Santiago Genové was a Mexican anthropologist. While studying monkeys he found a connection between violence and sexuality in their society. He thought that this should be applicable in human society as well. So, to conduct his study, he started an experiment that was dubbed by the newspapers of that time as the ‘Sex raft experiment’.

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He ordered a 12x7 meter raft and advertised in the newspapers for the recruitment of his subjects. Raft's name was Acali, and he planned to sail with 10 attractive young men and women of various countries, races, and religions. Five men and five women were ready to sail across the Atlantic from the Canary Islands to Mexico in 1973. Among the five women and five men, there had been a Japanese photographer, a French scuba diver, an Angolan priest, a Swedish ship’s captain, an Israeli doctor, and an Alaskan waitress who was fleeing because of her abusive husband.

Santiago wanted to spur conflict among the people on board. He minimized the privacy. For this, he ordered a raft that had no engine and for the toilet, there was a single hole on the raft and people had to use it in front of everyone. They had to change clothes openly and privacy had no existence among the people on board.

To make males frustrated, he appointed women in charge of the raft while men were given menial tasks. The happening of the next 101 days is now chronicled in Marcus Lindeen’s documentary ‘The Raft’. He tried everything to make them violent and sexually frustrated. However, he was unsuccessful. He became tyrannical. So, in the end, the people on the board revolted against him. The scientist became frustrated when he heard on the radio that his university had detached itself from the scandalous ‘sex experiment’. He wrote later, “Only one has shown any kind of aggression and that is me, a man trying to control everyone else, including himself”. After many days and bearing immense hardships, they survived and reached their destination.

(Survivors of the raft)
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Though the scientist did not get what he desired to get from the experiment or rather we should say that he could not prove his theory, it was a remarkable experiment in human history. We generally have a notion that people are bad and selfish. We believe that people easily become violent and always think about sex. But, this is not true. The members of the raft did not become violent and even the male members didn’t abuse the women physically or sexually as other people might think about them. No doubt some people are bad, selfish and full of criminal mentality, most of the people in this world are co-operative and helping. I have experienced in lots of situations that even strangers come to help someone when he or she needed help. People don’t hesitate to help someone even if they have to spend their money and time on them. This is the true nature of humanity. We are not as bad as movies and literature portray us. In some corner of our hearts, goodness always stays and manifests itself on myriad ways.

What do you think?

Source: Internet