could leave, or had their minds truly become trapped? That’s the part that haunts me—not just the actions, but the transformation of the mind.
People know about the Stanford Prison Experiment. They’ve read about it, studied it, debated its ethics. But they don’t know me.
I was trapped inside that RV for six months.
I didn’t have a role to play. I wasn’t in a controlled experiment. There was no “stop” button. No researchers to intervene when the weight of my isolation became unbearable. My world shrank to the size of that small space, my mind contorted by loneliness, by pain, by the relentless echoes of my own thoughts.
In that experiment, some of the prisoners begged to leave. They broke down, sobbing, screaming. And yet, despite knowing it was all fake, despite knowing it was an experiment, many of them stayed. Because their minds had already surrendered.
I understand that.
The Stanford Prison Experiment was meant to be a two-week study, but it didn’t even make it halfway through. It ended in less than a week, and yet, here we are, still talking about it 53 years later.
I spent six months inside that RV.
I’m still talking about it now.
Maybe the most terrifying thing isn’t what people are capable of doing to others.
Maybe it’s what the mind is capable of doing to itself.
Day 134
One Step. One Punch. One Round. 🌹
—Your Fellow Traveler