‘Instructor’s Name’
‘Subject’
Obedience to Authority
“Hypothetical question: If you had free reign over classified networks for long period of time, say, 8 ‐ 9 months, and you saw incredible things, awful things, things that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC, what would you do?”
- Bradley Manning
The above words were uttered by the Whistleblower Manning, who released classified documents of US Intelligence, which among others showed how US Army meticulously murdered Iraqi citizens including children. He revealed some troubling information about the repercussions of the ‘War on Terror’, which the Government is today waging in the name of the security of its citizens. Manning has been branded as a traitor by the Government and is incarcerated in a high security prison. This is one of the many examples, where an individual’s morals and values were in crossroads with that of an authoritative power. When the individual chose to uphold his values and disobey the authority figure, he is seen as a traitor and law breaker. This conflict is the central theme of our discussion.
Obedience is the emotional means through which an individual’s action is linked to a political agenda. Communal living requires a system of authority, which the people living in the community should obey, and this obedience forms the basic element of the social structure. So siding with the “lesser evil”, is in effect submitting to the norms of the authority figure and is an instance of “Obedience to authority”. This essay attempts to weigh the necessity and the drawbacks of ‘obedience to authority’, through the example of American Government’s ‘War on Terror’.
James Quinn, in his article titled ‘Obedience to Authority, Should We Trust the Government?’, states that today the American society is being subjected to totalitarian rule, achieved through false propaganda instigating fear and greed in the minds of people. He opines that the past century has witnessed the creation of a totalitarian state, built on state peddled debt and mass consumerism. The essence of his argument is that an invisible authority centre, consisting of politicians, bankers and media persons, has cultivated a false sense of terror and mass delusion, and has manipulated the people of America into voluntary servitude. People voluntarily obey this authority centre, and thus their lives are being dictated by a group of people with selfish motives. He says that by using the fear of terrorism, the government has managed to grant itself unlimited powers. It uses this power to infringe on individual rights, such as placing surveillance cameras in public places, scrutinizing social sites, and retaining American citizens without reason.
While considering the argument of Quinn, it is important to remember that War on Terror is said to be aimed at providing American citizens safety and security. The incidents of the terror attacks that occurred on 9/11, caused alarm among the public, and as an authority in charge of its citizen’s security, the American Government took some tough steps to combat terrorism. However, Quinn questions the authenticity of the motives behind some of the laws passed. He cites Pink Floyd’s ‘Mother Song’, to explain how the Government acts like an overprotective mother, but with less honorable intentions.
Fear and authoritative coercion can make people subject to rules, including those which violate their basic moral values. This concept was proven by the experiment conducted by Stanley Milgram. He conducted an experiment on August 7th, 1961, in which he asked a few people to help him conduct his research, by acting as a teacher to few other people selected for the experiment. The teachers should pose questions to the learners, and if they get a wrong answer or silence from the respondents, they were asked to punish the learners by subjecting them to intense shocks of up to 300 volts. Milgram found that 65% of the teachers delivered shocks to the learners. On assessing this behavior, Milgram concluded that people were willing to commit acts, even torturous and ghastly ones, if they were commanded by a person of higher authority. Since Milgram was performing the research on behalf of a reputed institute, the participants trusted him and believed he would not do harmful experiments. So both Milgram’s authority and his reputation, made well-adjusted men perform sadistic acts.
Milgram’s experiment gives insights into, some of the violent acts performed by people following orders. The concentration camps of the Nazi regime is an example that immediately comes into mind, whereby an evil and inhumane act conceived by a single person, was carried out by hordes of followers, who were just following orders. The Guantanamo bay and other prisoner facilities inquiring prisoners of ‘War on Terror’ is another such example, where torturous and inhumane methods are used to coerce a prisoner into divulging information.
People follow orders because, they consider what they are doing to be important, and they trust the person issuing the order to be having a greater knowledge about things than they do. An article published in Article Alley says that, people who are obedient are more likely to be accepted by the society and comforted by it than people who do not, because people who disobey orders coming from an authority are faced with dire consequences. Bradley Manning is an example of this, whereby his actions revealed the society some important facts about the ‘War on Terror’ and exhibited its ugly side to the world, yet he spends his time in an isolated prison cell as a punishment for his acts.
History shows that, in any war, it is not always the victor who benefits from the war. There are always some hidden groups, apart from the main parties, which accrue benefits out of conflicts. The American war on Iraq, for example, lasted from 2003 to 2011. The direct beneficiaries are groups like the Kurdish population, and the large majority of Iraqi people oppressed by the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. However, Iraq is even today plagued by sectarian violence, and one should not forget the huge civilian and military losses, incurred during the war. There are also many shadow groups, like the corporate houses (mostly U.S. based) such as Private Military services and Private contractors of war, who benefited hugely as a result of the ‘War on Terror’. In the decade between 2001, when the US experienced terror strikes, and 2011, when the Iraq war ended, the Government has spent close $7.6 trillion on military expenditure, while other areas like health care, education and environmental conservation did not register significant growth.
Obedience, as Presbey says, has no place in political or moral discourse. She further elucidates that, only a child can obey blindly, and if an adult obeys a command, he in effect is supporting the policies of the authority whose command he obeys. She says while social and political institutions shape a person’s normative behavior it does not determine it. So, a person should obey or deny an order based on, his moral values and his understanding of the situation in which the order is given. Thus, demanding obedience to authority from the citizens on the grounds of social responsibility not only distorts but also inhibits an individual’s freedom and responsibility.
Works Cited
Article Alley. Obedience to Authority. 19 February 2007. Web. 8 March 2014.
Chambliss, William J. and Daina Stukuls Eglitis. War, Terror, and Genocide. July 2013. Web. 8 March 2014.
Manning, Bradely. "Who is Bradley Manning and why should you care?" 26 July 2013. CBSNews. Web. 8 March 2014.
Presbey, Gail M. Philosophical Perspectives on the 'War on Terrorism'. New York: Rodopi, 2007. Print.
Quinn, James. Obedience To Authority, Should We Trust The Government? . 2 January 2013. Web. 8 March 2014.
Sapolsky, Robert. "StanfordUniversity Class Day Lecture 2009: The Uniqueness of Humans ." 13 June 2009. YouTube. web. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrCVu25wQ5s>. 9 March 2014.
The BBC Prison Study. 50th Anniversary of Milgram's 'obedience' studies. 2008. Web. 8 March 2014.
