>[WS:] Did not I just say that? But we are not discussing opportunity
>structures here, but choices made within those structures. To use Milgram's
>experiment as frame - the participants obviously could not redesign what was
>presented to them as the "testing" set up, but they could make several
>choices - leave the room, stay and refuse to press the button and see what
>happens, or go with the authority figure.
>
>The problem is that most people did not like that range of choices - they
>did not want to hurt someone else, but they did not want o disobey the
>authority figure either - so they try to shed that responsibility by
>claiming that somehow they did not have that choice, that someone "made"
>them do it, and they should be excused.
It is a little more complex than that. Or perhaps a bit more simple. The phenomenon of people obeying authority is related to the issue that Nick brought up a couple of days ago, that of childlike reactive thinking. Only it isn't confined to the lumpenproletariat, but is almost universal.
Most people don't even consider the possibility of disobeying an authority figure. It isn't a question of choice at all. Anymore than people consciously choose between finding a toilet and just taking a shit in the street wherever they are. Its habit, its how they are trained.
Given a chance to think about it, many of the people who instinctively obey authority might run it through their moral and other filters. and decide to do something else. Though quite often they won't think of that all by themselves, they need someone to suggest the alternative course to obeying authority. But if the authority figure arranges to issue the directive without notice, or possibility of challenge, most people will usually just go along.
I know what you are getting at here, this behaviour drives me up the wall. But its so common that it isn't even a question of explaining why people obey authority, it isn't some kind of flaw that individuals have that needs an explanation, the real question has to be about the weirdos like me who make up their own mind about whether to obey an instruction from an authority figure. What the fuck is wrong with me? How did this happen?
I don't think you can do anything about it to be honest. That's just how people are. The need to obey authority must be hard-wired. The only thing you can do is weaken and change who are recognised and thus obeyed as the authority figures, because that's one thing that can be effective. Who is actually considered to be an authority figure and will thus be instinctively obeyed is something we can influence. One minute a person can be an authority figure, for no good reason really except that he's wearing a uniform, the next minute he's someone whose directive you'll just ignore. That sort of thing.
Its all very well raging about it (I've done it myself) but that won't achieve anything. Neither will this nonsense of yours about people making choices and being responsible for their actions. We can make people legally responsible and I think maybe we should, it must surely play a small part of undermining authority? But the fact remains that they aren't really responsible in practice, because the sad hard truth is that most people are simply not responsible, most people are more like children when confronted with something they interpret as a figure of responsibility. They just instinctively do as they're told, like someone had pushed a button.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas