Micro-handbook on Resisting Obedience to Malevolent Orders

[barbaraann]

Most of us know some "good people who vote Republican." The basic problem with these people is that they have succumbed to the extremely powerful tendency of humans to follow orders, even when those orders are malevolent. (Nazi Germany of course is the classic example.) I believe that most Republican leaders are sociopaths, most rank and file Republicans are not, and that if they would apply the steps in this article to their politics they would be able to free themselves from obedience to the sociopaths running the party.


OBEYING AND RESISTING MALEVOLENT ORDERS
Stanley Milgram's famous experiment highlights the powerful human tendency to obey authority
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Practical Application
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* Question the authority's legitimacy. We often give too wide a berth to people who project a commanding presence, either by their demeanor or by their mode of dress and follow their orders even in contexts irrelevant to their authority. For example, one study found that wearing a fireman's uniform significantly increased a person's persuasive powers to get a passerby to give change to another person so he could feed a parking meter.

* When instructed to carry out an act you find abhorrent, even by a legitimate authority, stop and ask yourself: "Is this something I would do on my own initiative?" The answer may well be "No," because, according to Milgram, moral considerations play a role in acts carried out under one's own steam, but not when they emanate from an authority's commands.

* Don't even start to comply with commands you feel even slightly uneasy about. Acquiescence to the commands of an authority that are only mildly objectionable is often, as in Milgram's experiments, the beginning of a step-by-step, escalating process of entrapment. The farther one moves along the continuum of increasingly destructive acts, the harder it is to extract oneself from the commanding authority's grip, because to do so is to confront the fact that the earlier acts of compliance were wrong.

* If you are part of a group that has been commanded to carry out immoral actions, find an ally in the group who shares your perceptions and is willing to join you in opposing the objectionable commands. It is tremendously difficult to be a lone dissenter, not only because of the strong human need to belong, but also because-via the process of pluralistic ignorance-the compliance of others makes the action seem acceptable and leads you to question your own negative judgment. In one of Milgram's conditions the naïve subject was one of a 3-person teaching team. The other two were actually confederates who-one after another-refused to continue shocking the victim. Their defiance had a liberating influence on the subjects, so that only 10% of them ended up giving the maximum shock.

http://www.psychologymatters.org/milgram.html


I wish that every Republican member of Congress had this taped to his or her desk and could refer to it when Bush, Cheney, DeLay, Frist, etc. started demanding obedience.

[hobbit709]

1. Question Authority

has always been my motto.

[barbaraann]

2. Yes, that would be the "nutshell" handbook.

:-)

[SpiralHawk]

3. Question BushCo. They are proven liars and propagandists

Therefore its highly likely that the next pronouncment they make will also distort reality to their advantage.