The essence in obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view himself as an instrument for carrying out another person's wishes and he therefore no longer regards himself as responsible for his actions.
Stanley MilgramRead
The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.
Interpretation
Submitting to authority often leads to a loss of personal responsibility.
Stanley Milgram's quote highlights the dangers of blindly following authority figures, suggesting that when individuals relinquish their sense of responsibility, it can result in significant societal consequences. This loss can enable harmful actions and diminish moral accountability, as people may act contrary to their values simply because they are following orders.
In practice
During a seminar on ethics, this quote could be used to discuss the implications of following orders in unethical situations.
The essence in obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view himself as an instrument for carrying out another person's wishes and he therefore no longer regards himself as responsible for his actions.
A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act, and without pangs of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority.
The soldier does not wish to appear a coward, disloyal, or un-American. The situation has been so defined that he can see himself as patriotic, courageous, and manly only through compliance.
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.
I have never been one of those who cares about happiness. Happiness is a strange notion. I am just not made for it. It has never been a goal of mine; I do not think in those terms.
Christianity has taken the part of all the weak, the low, the botched; it has made an ideal out of antagonism to all the self preservative instincts of sound life; it has corrupted even the faculties of those natures that are intellectually most vigorous, by representing the highest intellectual values as sinful, as misleading, as full of temptation.
History is a people's memory, and without a memory, man is demoted to the lower animals.
You know, we are one nation under a god. Yes, you were right. An angry, crack slinging god who decorates with bullets and spent condoms.
The mind, placed before any kind of difficulty, can find an ideal outlet in the absurd. Accommodation to the absurd readmits adults to the mysterious realm inhabited by children.
All necessary truth is its own evidence.
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