Obeying Authority & The Milgram Experiment

[Comrade #138672]

According to some, people can not have principles and they will tend to obey authority mindlessly. They derive this so-called "truth" from the findings of the Milgram Experiment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment). So people "need to be led".

But I think that it's wrong to say that, because:

1. The Milgram Experiment was just one experiment with a limited context, few people, etc.
2. The results do not even support this conclusion.
3. Participants might have been misinformed about dangers, etc.

What do you think?

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Radiolab has an episode addressing this. It points out that most people erroneously associate the results of one tiny part of the experiment with the entire experiment. Interestingly people were more willing to do awful things in the name of scientific progress without the need of pressure from an authority figure.

It's worth a listen http://www.radiolab.org/2012/jan/09/

[Questionable]

I find it difficult to compare the results of this one test to the whole of humanity.

[Comrade #138672]

Many people claim that this tells us something about human nature, but I think that it tells us more about Capitalist culture.

[Zealot]

All it proved is that people have a tendency to blindly obey authority, not that they want to. In fact, the experiment showed quite the opposite; people were very uncomfortable with obeying the command to continue the experiment but done it anyway.

[Questionable]

Many people claim that this tells us something about human nature, but I think that it tells us more about Capitalist culture.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this experiment was only conducted once with a particular group of people before being banned on the grounds of being unethical. I'd like to see how it compares to other cultures before I draw any conclusions.

But yes, capitalist education teaches us from the youngest age in public school that people in positions of authority are always right and always have the last word, even if they're wrong. It doesn't surprise me that adults who have been subjugated to this sort of indoctrination their whole lives would submit so easily.

[cyu]

Interestingly people were more willing to do awful things in the name of scientific progress without the need of pressure from an authority figure.


Yep, or being part of something bigger... For example, I don't see much point in randomly hurting people, but if those particular people play a role in the starvation and death of an entire underclass of people, then I would say the priorities of the starving outweigh the mink coats of the callous.

[Kenco Smooth]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this experiment was only conducted once with a particular group of people before being banned on the grounds of being unethical.


Nope, Milgram repeated it numerous times under a number of different conditions to observe what relevant factors would influence obedience to authority. It was also repeated by the bbc (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7791278.stm) a few years ago with the same results coming out.



3. Participants might have been misinformed about dangers, etc.


Such as?

[Questionable]

Nope, Milgram repeated it numerous times under a number of different conditions to observe what relevant factors would influence obedience to authority. It was also repeated by the bbc (http://www.anonym.to/?http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7791278.stm) a few years ago with the same results coming out.

Very well then, I was wrong. It still can be linked to indoctrination at an early age in capitalist cultures.

[Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant']

This is the same experiment repeated by Derren Brown in one of his shows?

[Comrade #138672]

Nope, Milgram repeated it numerous times under a number of different conditions to observe what relevant factors would influence obedience to authority. It was also repeated by the bbc (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7791278.stm) a few years ago with the same results coming out.

Such as?Maybe they thought that the scientists knew what they were doing and that these shocks could not do so much harm. So I thought that people would not fall for it so easily a second time, but the other experiments seem to suggest otherwise (although they are different and less intense).


This is the same experiment repeated by Derren Brown in one of his shows?I thought Derren Brown was a fraud?

[Mr. Natural]

As a systems-complexity theorist, I find Wecandobetter points to my response with: "Many people claim that this tells us something about human nature, but I think that it tells us more about capitalist culture."

The Milgram experiment points both to capitalist relations and the systemic character of "human nature," but manages to avoid addressing either. Typical modern academic!

Life and society are systemically based, and humans, as living systems that are parts of larger systems, are "loyal" to those systems and take on their characteristics. In life, parts form wholes that form the parts, and with capitalist globalization, we all now work for and live and think within capitalist relations. Humanity is now trapped within capitalist institutions, values, and practices, which are top-down, dictatorial relations, and this is especially true now that a mature (entropic) capitalism has largely eliminated the "negation of the negation" (that's us: the left).

People must create systemic, communal relations and live in various forms of community, but capitalism's organization is creating us in its chaotic, alienated image instead. People are supposed to produce for use and need, but now produce for a malignant profit taken from human and natural forms of community. Capitalism is a cancer of human and nonhuman life.

It is "human nature" to be a part of systems, and Eichmann et al were performing their particular systemic duty, as Eichmann pled at his trial. He was just following orders. So are predator drone operators. They are all just doing their systemic duty.

My points: (1) We are systemic beings and must become hyper aware of our systems and their qualities and not be mindlessly trapped within them. (2) Capitalism is The System now, and we have all been captured by its inhuman, dictatorial relations and practices. If you doubt this last point, take a look at the extreme, go-nowhere sectarianism and conservatism of what remains of the left.

So "human nature" is of a systemic nature, and capitalism is now Our System. We had better do something about this, and soon.

My red-green best.

[Kenco Smooth]

Maybe they thought that the scientists knew what they were doing and that these shocks could not do so much harm. So I thought that people would not fall for it so easily a second time, but the other experiments seem to suggest otherwise (although they are different and less intense).


There's really no way they didn't think they were doing harm if you look at the transcripts. The voice of the confederate asked them to stop between faked screams of pain. Towards the final level the confederate begged them to stop due to an undisclosed heart problem and then went completely silent for the final levels, not even answering questions but still receiving shocks from the participants. The participants reactions also make it clear that the believed they were causing harm. The experiment is held up as an example of highly unethical research due to the extreme distress many participants clearly displayed.



I thought Derren Brown was a fraud?

He's explicitly open about being an illusionist. When he repeats the tricks of old magicians and mystics he makes clear that he is not actually displaying supernatural powers or communing with spirits. He's done a fair amount of debunking in his time actually.

[RedAtheist]

Many people claim that this tells us something about human nature, but I think that it tells us more about Capitalist culture.

I think this is correct. I read somewhere that people who grow up living in dictatorships are more likely to obey the authority figure than people who grow up in countries considered to be democratic. This points to a trend which could potentially be continued in a socialist society (which should be more democratic than a capitalist society.)

If anyone has the source for the claim that people are less likely to obey the authority in democratic countries, that would really help.

[Mr. Natural]

RedAtheist asks "If anyone has a source for the claim that people are less likely to obey the authority in democratic countries."

Sure. The source is ourselves and our commonsense. I don't know what countries if any might be considered genuinely democratic at present, but in a democracy, the people are the authority and obey themselves. Any complex society will need higher levels of governmental organization, but in a democracy, these "higher" levels will be grassrooted.

Anarchism/communism bring democracy to all areas of life.

In a faux, bourgeois "democracy," though, people become immersed in the top-down, dictatorial, relations of capital. In capitalism, people are the means to the end of profit and become physically and mentally captured by external, domineering, alienating capitalist relations and values. Capitalism, as The System, has triumphed in the US, and one measure of this is that the American people, existing in the belly of the beast, now have the political and democratic awareness of a potato. "Democratic" politics in the US are externally managed soap opera.

Comrades who live in other advanced countries might find it hard to come to terms with the reality of the wholesale political ignorance of the American people, but as it is a product of the advance of capitalism, you may consider it to be on its way to your neighborhood.

All is not lost, though, for political ignorance dialectically opens opportunities for political education. Capitalism's systemic mindfuck is powerful and pervasive, though, and revolutionaries need to re-revolutionize their psyches and theories to cope with capitalism's global/mature/senile stage. The process of capitalism has reached the end of its road, and its self-destruction will take us with it, unless ....

The old revolutionary ways have clearly failed. What are the "new ways"? What needs to change?

My red-green best.