Wave… How can a simple class activity turn out to be disaster?

Wave… How can a simple class activity turn out to be disaster?

As an ordinary person, I usually have a feeling of some people’s acting unconsciously in their daily lives. In other words, they do something yet they don’t know why they do it. Or people can conform without questioning the other if the one who gives the order a symbol of authority. And when it comes to check those kinds of situations from the view of nature versus nurture debate, I firmly believe that, some behaviors, thoughts or conformities are innate. I really don’t know why but it is the way how I think about them.

Your education level, your cultural level, your awareness about the equality and so and so forth… Those kinds of things can lose their importance when it comes to the issue of conformity. In the movie, except two girls, none of the students question the demands of the Herr Wenger. And they take his words as an order all the time. For instance, they stepped on the floor as strong as they can in order to disturb anarchy class since that class didn’t have same ideas with them…By stepping on the floor together, they felt that they are a unique body and it was perfect for them not to be an “individual” anymore in this “individualistic world” and as a result, all the social differences disappeared. They were like the parts of something thanks to Herr Wenger and it was invaluable for them.

Not only they obeyed Herr Wenger but also they found new things for their so-called unity. They created a greeting method and didn’t allow the students to go inside of the school if they didn’t greet via that wave shape. Or they put their unity’s structure all around the city. They tried very hard to increase the number of their members but on the other hand they also tried hard to tackle the people around their unity who are against the wave. Their treatments to the “others” were also horrible! They out casted the people if they didn’t wear white shirts. As an extreme example, we can talk about one of the students who slapped to his girl friend. And after this act he said a very interesting thing: “I slapped to my girl friend, I don’t know why. Although I knew it was wrong, I did it…” This was the main theme of the movie for me; because almost all the students obeyed Herr Wenger or let’s say “wave” -since the Herr Wenger didn’t have the control anymore- and they did  illogical, nonsense, irrelevant and even “fatal” things despite they knew that those kind of acts are wrong…

At the end of the movie, one of the students expressed his thoughts through saying: “Wave made all of us equal to each other. If you quit this I can’t live anymore”. And he couldn’t… He shot himself…

Maybe this movie was an extreme example of conformity… But who can deny the disposition of people to such kind of things? We, in any part of our lives, conform to something even without questioning it and if it is withdrawn; our all parts can lose its balance for a while. If we are strong enough (with the basic values we have, family environment etc.) we have a chance not to become a part of such kind of movements but if we are somehow vulnerable to conformity issues, we can be a victim of such a game…

We still have a long way to go in order to understand nature and nurture balance. But it is my belief that, nature can’t be ignored when it comes to the topic of development…