- “…obedience is a necessary ingredient for society to function…”
- “…one of the things sets a prerequisite for carrying out acts that are evil is to shed responsibility from your shoulders and handed over to the person in charge.”
I agree that obedience is necessary for the society to function. We need to follow morals and ethics to become a righteous individual in the society, without obedience, we would fall out of codes and orders. It is almost human nature to obey to an authority figure. However, blindly obedient to an authority figure could permit tragedy. We should be strong with our morals and decide how far we would go with authorities. Moreover, when encountering evil acts, people shed responsibility to others in a way to feel fewer burdens psychologically. Here, we see how German people permit the massacre of the Jews, they were blindly following authority and perhaps shifting the responsibility to the authority.
I agree with you about the fact that obedience is necessary for a society to function because without obedience, there would be no order, and possibly no morals or ethics. I believe it is innate for people to follow an authority figure because if there was none, what would they be doing? What rules would there be? I also agree over the fact that there are some instances in which people can listen to authorities, but there comes a point when authorities ask for too much, and people need to realize that what they’re being asked to do is morally wrong. Just like in the experiment where some participants wanted to stop because they thought that what they were doing was wrong, but have only kept going because the person in charge took the responsibility off them, and told them it was necessary for them to finish. If the researcher hadn’t told them this, and the student screamed out in pain, I strongly believe that most people would have stopped before getting to the very high levels of shock.