Obedience to Authority

**Darkcrusade** · 08-02-11, 08:46 PM

But who engineers these socially organized evil acts that have been fragmented and distributed among society’s members so that responsibility dissipates into vapor? There is only one answer to this question: Government. http://www.amazon.com/Death-Governme.../dp/1560009276

The problem has been defined and the cause has been identified. Any rational man of science would have to conclude that the solution to the problem is the removal of its cause. What else?

Now in the epilogue of the book, Dr. Milgram reaches some more conclusions and comes agonizingly close to proposing voluntaryism. He makes all the correct arguments that lead him right to the very threshold, but then he simply cannot even see the door that is open right in front of him.

He states, for example:

For the problem is not "authoritarianism" as a mode of political organization or a set of psychological attitudes, but authority itself.

Let's remove all the extraneous verbiage, and we see the statement quite literally says that "the problem is authority itself." So once again, I contend that he has reached the logical conclusion with this statement. But then this immediately follows:

... authority itself cannot be eliminated as long as society is to continue in the form we know.

Which of course provokes an obvious line of inquiry: So why can't we continue society in a different form? Without the thugs? But instead, he finds himself at an impasse. Authority has been identified as the problem, but the solution cannot possibly be to remove the problem.

And he understands quite clearly that it matters not the form taken by the government—the fact that government is necessarily authoritarian (thuggish) is the central and inescapable matter of fact:

In democracies, men are placed in office through popular elections. Yet, once installed, they are no less in authority than those who get there by other means.

He so wants to be a voluntaryist, but refuses to follow the trail of breadcrumbs beyond a certain point.

Voluntaryist: OK, Stanley, what three numbers come next in this sequence: "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ..."

Stanley: Six...

Voluntaryist: Good!

Stanley: Umm, seven...

Voluntaryist: Excellent, Stanley. One more...

Stanley: Uhh...

And he just can't do it. He trips on his shoelace and falls three feet short of finishing the marathon and cannot get back up. He has all the information he needs, but cannot put the pieces together. And any other analogy you can think of to express vexation.

At the end of the epilogue, he shows his frustration by forcing himself to conclude the worst possible forecast for a lamentably defective human race:

... [It is ultimately revealed that] the capacity for man to abandon his humanity, indeed, the inevitability that he does so, as he merges his unique personality into larger institutional structures.

This is a fatal flaw nature has designed into us, and which in the long run gives our species only a modest chance of survival. It is ironic that the virtues of loyalty, discipline, and self-sacrifice that we value so highly in the individual are the very properties that create destructive organizational engines of war and bind men to malevolent systems of authority.

Each individual possesses a conscience which to a greater or lesser degree serves to restrain the unimpeded flow of impulses destructive to others. But when he merges his person into an organizational structure, a new creature replaces autonomous man, unhindered by the limitations of individual morality, freed of humane inhibition, mindful only of the sanctions of authority.

And finally:

The results, as seen and felt in the laboratory, are to this author disturbing. They raise the possibility that human nature, or—more specifically—the kind of character produced in American democratic society, cannot be counted on to insulate its citizens from brutality and inhumane treatment at the direction of malevolent authority. A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority.

And again, he hits the nail on the head and does not realize it because he holds on to contradictory ideas. One the one hand, he claims that flawed human nature is to blame, but then he specifies that perhaps not human nature itself but, in his own words, “more specifically the kind of character produced in American society” is to blame. If character is produced by society, then it is learned and is not innate. Character flaws are therefore not birth defects and can be molded or changed by proper education.

The proper conclusion to draw from all of this, it seems, is that human beings must learn that they are each independent, sovereign moral agents who are solely responsible for their own actions, and that there are no exceptions to this golden rule. Done. That is merely education.

The chimera of obeying some font of just authority that descends from the atmosphere and infuses itself into some group of transformed superhumans never even comes into being. Government finds itself at the Santa Claus level of existence.

Conclusion

A critical examination of Dr. Milgram’s assertions reveals that government is thuggery and obedience is the mechanism that binds good people to these thugs and their evil ends. The thugs develop ingenious ways to perform evil under the guise of doing good, recruiting good people to be obedient cogs in evil machinery that has caused most of the human misery that has existed during the entire era of human civilization. Understanding all this, shall government then be categorized as good or evil?

Once government is correctly identified as evil instead of good and necessary, the inevitability of the bad results from instituting it becomes obvious. The only solution, then, if one wants a truly civil society, is to remove government from the equation.

For Dr. Milgram, and all others who hold onto the idea that human society cannot be organized without a coercive government at its core, I contend that they must bear the burden of proof for such an assertion. Where is the empirical grounding in fact that gives validity to this claim?

Because if government is not in fact integral and vital to civilized society, then all logical arguments point to its elimination in order to improve the world, as it has been shown time and again to be the main source of human suffering.

Dr. Milgram also worried that the prescription “Thou shalt not kill” did not occupy an intractably high position in the human psychic structure. He then argued that this was an innate flaw in human design, but also hinted that society’s influence may cause such ideas to be undervalued and subordinated to obedience. I strongly believe that the latter explanation is the truth, and also that this unfortunate condition can be remedied.

When enough people understand that “I shalt not kill”—a principle that comes from the authority of self—must take up a prominent spot right behind “I must eat and have shelter in order to survive” because “we must all voluntarily cooperate together in order to have a society,” then the problem resolves itself.

And since I possess the ultimate authority over my actions, and since I am ultimately obedient only to myself, “I shalt not kill” implies that I cannot grant any “Thou shalt kill” power to others. “I shalt not steal” implies that I cannot grant any “Thou shalt steal” power to others.

And since government is defined by “We shalt kill and steal,” it necessarily disappears in a puff of logic in such an ethical and intellectual environment.

Dr. Milgram was convinced that human society could only exist if it had some group of humans with superhuman authority to organize and control it. What he failed to recognize, just as many, many people today fail to recognize, is that no human being can possess superhuman authority, and that those who do claim to have such power are merely thugs and nothing more.

When humanity begins to understand that authority is an inalienable individual attribute—as is the self-responsibility that is the natural result of possessing such a natural endowment—only then will we finally emerge from the long dark age of government and begin the renaissance of human freedom.

Teach your children well. > http://strike-the-root.com/oh-stanley

Obedience to Authority

Obedience to Authority

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