This morning was what I like to call a Parris Island morning. I step outside and am taken back to that place those years ago. The air, the smell, the dark; all reminded me of that Island upon which I was forged into a Marine. Nostalgia hit like a wave. Anyone who's been there in that capacity has a fondness for the mornings there. I always enjoyed the mornings; just before the day began, you could almost feel the calm before the storm. Soon, the Island would be abuzz with the sounds of the forge. Like smiths pounding away at the nascent shape of a red hot, soon-to-be sword, the Drill Instructors would bark out orders. Slowly, the raw iron would be increasingly shaped into a steel sword. A weapon of war. A weapon of honor. Sometimes I miss that place and the three smiths that forged me. It is were I was made. And thus, I relish mornings like today. I breath the air a bit deeper, and I remember what I am.
Which is really something we all should do. Too often, mankind as a whole wants to forget what it is. We ignore things about ourselves that are painful. We banish these things, pretending that if we do not speak of them, they will simply cease to exist. We like to think that we are above our base instincts; our primal urges and desires. But we are not. We will probably never be. We should embrace them. To do so is not to absolve ourselves from a sense of morality. No, it will help us define our morality. No other species that we know of is concerned with what it is. It simply is, and that is all that matters. It does not try to shut away parts of what it is. It is the ability to understand that there are parts of us that are, simply put, amoral, that separates us from the rest. But we ignore it because it makes us uncomfortable.
What on earth am I talking about? In 1963, Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted an experiment designed to test and evaluate normal people's responses to authority. Two years prior, Adolf Eichmann, a high ranking Nazi SS officer was tried in an Israeli court for war crimes. His defense was that he was following orders. Milgram was inspired by this trial. Normal people acted as "teachers" and an actor was the "learner." The teachers were directed by an alleged biology teacher: the authority figure. The teachers would read off a word, and the learner was to respond. If the learner did so incorrectly, which he always did, the teacher, a normal, every day person just like you and me, was to administer a shock of increasing power up to 450 volts. The authority figure would prod the teacher on if he/she were to exhibit signs of distress and concern about the experiment.
You might be thinking that only a very small number of people administered these shocks willingly to another human being. That is precisely what Milgram's psychology students thought too. They theorized that only 1.2%, the sadistic few, would administer the maximum dosage. You, and they, were very wrong. Up to 66% of people would inflict the maximum to the actor, who would complain, scream in pain, and insist on the cessation of the experiment because of a heart condition. Sixty-six percent. No one refused to give shocks before the 300 volt level. This test was performed a number of times by Milgram and others, and the results were the same. Many people would continue to administer shocks despite being visibly upset over what they were doing. It took but a man in a lab coat to get normal, every day people, people who by most accounts would be considered genuinely GOOD, to inflict serious, life-threatening damage to a stranger.
My point here is two-fold. Firstly, it is quite clear that there are parts of us that we'd rather not admit existed. This is a prime example. A man in a lab coat can get us to administer fatal levels of electricity. Normal, every day people. I cannot stress that part enough. We like to think that we're good hearted and so forth. These people were not "little Hitlers." They were people you knew. It could have been you. And that leads me to my second point. This experiment forced us as a species to face the stark reality of humanity: we are capable of horrendously evil things. All of us. Not just the serial murderers, or the Stalins of the world. Every single one of us.
As a result of these types of experiments in the 1960s, this sort of human experimentation was generally frowned upon, if not banned de facto. It scared people so much that it was basically forbidden until very recently. ABC News last night did a recreation of that experiment. Forty years later, and the results are the same. I do not ask why the results were the same. I've come to grips with the disturbing propensity for evil in man a long time ago. My job will do that to you. But I do ask why we would ban these types of experiments; we're so afraid of recognizing what we are and what we're capable of. I think that we should understand what makes us work so we can mitigate those things that are distasteful, not ignore them in the hopes that they'll go away. These experiments may help us understand how and why the mechanism of authority can work to undermine our collective morality. Many Germans simply did what they were told. And many Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, mental patients, and disabled people died as a result. You will sit there in your easy chair, in the comfort of your warm home or office, and you will say to yourself that you would do differently. That you would not turn a blind eye to the evil; that you would not participate; that you are better than those terrible (every day, normal) Germans. But you should really ask yourself, "Would I? Would I simply do what I was told?" I feel that in knowing the answer, which is very likely a resounding "yes", only then will you be able to change that answer. It is, friends, impossible to change the answer when you've never even considered the question. If the question is asked and you're hearing it for the first time, then you've only one opportunity, and Milgram has shown us that we will not choose the alternative. When confronted by authority, real or otherwise, we will do what we're told.
Word of the Day: Punctilio (noun): 1. a fine point of exactness in conduct, ceremony, or procedure; 2. strictness or exactness in the observance of formalities; as, "the punctilios of a public ceremony."
On This Day in History: Titus Labienus, a lieutenant of Julius Caesar during the Gallic Wars, defeats his former liege in the Battle of Ruspina (46 BCE).
"Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not…Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority." - Stanley Milgram "The Perils of Obedience"
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