Conclusion: It is often difficult for individuals to disobey authority figures and groups based on these primary reasons; individuals will obey malevolent authority as from legitimate figure, decision making are often influenced by groups and unceasing quest for achievement causes humanity to have a hard time disobeying any legitimate authorities or groups given the fact that we are acting on self-deception in order to satisfy our inner ego, groups and with structural laws given to us as the correct way to obey.
Support: The film Jarhead is about newly recruited young men joining the marines in order to protect and serve our country. However, the film’s main focus will be on Private Swofford’s decision to join the United States Marines Corps
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The soldiers were isolated from the outside world, and felt solidary confined within the oi rigs. They entertained themselves by playing football, shooting their rifles into the air and getting wasted with alcohol. Eventually, the soldiers were going insane and was tire of doing the same thing for the past six months and felt their “purpose” were served at all. The purpose of their duties were to guard the oil fields until their allies arrive to take control but the soldiers joined the military with the purpose to “serve and protect the united states of America against all foreign enemies”. The idea of serve and protect is completely differ from their point of view, and that is you can’t protect if there’s no harm to being protected from. They didn’t feel they had a purpose doing what they did and it wasn’t what they expect to being as “righteous” when citizens view a soldier. When civilians see a soldier in uniform, we often come to a conclusion that, this individual is risking their lives to protect ours. Private Swofford and battle buddy Corporal striving to have some type of action and were thirsty for an all-out battle with the enemies. Killing an Iraqi was an honor to them, the movie went on to how the soldiers were fighting over an enemy kill is an award to be cheer for. Corporal Alan Troy was an ex offender who lied to on his application to join the military and in order to stay in the military he would need to find all possible ways to proof he is capable of doing what others can and obtain the honor of a soldier. In order for him to proof he can be a soldier, he would need to rake up battle kills on his portfolio. In Juliet B. Schor’s essay on Work and Spend; it is our unceasing quest for material goods is part of the basic makeup of human beings. We work hard and want to obtain a reward; achievement for putting our time into something. It’s a structural process that
In "The Perils of Obedience," Stanley Milgram conducted a study that tests the conflict between obedience to authority and one's own conscience. Through the experiments, Milgram discovered that the majority of people would go against their own decisions of right and wrong to appease the requests of an authority figure.
Boyd talks about how everyone was very eager to volunteer to join the military to have fun and to make some money and it seemed to be very easy because the war was expected to be very short. Things started to look a bit different even when, the volunteers got to the first destination to be sworn into duty. They started to wonder why they were being sworn in to service for 3 years when they all thought the war was going to be very short. Boyd and the rest of them figured that the government must know something more than everyone else knows. Even during the beginning of the service the conditions for the service did not look as good as they had expected, and the officer had seen that the volunteers started having second guesses about doing it so they put them into more comfortable quarters to keep them from going home. During the war most of the time the conditions were horrible. There were many problems with the soldiers during the war. Many died from being wounded, being shot, and the worst of all was the disease. The conditions were so horrible that many men couldn't get enough sleep and even when they did get sleep they were sleeping in the rain or in the snow.
Stanley Milgram’s experiment shows societies that more people with abide by the rules of an authority figure under any circumstances rather than follow their own nature instinct. With the use of his well-organized article that appeals to the general public, direct quotes and real world example, Milgram’s idea is very well-supported. The results of the experiment were in Milgram’s favor and show that people are obedient to authority figures. Stanley Milgram shows the reader how big of an impact authority figures have but fails to answer the bigger question. Which is more important, obedience or morality?
The story of Jason Poole as presented by Grady is a clear picture of the ravage of the potentials of soldiers in the face of war, and the wrong priorities of the American government in spending billions of dollars for the war that have no clear advantage for them or the American people, that is worth dying for. The sending of potential young men and women in Iraq to sustain its war lacked the basic objective that warrant their sacrifices, as well as the billions of dollars spend in pursuing such unclear purpose that is wrongly labeled “war on terror.” As per records, American fatalities in Iraq as of January 20 stood at two thousand two hundred twenty five (2, 225), while casualties numbered at 16, 472 (The New York Times, par. 8). Grady cited that medical treatments for brain injuries in Iraq alone would cost fourteen billion dollars.
The classical thinking believe that authority can be achieved through self-interest, fear and habit. However, this thinking has been moved away by
Obedience is when you do something you have been asked or ordered to do by someone in authority. As little kids we are taught to follow the rules of authority, weather it is a positive or negative effect. Stanley Milgram, the author of “The perils of Obedience” writes his experiment about how people follow the direction of an authority figure, and how it could be a threat. On the other hand Diana Baumrind article “Review of Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obedience,” is about how Milgram’s experiment was inhumane and how it is not valid. While both authors address how people obey an authority figure, Milgram focuses more on how his experiment was successful while Baumrind seems more concerned more with how Milgram’s experiment was flawed and
Most of the soldiers did not know what the overall purpose was of fighting the Vietnamese (Tessein). The young men “carried the soldier’s greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first place” (O’Brien 21). The soldiers did not go to war for glory or honor, but simply to avoid the “blush of dishonor” (21). In fact, O’Brien states “It was not courage, exactly; the object was not valor. Rather, they were to...
More specifically, the movie A Few Good Men depicts the results of blindly obeying orders. Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, also explores obedience to authority in his essay “ The Perils of Obedience”. On the other hand, Erich Fromm, a psychoanalyst and philosopher, focused on disobedience to authority in his essay “ Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem.” Milgram wrote about how people were shockingly obedient to authority when they thought they were harming someone else while Fromm dissected both: why people are so prone to obey and how disobedience from authoritative figures can bring beneficial changes for society. Obeying commands, even when they go against our morals, is human nature; Disobeying commands, however, is challenging to do no matter what the situation is.
Individuals often yield to conformity when they are forced to discard their individual freedom in order to benefit the larger group. Despite the fact that it is important to obey the authority, obeying the authority can sometimes be hazardous especially when morals and autonomous thought are suppressed to an extent that the other person is harmed. Obedience usually involves doing what a rule or a person tells you to but negative consequences can result from displaying obedience to authority for example; the people who obeyed the orders of Adolph Hitler ended up killing innocent people during the Holocaust. In the same way, Stanley Milgram noted in his article ‘Perils of Obedience’ of how individuals obeyed authority and neglected their conscience reflecting how this can be destructive in experiences of real life. On the contrary, Diana Baumrind pointed out in her article ‘Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience’ that the experiments were not valid hence useless.
Obedience is a widely debated topic today with many different standpoints from various brilliant psychologists. Studying obedience is still important today to attempt to understand why atrocities like the Holocaust or the My Lai Massacre happened so society can learn from them and not repeat history. There are many factors that contribute to obedience including situation and authority. The film A Few Good Men, through a military court case, shows how anyone can fall under the influence of authority and become completely obedient to conform to the roles that they have been assigned. A Few Good Men demonstrates how authority figures can control others and influence them into persuading them to perform a task considered immoral or unethical.
Obedience and disobedience play a huge role in our lives as humans. We begin with disobedience. With that, though, we develop the ability to choose to obey or disobey. In doing this, we obey the highest calling that we must: human nature. No matter how we modernize as a society, the primal instincts and decisions that rise up in every human being are very much the same as they have always been.
Therefore, people usually tend to slip into predefined roles, behaving in a way that they thought was required, rather than using their own judgment and morals. It doesn’t matter if these are good people or no, they tend to conform even when that means doing horrible things. Surprisingly, people could become subject to obedience when are confronted with higher authorities or the individual personalities of people could be swamped when they are given positions of authority. Those in power become abusive, and those subject to that power become immature, passive, and rebellious. These effects do not have to do with differences in original personality, but result from the situation in which people find themselves. I would say that people in a position of absolute power can easily take it to extremes as well. By having legitimated their actions as necessary and brought on by the target, through a process of cognitive dissonance people can come to believe that they acted morally and appropriately in a given situation while the reality is relatively different. It is just incredible how great an effect the environment has on our individual behavior, capable of trumping what we would otherwise consider our steadfast moral and behavioral guidelines. Individuality so easily melts away as the social environment begins to define the individual. It is scary and amazing at the same time how quickly and easily people adopt in new social
He has not seen the blood or heard the screams of suffering soldiers. He has not watched his best friend die in his arms after being hit by enemy fire. He is an onlooker, free to analyze and critique every aspect of the war from the safety of his office. He is free and safe to talk about ethics and proper war etiquette. The soldier, immersed in battle, fighting for his life, can think of only one thing.
Though conformity is a humane feeling, many examples of conformity going wrong can be found throughout history. For example, multiple Germans conformed to follow Nazism and prosecuted millions of innocent Jews. Southern whites conformed to segregate thousands of African-Americans. By looking at multiple sources of literature, one can see conformity becomes unacceptable when innocent people are hurt and/or killed and affects the way one thinks or acts.
Humanity is a list of struggles and revolutions that led to our current evolution. Till now, revolutions are constantly taking place. Revolutions can differ in nature, ranging from intellectual, to technological and even political which we are witnessing currently especially in the Arab world. Yet along with this diversity in nature, we find out that disobedience is driving motor behind them. So it appears that disobedience is a must in order to evolve as a species and that obedience is what’s holding us back from attaining our highest possible level of “intelligence”. Humans are after all social animals and need to be part of a group to survive. However, obedience is also a must for any society to persist and exist in a healthy atmosphere, for without it chaos would appear and thus there would be no chance for innovation and evolution. As we will see being part of a group can be accompanied by what’s known as a group mind, so finding the right combination between being obedient and disobedient is essential to be understood if Humans are to continue in their forward evolution. In fact as writer Fromm states: “If a man can only obey and not disobey, he is a slave; if he can only disobey and not obey, he is a rebel (not a revolutionary)”. From this statement and as it will be later on explained, being Human means having the freedom to both obey and disobey.