On 2009-Jan-02, at 18:51, Jared ''Danger'' Earle wrote: > The point of Milgram's tests wasn't that people were willing to > inflict abuse. The point was that people would do what they're told. > > You get another Holocaust because you get a madman willing to order > people to kill, not because people obey orders.
I agree with you and it is both.... the individual is willing and the authority is willing. How many of those same Milgram subjects would have carried out the shocks if the person in the other room was their own wife or daughter? I'll take a wild speculative guess and say NONE. In fact most people would stop right at the outset... "what do you mean you have my wife tied up in the next room??" "What do you mean you are conducting an experiment on my wife?" The core of the matter is that humans have very little genuine empathy and compassion for others. Your boss tells you to fire your subordinate. You're told to administer shocks. You walk past a homeless person in the street. It is all the same thing. The Milgram experiment just put it in the lab. So as I say, teach people about the Milgram experiment, and soldiers will get the message that actually, the job of abusing and oppressing is even easier than they might have imagined. Yay! Stefano _______________________________________________ OSX-Nutters mailing list | [email protected] http://lists.tit-wank.com/mailman/listinfo/osx-nutters List hosted at http://cat5.org/
