Duty and Brutality

Priyanka Mazumder

In the article “The Dilemma of Obedience,” Stanley Milgram examines the fact that obedience to the authority insists ordinary people to act violently. Now question can be raised that will the actor continue the action, if it conflicts with morality, or at a certain point he will deny performing it? In this regard, to see when people refuse to obey the rules, Milgram set up an experiment where a teacher needs to give increasing electro shocks to a learner, when he makes an error in a learning session (604). In the experiment, almost two-thirds of the teacher behaved as “obedient” (604). Now, will we consider them as monster? But, these people came from different ordinary profession, not from military. So, what triggered them to act violently? What was the perspective of the teachers, when they performed violent action?

From the reaction of the teachers, we find that some of the teacher excused their violent behavior by saying that it was their duty to give command to torture the learners (605). It points out that teachers are not thinking themselves accountable for the action; moreover they transfer the responsibility of torture to the authority. Some teachers even said that “the responsibility belonged to the man who pulled the switch” (Milgram, 606). This statement indicates that when people collectively involve in a violent action, it blocks their vision to see the whole picture. So, they do not feel individual guiltiness.

Similarly in the article, “Psychological Boundaries and Ethic Conflict: How Identity Constrained Choice…….during Lebanese Civil War,” Kreidie and Monroe show that how obedience and loyalty to the group and ethnic identity makes individuals to involve in violence. Unlike Milgram, authors introduced us with several persons, who were directly involved in ethnic conflict in Lebanon. From these subjects’ interviews, we notice that they construct a boundary between themselves and their enemy. They view their enemy as animal and brutal (26). It indicates that subjects have strong belief about how their enemy will behave. In fact, they have an ideology of Us vs. Them, which insist them to use violence means. They told that their enemy deprived them from equal rights and to protect it, they join in the civil war (21). It indicates that subjects are trying to say that their enemy pushed them to act violently. So they do not need to feel guilty and responsible for the civil war.

Now, it is very interesting that in both Milgram’s and Kreidie and Monroe’s article, none of the actor admit that what they did was wrong, moreover they blame others and hold them responsible for the violent action. So, from this we can say that human being has the tendency to get psychological satisfaction and legitimize their cruel action by believing that it is their loyalty and duty to the authority or group.

Work Cited

 Milgram, Stanley. “The Dilemma of Obedience.” The Phi Delta Kappan. 55(9), May. 1974.

Kreidie, Lina Haddad and Kristen Renwick Monroe. “Psychological Boundaries and Ethic Conflict: How Identity Constrained Choice and Worked to Turn Ordinary People into Perpetrators of Ethic Violence during Lebanese Civil War.” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society. 16 (1), fall. 2002.