A variant of Milgram

While looking at one of the posts today, I thought about something I saw in a psychology class years ago about the Milgram obedience study. There is a wiki link and also a youtube link that talks about it. Basically, the study allegedly meant to try and shed some meaning on why so many people obediently followed orders to commit atrocities for the Nazi's. Seeing this, amongst many other things, has made me very wary of any individual or group who uses a variant of authority to get people to do things or believe things they otherwise would not believe. I've certainly seen it in left leaning causes and I've also seen it much more recently in the alleged conservative movement.

In the video link, Milgram states, "What is it in human nature that allows an individual to act without any restraint whatsoever so that he can act harshly, inhumanely and in no way limited by feelings of compassion or conscience" Ever since Reagan, I think we have heard an endless wail that a faceless "Big Government" has devolved people and rid them of their sense of responsibility and need to work. Simultaneously, however, we have also been subconsciously fed a non stop drivel that if a person is not successful and wealthy, it is because they are stupid and/or lazy and should be looked down upon. While that may not have been Reagan's entire message, the passage of time has warped it even further and spawned a plethora of figures like the talk radio crowd and the icons of right leaning press and internet who are seen by their audience as undisputed authorities on every thought the founding fathers ever had while they were alive as well as undisputed authorities on what the founding fathers would say if they were alive today.

What scares me is the complete lack of individuality I see in many who ape and preach the words of the founding fathers rather than their own thoughts. More, what I really sense is that what many in that movement want is not so much a reduction in government, but rather a complete lack of any sort of social standard or need to consider anyone but themselves. Publicly, this is displayed as patriotism and defense of individual liberty. In practice, however, it is appearing to me as just a catalyst to justify a "Fuck you, me first" mentality. Something I always thought the founding fathers believed in was to be wary of ANY group that amasses power, especially when people begin to follow them blindly. For a select few, what Reagan started has been nothing short of a smashing success. Regulations are fewer, union membership is sharply reduced, pensions are extinct everywhere but in government, and at long last, those in poverty have come to be viewed as equal to an annoying case of herpes that never goes away.

Looking in the video, there are individuals actually laughing while trying to convince themselves that what they were doing needed to be done. Strangely, even while wages are being destroyed and the majority of this country's middle class is being hammered into nothingness even when they do work hard, a wave of people are willing to keep letting themselves be whipped into a frenzy of anger and hate toward whomever their leader tells them is the enemy. If you can succeed in creating that sense of victimhood/entitlement, you can eventually justify any behavior you want no matter how predatory or unrestrained it becomes. Going back to Milgram's question about what it is in human nature that allows this, I don't think there is anything in human nature that "allows" it. Rather, I think it is the destruction and overriding of human nature that causes it. If you can see someone as an equal, it becomes harder to hurt them and watch them suffer, especially when you directly benefit from it. If you see them as beneath you and as an object of contempt, you can crush them and feel justified in doing so. This is where I see our country headed today. It's the attitude we use to conduct our affairs in the greater world, and it's becoming the metric we use to govern at home.