re: #271 Cannadian Club Akbar

I saw something on NatGeo where a shrink played a Warden and his guys were guards. The had people play inmates. Both fell into their rolls so much, the experiment was canceled. Scary stuff.

That’s the Stanford prison experiment.

The question you need to ask yourself when you see such things is: would you still remember your moral compass?

It is a frightening question.

I know what the Milgram Experiment was. I am confident I would recognize such an experiment if someone tried to put me in one. So I would refuse for sure in that case.

But the real question is, are there cases where obedience to authority could cause me to break with my conscience?

Of course I would love to say “no! never!” absolutely.

I honestly believe that is is true. But then again I have never faced a real test of that. Take the classic ethical case of evil soldiers order you to murder someone. I honestly believe that if I were handed a gun and told to shoot an innocent, or the evil people would shoot me, I would resolve to go out trying to shoot the evil people.

Of course I want to believe that too. And of course, I have never been tested either, thank Hashem.

But two things makes me think I likely would act that are not not bravado. For my whole life, I have hated arbitrary, cruel and petty authority. I do not hate legitimate and just authority, but the abusive and stupid kind causes me to want to fight. The other thing is that I honestly worry about the possibility of failing such a test if it materialized for real. I don’t think people who are likely to fail, worry about not failing.

Please Hashem none of us ever faces such a test for real.