In light of what has recently been heard about cold figures of Authority as principals and their compliant subordinates as proxies and implementers of orders, today I will refer to the "obedience to figures of Authority" experiments conducted at Yale University in the early 1960s by Psychology Professor Dr. Stanley Milgram, which were repeated in other countries and revealed how easy it is for individuals with prestige and power to influence the behaviors of the people they control.
In the Milgram experiments, the "teacher" sits in front of a console, from which he can give the "student" in the next room an "electric shock" every time the "student" gives the wrong answer to a question. In the room where the electric shocks are administered, next to the "teacher", is the person of AUTHORITY & POWER who is the head of the scientific experiment. The head scientist and the "student" are collaborators and the real "guinea pig" is the "teacher"...
As the experiment progresses, at the urging of the "scientist" the "teacher" increases the volts of the electric shock, even though he hears the cries of pain (but has no visual perception) of the "student" who makes mistakes and receives electric shocks as punishment...
Professor Milgram's experiments coincided (by design and not by chance) with the trial of the German Nazi "war criminal" Adolph Eichman, who had been captured by Israeli agents. The question was "whether and to what extent the executioners of Jews and millions of other people were simply docile - obedient instruments at the orders of their Leaders, i.e. persons who possessed prestige and power."
The original experiments and their replications measured and still measure the willingness of study participants to obey and carry out orders given to them by a person of authority and power, even if these contradict their personal conscience and feelings. In other words, the “teacher” – the bully inflicts pain on the “student” – the victim and continues to do so despite the cries of pain heard from the next room!
I clarify that the electric shocks are NOT real, just as the screams of pain of the alleged "victim" are not!..
Professor Milgram and other psychologists who repeated experiments of this type found that the abuser had difficulty in delivering electric shocks and pain to their victims when the two rooms were not separated by an opaque wall but by glass, where the abusers could see the pain they were causing, despite the imperative admonitions of the person of Authority and Prestige. In fact many "abusers" avoided looking at their victim's eyes!...
People who make decisions that are painful for other people usually try to keep their distance from them, as direct, face-to-face contact makes enforcing them more difficult...
This was demonstrated in a related paper by Professor of Psychology at the French University of Grenoble Dr Laurent Bègue and his colleagues, which was published in the online edition of the Journal of Personality entitled "Personality Predicts Obedience in a Milgram Paradigm".
This study involved a variation on Milgram's experiments, in which researchers examined whether certain personality traits make people more or less likely to follow orders and commands when those orders harm another person. In this study, 66 people aged 26-54 were asked to participate in a parody of a television game show where participants were instructed, within the rules of the game, to give their teammates an electric shock as punishment for each wrong answer, with the intensity of the shock increasing after each wrong answer.
Eight months later, the participants were asked to complete a questionnaire (which was considered to be unrelated to the original experiment) to help researchers assess their personality traits, such as agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, and openness.
The researchers found that participants with strong personal tendencies for agreeableness and conscientiousness were more willing to obey orders and thus were willing to increase the intensity of the electric shocks to their teammates in this particular game show.
In contrast to the "willing", the refusers were people with anthropocentric political ideologies, people who in their daily behavior refuse to comply with the dictates of the "System" and the media, and especially women who had a history of participating in strikes and demonstrations.
"Many studies show that the tendency to conform and conscientiousness are widely associated with positive outcomes, such as improved mental health, longevity, school performance, reduced aggression and socialized behavior," explains the head of the research Laurent Begue and concludes by stating that "in some specific situations, the same personality traits can also have a darker side, in the sense that they can lead to destructive and immoral obedience."
Regarding the factor of “distance” between the “offender” and the “victim” it needs to be emphasized that when someone suffers from our choices and is distant from us, the suffering we cause remains abstract and has a certain unreal quality. This conceptual reality is more difficult to experience emotionally. Professor Milgram had given the example of a bomber, where the pilot knows that his bombs will result in death and injuries, but the distance and lack of visual contact with the results of his action reduce the emotional charge of the suffering he causes!…
In all the repetitions of the experiments on obedience to the orders of the Authority, this relationship between distance and destruction was confirmed. When the victims were “distant” and invisible, they were “strangers” who were not psychologically connected to the “teachers” – the abusers, who were clearly (and this is shockingly) willing to inflict great pain and perhaps even harm on the “student” victims. But many “abusers” became less willing to press the lever when the “victims” were gradually brought closer to them.
Moral of the story?
LEADERS who are far removed from the people may not be callous, but they probably don't realize the suffering they cause!..
If our LEADERS care about their legacy and if we want to bequeath a good Homeland to future generations, we will ALL need to escape, both from the Left and the Right, from habits and behaviors resulting from the modern economy and foreign culture that have annihilated Greek Principles and Values.
The destructive habits dictated by cliques and implemented by political puppets with the help of systematic brainwashing by the regimental media, along with the complacency that characterizes us, have led us to political inertia and a lack of the necessary strength to resist orders and practices against our consciences!...
The shocking demonstrations of support for the families of the Tempi victims inside and outside of Greece's borders on Sunday, January 26th were a VERY POWERFUL message to the Political System that "there is yeast and there is flour, we are searching for a baker" like the title of a recent article of mine...
Countless were the Greek men and women with good conscience and compliance who, with our SILENCE, thundered that we refuse SUBORDINATION to the "System"!..
Read more about Milgram's experiments here.
