Compliance and Obedience

[in_the_annex]

 Last night I viewed a searing documentary by Errol Morris: Standard Operating Procedure ( trailer ), a series of interviews with some of the principal participants of the Abu Ghraib scandal that shocked the world in the spring of 2004.

Lynndie England, Sabrina Harman, Megan Ambuhl, and others were low ranking reservists belonging to a Military

Comments

[berecyntia]

Even greater similarities exist between Abu Ghraib and The Stanford Prison Experiment. A group of 24 people were randomly divided into "prisoners" and "guards." It took less than 6 days for some of the guards to become brutally sadistic, and many of the participants were left with severe psychological problems. Of more than 50 people who viewed the experiment, only one questioned it.

[in_the_annex]

I thought of the Stanford experiment too, especially in the light of authority creating an environment or climate of oppression through either small adjustments to attitudes towards the victim (desensitization), or by creating a peer groupthink situation.

In fact the Milgard Experiment explored the groupthink situation by adding collegues (ie. actors) by the test subjects side and making decisions with him or her. In one variation of this they found that abusive behaviour increased to 90%. Scary.

[adrienne_j]

Naomi Klein's new book 'The Shock Doctrine' examines a lot of these torture experiments and their legacies, which is mainly how they've been expanded to be perpetrated on entire countries disguised as 'economic reform'. It's a really interesting book if you care to borrow it at some point.

[adrienne_j]

Thanks, I've been meaning to read Klien's latest, I'll pick it up from you the next time I see you.

[in_the_annex]

which is me!

[braz_king]

I like your thoughts on the necessity of obedience vs. the duty to conscience. I think of it as the Leonidas Impulse - the tipping point where one's own conscience overrides responsibility to authority.

The challenge is that outside of the law, there is only the self, wide open and vulnerable to dark influences from the unseen world. Inside the herd, we are insulated from many voices because the mooing is so loud.

Love you!

[braz_king]

Love you back.

There are so many levels of laws that we can subcribe to, each a failsafe for more base laws. Where do these levels stop? With the Gods? Or inside ourselves? How many influences does it take to make a person moral?

It's true that the groupthink fog can obscure a clear direction to moral choices.

[in_the_annex]

sorry, that was me, not God.