Some days I have to wonder if scientists have a clue, human history and our current society is one of callousness and economic oppression under the guise of idealogies like "Free market", the "welfare state", etc, etc... because people don't care about the fate of others.

If we did there would be no homeless people, the fact that we have homeless people at all is proof positve - we don't give a fuck.

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Ms. Segura, thanks for bringing this topic to our attention by way of the Milgram experiment although it is no secret by now just how cruel humans can be. I have frequent nightmares about the torture of people against people, animals, etc. It is absolutely mind-boggling that people are so committed to following orders despite what their conscience may tell them is right or wrong. But then again, everyone knows that our entire educational system was set up from the beginning to teach students in American society to obey so they would go into the work force and not question authority. Public education was set up by industrialists like Ford and Rockefeller, etc. with this very idea in mind. This has been going on all through the 20th century to present day. It's like turning out millions of non-thinking drones - who are not supposed to join unions or evade the draft or study socialism or consider atheism and learn about other religions, etc. There is a perfect poem for this called "The Unknown Citizen" by W. H. Auden and this poem says it all.

Never has a country's citizens been so manipulated on this planet as has ours. It isn't that we are beginning to live the matrix - we've been there for decades.

The real question is what are we going to do about it? Educating people to become free thinkers - people who question authority - takes time. Most are too afraid of losing their jobs.....but wait, everyone is losing their jobs anyway. We need to empty the cup and start thinking outside authority. Maybe anarchy is just around the corner.

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What bubble were those people living in? Even if they never heard of the Milgram experiments, hadn't they heard of Nazi Germany?

There's one important distinction that makes the conclusions very disturbing: The subjects were under no real pressure to do what they were told. They were volunteers, probably expecting on some level to be manipulated. They knew that they could go home after the experiment with no consequences.

Concern about punishment, keeping your job, or social pressure, while not an excuse to commit horrific acts, is somewhat understandable when dealing with the average person. But the experiments seem to prove that people will do what they're told even when there are no carrots or sticks involved. It wasn't their boss, their pastor, their mother, or their peers telling them what to do; just some geek in a lab coat.

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I think it was Kant who pointed out that a human individual is an end-in-himself (or -herself) and not a Means. We'd do well to think about such things. When, in this capitalist society we are taught, from birth, that Usefulness is the Measure of our Value the clear implication is the underlying premise that we are to see ourselves (and others too) as means to some other end. And of course that other end is to be determined by those 'in authority' of the social, political and economic order (as well as their analogs in the the moral realms). We here at the bottom rungs of the social order are to be means either for the Will and Judgment of our "superiors" or for the Will and Judgment of some stipulated deity or 'higher power' -- God, the State or the Boss ("Employer") or all three together, as it turns out in this Corporate State that now is consolidating itself upon all of us.

And as the article quite correctly points out (in my opinion at least)in the last paragraph:

Milgram wrote, "When an individual wishes to stand in opposition to authority, he does best to find support for his position from others in his group. The mutual support provided by men for each other is the strongest bulwark we have against the excesses of authority."

Casuistry seems to be on steroids these days, and is enjoying quite a healthy resurgence. In such reasonings many monsters hide!

We must refuse to conceive of ourselves as means and to conceive of others as means. Only then do we have the possibility to collectively decide on what goals to set for ourselves and how to accomplish these.

Social democracy!!

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Whatever one human being manifests is what lies within all human beings as potential by virtue of being the same species

Those things that keep us from demonstrating cruelty displayed by others is an amalgam of upbringing, genetics, luck, emotional stability, socialization and serendipity.

Some people murder. I don't. But because one person can means I have that capability. I've just not been placed in their shoes.

But then, I have long been a practicing Buddhist and Buddhists believe that whatever one "waters" in the garden is what flourishes.

Water hate and it takes over; water serenity and peace and that pushes out the weeds. But neither potential disappears completely.

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Under representative democracy the most nightmarish Hell that you can possibly imagine is never more than a signature away.


FREE AMERICA

REVOLUTIONARY (DIRECT) DEMOCRACY

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Perhaps even more relevant to Abu Ghraib was the Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted by Dr. Philip Zimbardo in 1971. He took a group of carefully-screened, very normal, volunteer University students and divided them into prisoners and prison guards. In short order the guards became cruel and overbearing and the prisoners became submissive and depressed. Though they could voluntarily quit the experiment, few did. The guards seemed to enjoy their work and willingly put in overtime without extra pay. Dr. Zimbardo became so caught up in the experiment himself, as the "prison superintendent," that it took a woman, a recent Stanford doctoral graduate, to tell him he had to stop it, which he did, only six days into the two weeks that had been planned. Of the many outsiders in various positions - parents, priests, psychologists, doctors, etc. - who visited the "prison," this one woman was the only one to question Dr. Zimbardo's authority.

If you want to know more, Dr, Zimbardo will lead you on a tour of hell at: http://www.prisonexp.org/ .

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"an experiment that shows that most of us think that we will behave better than we actually do".

Sherman's students studied Milgram's experiments and predicted that they would not succumb to pressure from authority figures. Sherman then arranged for the students to be asked by an outsider to do something that they would not naturally be inclined to do. Most of the students did not live up to their confident predictions.

However, there was a significant amount of difference in the rate of compliance which suggests that when people consider moral dilemmas in advance they are somewhat more likely to do the right thing.

I guess they don't want to teach morality and ethics in boot camp, but it should be required in our schools. A poster upthread explains why.

Sherman's study can be found in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 39, No. 2.

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In all of the animal kingdom, what other species
except for HOMO SAPIENS kills for the joy and pleasure of killing not because of need? Why can't we just follow the example of all the so called Wild Animals. Why are we so very quick to criticize and mock all those, who through hunger eat dog meat and snakes.

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Yep, we're all born with that nature. Babies know right off the go how to be bad. Learning to be good takes time and training, most folks don't get it, most folks don't teach it or give it to their own kids, so we end up with what we have! A world full of evil minded, evil acting people. From those who steal a paper clip to hitting their play mates at 2 or 3 over a toy to those like G. W. Bush and Saddam who kill thousands and don't blink an eye lash over their decisions! And don't forget those who only say "I hate ____ "and spill forth only words. IT'S ALL the SAME old human nature!

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Thus proving that having a bad attitude towards authority is often the only way to have a good attitude towards other people.

There are many people who were not loved as children, or were abused, who did not grow up to be without conscience but instead developed a bad attitude towards authority. They recognize abuse of power because that's what they got instead of mother's milk, and they oppose it with all their hearts and with their lives when necessary.

It is often those who had loving parents and good childhoods who grew up trusting authority and would never dream of questioning hierarchy, authoritarianism, or fascism, no matter what they were asked to do.

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Sure, we'll switch back between two parties and pretend to be caring for one another but when push comes to shove, we're just fine with continuing it. It's no wonder BHO can silently continue Bush's "secret renditions" program and not a peep from most of the electorate !

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.
.Matthew 7:13 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat

:14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

_______________________________________

SO we can assist (Jesus) the Teacher by saying "Exactly %70 percent wider is the gate that leads to Hell than the gate tht leads to life"


I have answered correctly and no one has punished me.

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Yes we probably are. But some of us have added, to our chimp brain, cultural layers that can help us discern why it would be wrong to do what was done in Iraq and other places. Some people who haven't had the chance to have intellectual layers added to their persona are poorly equipped to understand many things.
Now what do I mean clearly?
A moron who spent his childhood in some backwater place shooting deer and beer cans is much more likely to commit atrocity than a canditate in the physics Ph. D program at MIT.
You don't like this? Too bad it's the fact.
We are a chimp like species. We are very violent creatures that kill for food and also have the potential to kill the members of own species. Only culture and education can temper and/or remove this and show us why it must be tamed.
Somebody who had to enlist in the army to go kill third world people who never attack her, because she was economically in trouble in the richest country on earth, is NOT the most amazing subject of our species. Quite the contrary. It's somebody raw, on whom culture and civilization has not been able to lay down those lawyers I was talking above.

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Innately we are community animals and therefore 'follow the pack' to survive and combine. Otherwise we are the outsiders, the opposition. Like in a hoorse herd if one spooks and runs, the others do to- regrdless of having saw a threat or not.
This is strengthened by sociological pressures of Role & status.Not only do we want to be in the group, we want to be seen as someone of substance and influence in the group. In the horse herd, if a over flighty horse spooks, many will not react -has cried 'wolf' too often and the 'lead' horse does not support their reaction,also the reason mares don't run just because a foal gets spooked.These are not recognized dominate nor of influential standing.
this is why there is no doubt that only the High ranking members who weild influence authorized torture. No low ranking, non influential memeber could 'move' the group to perform such acts. Instead the low ranking, nobody would have been run out of the 'herd', exposed by disassociation, because the 'herd'memebers would be following the leaders who retain the most influence (power) over the group- whether physically there or not. this is why Cheney and Rumsfeld are to be prosecuted for torture. These crimes were not comitted in only one location, but many and therefore Only those dominate over the 'Military' group could have initated such behaviors.
I've seen how one mare can get the entire herd chasing down one dog- full runs with teeth beared, even when singlely most these mares have no problems with MY dog (familiar with her scent)- that old grey Mare Weilded power over the entire herd to such an extent their normal individual reaction were negated.
fight or flight, 'herds' can quickly become a single entity, when a dominate member is initating the action.The only one who Out ranked that Old Grey mare and able to stop the attack was Me. I am considered dominate even over even that mare.So Rummy was equal in status to the mare, but Cheney was equal in domination to Me- I could have let the attack happen,but stepped in and stopped it.Rummy initiated and Cheney perpetuated War crimes.

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Man "worships" the "idol" of "wickedness" and mistakenly referred to that idol as "authority" or "deity". That idol can be anything from pride, satisfaction, money, position, power, politics, seniority, national security, patrotism, etc., which when becomes deified commands and demands obedience to the "letters". Just look how cool the soldier in the picture was - afterall he was the man in control.

The truth is not in merely being obident to the authority, the truth is in the expected reward: tacit, explicit or implied. Man wants to deify himself at anytime, given the opportunity. Just like a broken glass vase or chalice could instantly become a sharp blade, so also can man under influence or authority become an oppressor, a torturer, or a murderer. The issue is not in our inability to question the authority, the issue has to do with our capability to agree with the authority. One thing which this article and the experiements failed to identify is our vulnerability to become what we want to change. That perhaps is the weakness of those who torture.

The Bible says it all "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" Genesis 6:5-7).

Another way to look at both experiements (Milgrams and Burger) is to consider the thoughts of mind as the given authority (something like Mind and the World Order according to C.I. Lewis). The question then is how does world order influence how world leaders interpret the thoughts of their minds. May be the question we should ask ourvesleves constantly is, "If I were in that position, would I have handled the situation differently?

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something about marxism and communism makes the kiiler instinct thrive. what do you expect when you view those who disagree with you as scraps of waste on the dunghill of an abstraction called "history".

the worst communist thugs like stalin, mao, trotsky and castro were well educated, middleclass, well read men. they just lacked empathy. millions starved, were shot, or froze to death.

but we all know that trying to make a profit is far worse. after all, the ny times and the cool one(blessed be his name) said so.

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From the article: "One lens through which to understand this is politics, a profession notorious for its moral corrosiveness."

No. The real lens through which to understand the corrosion of our innate morality is REGLIGION. That is, being systematically (incrementally) indoctrinated by religious dogma as children.

Such systematic ideological childhood conditioning is a sure guarantee that one is as far removed from personal responsibility, as possible. The inevitable end result of all this 'programming' is, of course, an adult with an under-developed conscience, if not completely devoid of a conscience.

Milgram's infamous experiment merely serves to reinforce the warped (evil) stance of the authoritarians (sociopaths) who still dominate the so-called Christian West.

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I guess that doesn't get through to you. I can see how you got fucked in life.

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You have to save yourself.

But it sounds lonely, no?

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I've often wondered whether there is some connection between this capacity to follow directions from authority and the group-think that is behind mobs. Could it be that these are two faces of the same defect in the human mind?

The mania for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq seems to me to be an example of this mob mentality and although I never favored entering those wars, I have to admit being taken back by the widespread enthusiasm for going to war, seemingly by everyone around me. Faced with this kind of environment, I had to start questioning my own position and start to have doubts about whether I was overlooking something.

I never overcame my doubts, but I did become less vocal in my opposition to the war, and now I have to wonder whether my relative silence may have influenced others. Probably others kept quiet for the same reason and this may have affected me as well.

Reflecting on this gives me some sympathy for people who have been ordered to torture. They should have been stronger and refused, but this is asking quite a lot of a young soldier without much experience of the world.

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Herbivores are pretty peaceful creatures.

Imagine a horse killing cows or vice versa?

I believe that people are herbivores because we have not pointed teeth like cats and dogs. ( Except the canines, which even horses and cows have)
I believe that the dawn of man saw humans as peaceful as a newborn baby. When hurt, we would naturally cry outloud, and hope to be heard by the forces that be.

In man's middle evolution, he is as the cursed person who has hurt another through his quest for the biggest sex. just like what happens to almost every person in the course of his lifetime.

Then towards the ending of Humankind's evolutionary wane, he will be as an elderly person... trying harder than ever to use all that he has learned and master the universe....but in reality, will wind up going out with only regrets, in a weak, fraile cackling whimper..Lashing out against even his own caregivers, because of severe pain.

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Babies are good everywhere. 5 year olds are good everywhere. We are born highly sensitives beings feeling connected with all around us. We are then systematically desensitized by the society around us, generally by people older than we are with trauma as the vehicle. I remember clearly my introduction to racism for example. A recently arrived 6 year old in a basically all white northeast coast town, I wanted to have friends. I became friends with the only black boy in the school. A really smart, nice person who could run faster than me. One day after school, the third and fourth graders who lived near me, and I though were also my friends, wanted me to prove that I was tough. Their challenge, a fight with the black boy, with whom they were not friends. The group followed us taunting, until we finally faced off. I swung first blooding the boy;s nose. Tears rolled down his face as the crowd cheered. He walked away and moved out of town within two months. I felt exhileration for a moment, then deep inexpressible shame. I did not know what to say or how to protest and was pulled along with the cheering crowd. What a choice for a 6 year old! Oh, the adults say, it was just a little fight, not a big deal. Grow up! The world is a tough place, you need to get strong! But it all rings hollow. I think all of us as 6 year olds had a much stronger sense of loyalty, honor and the rightness of things than any adult. It never occurred to us to take revenge, or stab a friend in the back, or target a race, religion or economic class. We just wanted to have friends and to play. And I think we resisted with every fiber of our body until, as in this example, we were taught, often by well meaning adults, the way of the world. Or at least the way of the world as they experienced it when they were growing up. Milgram's experiment simple exposed what we have grown numb to because that is the way trauma works. It disappears into the background, while we cope in this society which, due to a lack of understanding of true human nature, as displayed by the very young, and the operation of conditioning/trauma believes motivation, morality and order have to imposed externally. But in this belief how is it that those born, like those whom they intend to train, without morality suddenly attain the wisdom to train others?

I suggest that we are born good, lose contact with that innate goodness through conditioning and trauma, but can choose to heal and regain that connection. Milgram should be celebrated for pointing out how bad the hurt is and letting us know what needs to change. We now have the great opportunity to retake control of our lives and start saying NO to the crowds who want us to see enemies on every side and "authorities" who know better than we do and YES to the most human of adages, do unto others as you would have them do unto to.

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This asshole is not trying to protect your privacy; he's trying to steal your identity.

If you click on his "Privacy Center" hyperlink, the server the link points to will install a keylogger on your computer, which is used to steal your credit card number, SSN, etc.

Please, report the comment to Alternet's staff.

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Don't click. Identity theft site. Use Alternet's "report this comment" link.

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I think that our social scientists have just started to pursue the most promising angle, ie. what characteristics distinguish the 1/3 who declined to administer the more powerful shocks. I read somewhere (and it might not be true), that one of the resisters later blew the whistle on the My Lai massacre (the dates might be off). Books like "Outliers," and popular courses like the one on Happiness at Harvard are encouraging signs that people are considering how to make themselves, and their world, better, by figuring out how to pursue what's felicitous, not just what's "normal."

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We are by and large "sheeple," ask anyone who is in the religion business, we want to be told what to do, even the religious language infantantalizes us, we want parents to take care of us even into our old age. Why do you think such amoral institutions thrive even in the face of such abject immoral and cruel behavior committed by their hierarchy.

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In the 1980s, I engaged in a 2 year pilgrimage to try to better understand the psychology of violence, traveling round the country, talking to many people and having amazing experiences.

When I talked to a rapist in prison about how he felt while committing his crime, he explained that while he remembered all the details about what had happened, it was as though he was watching from outside himself while doing it – there was no feeling. And the three other prisoners in the group immediately said, "I know what you mean."

I have always had trouble understanding seemingly callous, horrible crimes of violence. I now believe that one explanation is that people in certain painful situations, including those inflicting pain on others, withdraw completely from that human, feeling part – because the feelings are unbearable.

I found many other indications that, along with the capacity to do terrible things to others, there is a part of us that is revolted and sickened by such cruelty. A wise sage, approached by a questioner about the "two wolves" within, one loving, one violent, was asked which would win. His answer? "The one you feed."

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One of my colleagues believes that we are capable of hurting and killing each other because we are still too close to our animal nature, though we won't admit it. I disagreed because I feel that we have forgotten our animal nature, and the things about us which we believe set us apart from the animals are exactly the things that inspire our most inhumane behavior.

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Family therapy professionals know that the sickest person rules the family. This little rule extends into businesses and politics. The sicko surrounds itself with those slightly less sick, they harass, loot, and run out the honest one at a time until they own the social structure.
So humans submit themselves to the Malign Thug, and to all authority figures below that level.
Anyone who has endured a harassment campaign---anyone who has an anomalous appearance--anyone who volunteers to secede from the herd, even in one line-item only--can tell you who the enemy is. Everyone, and the apparent exception probably will report to them.
This isn't paranoia, it's history, experience, and biology, Deal with it.

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In another famous experiment, an ordinary high school was randomly divided into Group A and Group B. Both groups were identified by special colours and insignia.

Group A students were told that they were superior to Group B students and that Group B was there to serve Group A. In fact it was Group A's job to police Group B for obedience and conformity.

Things escalated rapidly. Group A students graduated from pep rallies to outright bullying during the 3 day study. Group A unanimously assumed their designated role - why resist when an authority figure tells you that you are better than others?

Now there's an experiment that, unfortunately, is duplicated time and time again :.(

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Paulo Friere wrote this in his classic book Education for Critical Consciousness. Friere states the result of 13 years of traditional education is that students passively accept authority and lack critical thinking skills that would teach them to question their own actions, even in extreme cases such as the Milgram experiment.

To further demonstrate, one need only look at the case of Adolph Eichmann, the Nazi SS oficer in charge of sending Jews to the death camps. Hannah Arendt, author of Eichmann in Jerusalem, posited the idea of the Banality of Evil after observing and reporting on Eichmann's trial in the early 1960's.

Eichmann, Arendt argued, was nothing more than a bureaucrat, who had no particular hatred of Jews, but was following orders and trying to get promoted. Eichmann was part of the culture of evil that existed in Nazi Germany. Cultural evil is much more nefarious than the actions of a psychopathic madman, because in enlists ordinary people in extraordinary acts of evil.

When radical author and Colorado university professor Ward Churchill called the Wall St. traders in the World Trade Centers "little Eichmann" he was referring to the traders who profited from the death and destruction of war. Their claim that they are "just doing their jobs" is the Banality of evil Arendt described in her work.

The recent revelations of Wall St malfeasance and the lack of concern for average citizens suffering in this economic turmoil, and the exorbitant pay, bonuses and private jets of the rich and powerful further demonstrate the culture of "disconnect" for the suffering of average people that corporate executives live in their penthouse offices.

Critical pedagogy, a small branch of educational theory, offers a model for an educational system that would teach students to act with critical consciousness, to be active citizens in a democratic society, to be cultural critics with the ability to deconstruct their own experiences and "awaken" moral and ethical behavior by teaching young people to see the "Other" as human, with their own desires and hopes.

Milgrams experiment does suggest that we all have the capacity for evil, but I think we all have an equal capacity for good, too, given the right education.

peace

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I'm getting so sick and tired of "social scientists" recruiting young college aged people to participate in social experiments -- them letting the rest of you extrapolate to the entire rest of the human race! If you had taken part, and you're a 30 year old mother, or a 60 year old grandmother, would you have
reacted differently? Of course you would have; which is to say age means everything
when it comes to not being a 'sheep'.
Hey, sociologists! Buy a vowel and get a clue! Stop coming to huge campus full of 20 year old students who don't yet manage their own lives, to find people to participate in your experiments only to claim we are ALL like them!! Stop it!

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Then you shouldn't even have to ask.

#@!

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Neither the article's author nor the commentators have mentioned that Neil Postman thoroughly debunked both Milgram's methodology and conclusions more than 15 years ago referring to it as "scientism". His commments apply no less to Burger's reworking of the idea.

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If anyone has been around and not in a coma lately, we know that not only are human beings individually more than capable of the most profound cruelty individually, but collectively they are capable of evil that is nearly beyond imagination.

Death Camps - Nazi Germany
Death Camps - Pol Pot
Death Camps - Stalinist Russia
Rendition and torture - USA
False imprisonment and torture - USA
Use of nuclear weapons on Civilian populations - USA not once but twice.

MY God!!!! the list could go on and on and on.

Wake up. Human beings are capable and in fact engage in very human depravity - depravity that doesn't exist in any other species and so is rightly human depravity not inhuman depravity.

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why is everyone ignoring the fact that in all these studies, it is NOT "all of us" who do obviously immoral things because of an inability to deny authority figures--but two-thirds, which means that one third in all these experiments refused to do the ugly act? I've seen studies where the moral content was removed; subjects were to estimate which of two lines was longer, etc. When they were part of a group in which everyone else agreed that the shorter line was longer, most subjects went with the group opinion. When subjects supposedly about to begin a study, and waiting for an experimenter, saw smoke coming from under a door, or heard someone in another room apparently choking, whether they reacted had everything to do with the size of the group they were in. If alone, most reacted immediately and appropriately. But if sitting with two other subjects who ignored the smoke or cries for help, most subjects did the same. So it's not only authority figures, it's also groupthink that causes most of us--but not all of us--to cast aside our own judgment. Yet in all these experiments, if one other person demurred, even among a large number going along with the false choice, the rate of refusal in the subjects zoomed. So speaking up can really help, even if one feels terribly outnumbered.
We really need to look at what separates the one-third from the two-thirds.

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I like the way she ended this article.

We only think twice when others take the initiative.


Fear not to take the initiative. The TV has stolen the courage from us, and we must turn off the TV, and avoid excessive exchanges with those who use TV,..in order to unchain our thinking, originality and personal characther.

A Wise Man recently told me that no person can say who is important, and who is not.


If a Human baby is born into a wise loving and just family, and then falls into overloads of exposure to children from unjust and unwise families. The fair and wise child may make a bad choice, and become excessivly familiar to the way of wicked

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Gays can be the biggest conformists on the face of the earth. Just shows we're all the same.

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If everyone held "my body, my property, my choice" as their primary most important principle you wouldn't see people in the Milgram Experiments pushing the shock button past the point the learner has demanded it to stop.

It is precisely because this principle is not most people's most closely held principle, that we are able to ignore the individual sovereignty of others.

If we start demanding this right for ourselves it will be easier and more natural to respect it in others.

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The conclusion reached by this experimenter demonstrates how absolutely important it is that if media is to be balanced and fair in its presentations that it give equal coverage to protest in all its manifestations. People do not intrinsically have opinions, they must learn the consequences and ramifications of holding certain opinions. Stifling the information regarding dissent promotes mob behavior, no matter how sophisticated and civil the society imagines itself.

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Would the results have been the same had the actors been really shocked. It would be impostible to say with out reproducing the experiment and possibly the results would bring up new questions.

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This area of research has always been interesting because it goes to the fundamentals. But any adult who enters the experiment has already, to a greater or lesser extent, been conditioned by his society. Are members of different types of societies equally malleable, equally unwilling to consult their consciences? equally unempathic? I don't know, but I must admit to a niggling suspicion that modern mass culture with its high ratio of violence porn, a lifetime of hearing our leaders tell us the right sort of violence is OK, judgement of worth purely by material measures, etc. etc., all precondition a person to do terrible things if the circumstances are right. If you have grown up in a dumbed down conformist society where it is considered stupid to let ethics get in the way of financial gain, what are the chances of developing strong enough principles to pit your own instincts against those of the herd?

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Don't click that "privacy center" link.

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There is an absurdly painted bus in our neighborhood. The owners take great pride in taking at no charge anyone to see (sell) the nearby foreclosed properties. There is great glee in contemplating the misery of others. Driving home last night, I passed a manufactured home park. The management has placed a huge sign: TOMORROW IS EVICTION DAY - PAY WHAT YOU OWE OR GET OUT!! - What ever happened to Love Thy Neighbor or just plain compassion? Gone with the DODO bird.

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[This started as a response to a comment by talkville, "the uses of casuistry," but I decided it was general enough to stand on its own. It involves a quotation from Milgram: "When an individual wishes to stand in opposition to authority, he does best to find support for his position from others in his group. The mutual support provided by men for each other is the strongest bulwark we have against the excesses of authority."]

I like how Milgram here qualifies authority and what about it we seek to resist as an excess. It's all too easy to reduce a discussion about authority into a ridiculous decision between bucking of authority as such or complete submission, where resisting authority means abandoning or withdrawing from it. By talking about an excess of authority, I think Milgram opens a door to a way of thinking and talking about authority that is not so black and white. It's not entirely novel though.

Rousseau wrote of two kinds of self-love: amour-propre and amour de soi. The latter is a natural and positive love we have for our existence/life as such, while the former is a uniquely human tendency towards vanity and pride. They often look the same, but it is amour-propre that humans engage when doing what they do in order to be recognized by others as superior. This debases not only others whose weakness or pain may validate our sense of superiority, but ourselves too---we who turn ourselves into a means for the end of validation in an other.

Maybe we can apply a similar distinction to how we talk about and relate to authority. What resistance would be possible, in theory or on the ground, without some sense of authority? I don't just mean authority in the brute meaning of common-sense, but also in the sense that it shares with the word "author." That is to say, those in authority direct and cultivate as much as, and potentially more than, they control and stifle. That excess of authority I pointed out in the beginning is the pivot point of this distinction, and concretely it marks when we talk about "government" as a power independent of The People and when we talk about exerting State-power as our own. That excess is the object of our own belief that we are outside (possibly) of power or it is outside (and over-against) us. There was a great quotation of Cicero at the end of a recent article to this end: freedom is participation in power.

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I wonder what happened (or what would have happened) in the final scenario if one of the two actors had continued to obey the "scientist" and the other had disobeyed.

That would have caused a different dynamic: either way the subject would not have been isolated. I wonder how many would conform then?

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Did you really have to print that picture--AGAIN--of that piece of West Virginia white trash psychopathic slut, Lindee England? Every stereotype of West Virginia and women in the military is right there for all to see. On second thought, I guess you really did, to show the kind of garbage that is wearing the uniform now--

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Ho Ho HO. Of course again and again and again.
the Asians took up where the Germans left off, then the Africans revealed their "humanity" if not intelligence.

I say N. america is next. Obama will stir the pot. Let's see who turns up the heat. Hint: the group that understands where heat comes from. Ho Ho.

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What in the hell happened to free thinkers?

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Media Steals our dreams and aspirations absolutely. Espeicially concerning the Audio (dialogue) aspect.

Did you ever see how the "flea circus" train the fleas?

People would be much more original, creative, social, interested and patient with each other, have more character, etc X 10000 !

TV and Media corporations steal our dreams. The corporations which own it use the same psycology that is behind the scientists in those experiments use. It isnt difficult at all to do. Nor to get away with. They call it innocent-sounding and official-sounding names like "Advertising, Marketing, etc"

No profiteers can flourish in a society of people that thinks for themselves, dreams for themselves. Not when they can SELL you your dreams and thoughts. Now turn it off. Turn off the news. read read read read.
cancel your suscription to cable and/or satelite. It is a ticket to your self destruction with you name signed in your own blood.

In just 30 minutes, an average audio dialogue can place 1000 thoughts in your head!! Thoughts that you either have no need for, AND that WILL cause harm to, and interfere with your thought processes.

Sitting to listen like sheep to orations written by unknowns behind the stage, is an insult to yourself. Wake up. Media needs to change it's job description. To one of %100. sacrifice, rather than %100. self-service.
__

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Authority exists to be questioned. To be continually tested, ignored when appropriate, torn down and forgotten when necessary.

FREE AMERICA

REVOLUTIONARY (DIRECT) DEMOCRACY

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after the experiments of the 60's and 70's, both psych and soc developed a set of ethics to eliminate using students as guinea pigs...

the first rule is to do no harm... to anyone!!!

second rule is the development of a human subjects committee at research institutions where if someone wants to study certain social or psychological conditions there has to be an approval from the review board that is made up of faculty and others ensuring the safety and well-being of even voluntary human subjects...

try to do an end run around these rules and you get kicked out of the professional organization, probably sued and liable on your own for any injuries or damages... top it off with being blacklisted from ever doing your profession again...

that's why the old studies are still being reviewed, they can't be updated in the old form...

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certainly makes one think.. punish the germans for war crimes.. consider only "moving forward" (obama) when it is your own country. So, in the bigger picture we must add one more level of complication.. the culprits must not be of your own tribe. As for being born "good or evil" my two bits says we like all animals are born to survive and would not give a thought to keeping a sibling from the milk given the chance... no we are not evil, it just does not enter into the scene, it is survival..not bad, wrong or good or right. We add all of that as our mind grows and then we are then civilized by the culture we are born into. that culture can be very varied as history teaches us. At any age the civilizing can be turned off and turned back to suvival mode and that suvival mode can be induced faily easy via fear, authority, or mob rule. To entrust any of this or excuse our behavior by any of these is finally a tragic excure for cowardice. "To do the right thing" ultimately is a single voice following a single conscious. To understand this behavior to be otherwise, is still not a reason to justify or excuse it.

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All participants in the Milgram experiment have been products of one culture - our own morally bankrupt, raging-with-hypocrisy-we-don't-see culture. It tells nothing about universal humanity.

The explanations given in the article, such as, "Indeed, what these factors demonstrate is not how easily people will harm another person, but how quickly people will cede their own authority to another person when they feel isolated, pressured and powerless," are clearly consequences of our culture - how we've organized ourselves and are taught to behave to be part of our society. What we've been indoctrinated to internalize is not universal.

Or at least it wasn't, 500 years ago, before the Xtians thugs from Europe got the bright idea to steal and impoverish everybody else in the world. The authoritarian bent of our cultural heritage probably helped us succeed in these wicked deeds, but we've lost most of the cultural diversity which once existed on Earth.

The heart of a culture's ethical strength comes from its religious framework, and ours is horrible. Crooked and corrupt church leaders are everywhere. Xtianity has long been more of a force for accepting hypocrisy than for calling it out and ostracizing it. The huge range of Xtian churches today - from the Phelps who claim "God hates fags," to Mother Theresa's work in Calcutta, clearly indicate Xtianity is nothing but whatever folks decide to project into it - there is no unifying set of values.

The work of most churches destroy, far than than develop, a strong personal moral compass. Church teachings are to do what you're told; to obey commandments instead of developing strong values of your own. In many Xtians, self-righteousness and knee-jerk response have replaced a functioning moral compass of their own. Many are kept in their church by being kept morally infantilized. Even atheists and secularists who grow up in our society still internalize the social-organizing authoritarian hierarchy, and blindness to moral hypocrisy. No wonder so many in our culture will willingly do what they know is wrong.

Not all people suffered from this cultural dysfunction. A few of the largest other religions survive, but countless smaller ones were destroyed by Xtian missionaries, who forced the people into theirs, effectively destroying the glue which held them together. Any culture visited by missionaries, enjoys roads and vehicles, electricity, or commercial radio service, I'd consider to have been destroyed by our influence.

But until this experiment has been duplicated among people from a wide variety of cultures very different than ours, I'd consider any conclusions about "humanity" to be bogus. It only tells about the culture of the participants.

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The experiments of Milgram and Zimbardo point to the powerful effects of situational factors in influencing and determining how people may respond in any given situation – in these cases, situations where people become obedient to the prevailing authority. Milgram’s interest in how people could be complicit with atrocity related behaviors have their roots in the reality of the Nazi Holocaust during WW 2. Phillip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment ( www.prisonexp.org/ ) also explored the conditions under which people change under pressure of situational demands and factors.

On a similar note to Milgram and Zimbardo, the journalist Milton Mayer conducted his own research into how many of the German people became accomplices to the Nazi regime. He went back to Germany in 1954 and conducted in-depth interviews with about 10 different people who were adults during the Nazi regime. He published his book titled “They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45" (University of Chicago Press, Chicago & London: 1955). It offers some very illuminating insights. I found one passage especially poignant in which a German professor of Philology describes the insidious process by which a democratic society can slowly transform itself into a fascist state. It is a passage (and book) worth reading. It complements the work of Milgram and Zimbardo beautifully. This passage is published on my website ( www.focusreframed.com/?p=77/ )

(Please forgive the lack of hyperlinks; cut and paste the 2 links above. I could not figure out how to create hyperlinks for this comment.)

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The conclusions drawn in this article are all wrong. What the experiment clearly shows is the effectiveness of the public "education" system.

Since it's inception the education system has never been about educating children, rather, it has been and still is about indoctrination to authoritarianism and producing obedient workers. Even as a child I could see it before knowing the horrible facts of the matter. Try reading up on the words of John D. Rockefeller, John Dewey, and Henry Ford. Our education system was modeled on the Prussian education system which was designed to produce obedient mercenary soldiers and worked quite well for that purpose.

Is it any wonder then that an average American will commit atrocities and then say, "It vas not mein fault, I vas only following orders".

Get a clue, this is not human nature it is the result of 12+ years of enforced psychological mind control techniques being forced upon helpless children.

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Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

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