Obedience And Authority, By Stanley Milgram

Individuals often yield to conformity when they are forced to discard their individual freedom in order to benefit the larger group. Despite the fact that it is important to obey the authority, obeying the authority can sometimes be hazardous especially when morals and autonomous thought are suppressed to an extent that the other person is harmed. Obedience usually involves doing what a rule or a person tells you to but negative consequences can result from displaying obedience to authority for example; the people who obeyed the orders of Adolph Hitler ended up killing innocent people during the Holocaust. In the same way, Stanley Milgram noted in his article ‘Perils of Obedience’ of how individuals obeyed authority and

“These people had no ritual for the washing away of sins. It is another trait we inherited from them, and it has helped to discipline us as well as to breed hypocrisy among us.” (19) These words, which were written by Arthur Miller in 1953, in the description of John Proctor, have given us the explanation of the hypocrisy we have today and will remain within us for a long, perpetual time ahead.

Each of the two experiments carried out by Milgram and Zimbardo had questionable ethics in their procedure. Ethics is defined as “Moral principles that govern a person’s behaviour or the conducting of an activity” (Oxford Dictionaries, 2016). In psychology, ethics are moral guidelines when conducting social experiments such as these, so that the dignity of each participant is respected and preserved. This piece of work will evaluate the perceived ethics in Milgram’s experiment of human obedience to authority figures, and Zimbardo’s experiment of conformity to roles, and also provide an overall conclusion on whether or not these studies were ethical.

What do you think real Freedom is ? Do you think all living organisms deserve real freedom ? I think real freedom means that everyone have the right to choose what they want to do and what they want to say . Some examples would be Cairo’s Revolution,Martin Luther King Jr. standing up for the blacks, and the Censorship of Letters.

A great author named Garry Trudeau once said, " When you're young you don't feel iconoclastic - you're just kind of doing what seems natural, what moves you". What this quote means is that there are many times in a person's life where they complete actions without thinking of what the outcome or consequence will be. Therefore, in an effort to avoid completing the task of farm work, one character - McMurphy - great con artist, decides to admit himself into a mental institution. During his time there he defied and broke all rules of the institution. In many opinions, society has rules for a reason and they should not get broken; however, if one is to do so there

In “Tyranny of Choice,” Barry Schwartz brings to the table the topic of choice. The common believe is the more choices, equals more freedom. Under that assumption we are living in the best times then. Everything in the world has multiple options to choose from. The choices range from what type of gum you want, to the best life insurance policy for your family. Schwartz uses the modern university for his example, he likens it to an intellectual shopping mall: “Individual customers are free to ‘purchase’ whatever bundles of knowledge they want”. Some universities let incoming freshmen sit in on classes briefly to test them out, the way one would try on clothes at a store. On the surfaces this seems amazing, how could someone not be happy having the freedom to choose what fits them best. Schwartz argues that more choices in life limits our freedom. This happens by the choices taking up more of our time, in turn causing more stress and decreased happiness.

“Selfish desire is found in the senses, mind, and intellect, misleading them and burying wisdom in delusion.” Stated by Lord Krishna in the Mahabharata war to Arjuna, this statement is especially true in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and William Golding’s The Inheritors. These classic dystopian novels illustrate the harsh realities of oppression and the selfish mentality of humans who solely intend to claim power. The antagonizing groups in these novels are the Party and the Homo sapiens, who develop several methods to fulfill their lustful intention of ruling eternally through misery by either tormenting or murdering, and by utilizing comparatively advanced technology such as the telescreen and boulders. Their intelligence is suppressed because they do not bother caring for those who are suffering from their unjust actions. In fact, their sole purpose is to claim power by harming innocent people. Hence, although these novels consist of contrasting settings, Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Inheritors are similar because their societies control people through despair and technology for solely claiming power and not caring for morality.

The amount of cruelty one possess varies individually depending on the situations an individual has experienced throughout their life. This is why Milgram received such shocking results in his obedience experiment and why only a few reacted in Darley and Latane 's studies. Although cruelty is within from birth, the test subjects in Milgram 's, Darley and Latane 's experiment had no intentions of being cruel because they believed they were simply following orders and still fighting a personal conflict which is to respond or not to a situation, while still conforming to the norms of social etiquette.

Envision, walking down the street and seeing posters plastered all over persuading and screaming out at you how terrific, strong, and successful your leader is, wouldn’t you feel pretty great about your country? In North Korea, their society is exactly that, the article “Cult of personality: why do so many leaders force their people to worship them as heroes?” by Fred Bratman and the National Geographic video explain this concept very well. Between North Korea constantly shoving propaganda, statues, and myths into their citizens faces unequivocally their citizens will be manipulated and believe their leader is a god in disguise.

Stanley Milgram (1963), who was a psychologist at Yale University carried out a study to establish whether ordinary people are likely to be obedient to their authority. He concentrated on the compliance between a person's moral sense and authority. The subject of his experiment were people who were held responsible for Germany war crimes claimed in their defence they stated that they acted on the orders by the authorities.

Shotwell keeps the jacks and the rubber ball in his attaché case and will not allow me to play with them. He plays with them, alone, sitting on the floor near the console hour after hour, chanting "onesies, twosies, threesies, foursies" in a precise, well-modulated voice, not so loud as to be annoying, not so soft as to allow me to forget. I point out to Shotwell that two can derive more enjoyment from playing jacks than one, but he is not interested. I have asked repeatedly to be allowed to play by myself, but he simply shakes his head. "Why?" I ask. "They're mine," he says. And when he has finished, when he has sated himself, back they go into the attaché case.

In the quote above, Emmerson exhorts the American people to recognize that their vote is not so insignificant that it holds no impact in an election, but that it is the involvement of each citizen which ensures true democracy. He acknowledges that as an American citizen, one has both the power to neglect their voting privilege, never knowing its true value, and the power to exercise it, making a small step toward a just future for your country by participating in the democratic process.

“The Problem We All Live With” by Norman Rockwell, his argument is racism. In the painting there is an African American girl, Ruby, in a bright, white dress, she is holding a notebook that had the american flag resembling that Ruby is an American. The “N” word and “KKK” is clearly written on the wall in the back. This painting was in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1963.

Freud expresses the idea that dogs are ultimately the greatest companion a human can have because they are completely unaffected by the influences of an imperfect civilization. He assumed that animals have straight forward minds and don’t get jumbled in the love affairs and destruction of society. Freud often referred to the idea that “dogs love their friends and bite their enemies, quite unlike people, who are incapable of pure love and always have to mix love and hate in their object-relations.” Freud utilized this idea and his dog, Jofi, to treat his clients. It was recorded that Freud would often use the actions of his dog during a session with his client to determine whether or not the person was truly getting down to the subconscious reasons of their discontent. Roy Grinker, a psychiatrist that submitted himself to a therapy session with Freud, noticed that, when he became emotional, Jofi jumped onto him as he lay on the couch. Freud reacted to this experience by exclaiming: "You see, Jofi is so excited that you've been able to discover the source of your anxiety!” Since the dog was not influenced by civilized ideas, Jofi was able to sense when someone was disregarding the information that swayed them to believe they felt a certain way because of societal terms.

The philosophy of “the Absurd” is Camus’ answer to the question of life and whether it is worth living. In the opening line of The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus states that there is “One truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.” (495) Absurdism begins by questioning the purpose of life and the response, or lack of response from the indifferent silence of the universe. It reveals the void one might encounter in the search for the meaning of life. (Seniuk 162) Absurdism is the belief that human life is meaningless, and that it is up to the individual to decide how they will react to this idea; to find their own meaning or lack of.