Response to Obedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem

It has been found by Milgram that people obey for four main reasons these are; legitimate authority, the momentum of compliance, the agentic shift and passivity.

It also gave them the right to vote. Later on, Martin Luther King found out that not all blacks wanted to fight for equal rights the way he did. Some groups became aggressive and used violence. This is where the slogan “Black Power” became famous. King also fought against poverty. He said there were too many rich people in America and that the poor people should be given more money.

Erich Fromm’s essay “Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem” suggests that humankind’s evolution has, and continues to rely on man’s capability to exercise disobedience. While discussing the positions of disobedience being considered a vice, and obedience being a virtue, Fromm reflects upon the history of Adam and Eve believing that “eating the forbidden fruit” was man’s first act of disobedience. This is the point that broke the bond between man and nature requiring man to be dependant upon his own powers, while rewarding him with his “complete” humanity, freedom,

Disobedience is a trait needed to remove unfair rules and laws. Socially, disobedience against the government has had significant backlash. However, disobedience against

at education and so on. African Americans had grown tired of living in an unjust world

Negroes were turned loose, which meant that

And lastly, this lead to the Radical Reconstruction of 1867 and black gained a voice in the government that led to the violent backlash including the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) that wanted to restore the white supremacy in the

Through a veil of lies man obeys the State, the Church, the mass opinions of their peers, or any other organization that they view to be in power. This affords him a false sense of safety and protection. In his obedience, man feels strong allowing him to be controlled by the fear of being isolated or having undesirable repercussions greet him as a result of any disobedience. Throughout history it has been evident that, for the most part, the few in power have ruled over the majority. The foundation of this relationship has been “the few” equating obedience with virtue and disobedience with sin, resulting in man not only needing to obey, but wanting to obey. Man’s inability to see that he has lost his ability to disobey and stand up for what he believes and values, instead of what he has been brainwashed to believe and

It could be said, the status of African Americans changed due to just the roles that they had evolved into during this time period. By late 1945 increasing numbers of black Americans in the north of America were more educated and skilled making them more respectable within society, more economically powerful and more perceived as being a higher class of people. If they were better off, this created greater prosperity and equality resulting in more success with status. However, this wasn’t a generalization to all African Americans within the states, especially for blacks in the south who couldn’t get the chance to change their status at all as they couldn’t gain any economic power because of the small amount they were paid which in turn couldn’t let them gain any respect. This suggests that the roles of African Americans didn’t create much great status for the majority but only for a small minority who were mostly found in the northern states.

The aftermath resulted in a broken Black America. Black America needed to know there was hope. Mr. Du Bois

In the chapter "The Dilemma of Obedience" of the book Obedience to Authority : An Experimental View, Stanley Milgram explores the concept of obedience to authority, and why people cannot defy authority even the situation is totally conflicting with morality. He introduces his ideas by giving the definition of obedience, and mentions Nazi extermination as an instance of obedience, which contradicts with moral values. According to Milgram, obedience idiosyncratically binds humankind to systems of authority, and links the individual action to political purpose. In terms of observations, obedience accepted as an inveterate behavior inclination, and obeying a system of authority has been comprehended as

In Stanley Milgram’s article “The Perils of Obedience,” several people volunteer to participate in Milgram’s experiment. It consists of a learner and a teacher. When the learner fails to memorize a word pair, the teacher applies a shock to the learner. The shocks increase in severity with each wrong answer, attaining a maximum voltage of 450 volts. Milgram states many psychiatrists he interviewed before the experiment predicted most subjects would not go past 150 volts, or the point at which the learner starts to ask to leave (Milgram 80). In his first experiment, twenty-five out of forty subjects continued the experiment until the end (Milgram 80). After several more experiments at different locations, Milgram obtained the same results. Milgram

Today our society raises us to believe that obedience is good and disobedience is bad. We are taught that we should all do what we’re told and that the people that are disobedient are almost always bad people. Society tells us this, but it is not true. Most people will even be obedient to the point of causing harm to others, because to be disobedient requires the courage to be alone against authority. In Stanley Milgram’s "Perils of Obedience" experiment, his studies showed that sixty percent of ordinary people would agree to obey an authority figure even to the point of severely hurting another human being. (Milgram 347).

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....”

set the human race on the path to thinking on their own, but obedience to authority in the