On 12/14/15, Steve Kinney <admin@pilobilus.net> wrote:
On 12/14/2015 03:11 AM, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
Another shot to prod you along a bit further:
Those who are compliant with despotic external authority in the face of their own inner conscience of right and wrong, ought be regarded as other/ outer/ "them", and treated with extreme caution!
"Those" sheep happens to be about 60% to 90% of everyone! You wanna sweep -that- under the carpet of your politically correct boat?
The presumption that people who are notably compliant with illegitimate authority have a "conscience" and fixed notions of right and wrong is questionable.
We're talking about the Milgram experiment - instructor (authority, actor), teacher (the sheep), learner (electro shock pain receiver for wrong answers, actor).
[ ... ]
The results speak for themselves!
Indeed they do. In a context where the test subjects are self-selected (volunteers) from a population and culture deeply committed to elaborate, labor intensive submission to authority (college students), with "the boss" hovering over them demanding compliance (politely of course), most will continue "only following orders" to the point of endangering the lives of anonymous strangers.
I'm not sure this generalizes to describe the behavior of whole populations in the wild, though. Certainly, every country of any size has more than enough pathological "followers" to field military forces, run concentration camps, etc. But I think "60% to 90%" of any population is a very high estimate.
The results speak for themselves. You keep apologising in subtle(?) ways - "oh, it's only the most eager sociopaths" and "all the others must have had some other disorders".
Seriously?
Nope: I was expressly talking about "Those who comply most eagerly", not the much larger number
Milgram shows otherwise. Your are expressing nothing more than your personal opinion porn. Back it up with facts, or Milgram's experiment, repeated by other researchers many times, in many countries, with both genders, and even in relatively recent times, is consistent - 60% to 90% of people, in general, -will- push a button that they know/ believe is likely to kill someone, merely under the verbal pressure of an authority above them.
whose compliance is marginal, grudging, or largely pretended.
This is delusion on your part. Did you read the full wikipedia page? Find some facts to support your position, if you want your position to be taken as factual in any way.
This result doesn't need our qualification nor any apology! 'We' need a solution to educating 'ourselves' - our 'fellow sheep'!
You'll get no arguments from me on that point: If I could find a way to put that on a paying basis, I would probably not be flat broke today.
That's a good start. Let me also put it this way: even if "only" 10 to 15% of the population are sociopathically or "despotically" authority-compliant, rather than the definitive 60% yo 90% as ascertained by Milgram, we are still in an incredibly bad situation, since it appears evident when it's relevant, those exact people (the despotically compliant) end up having to kill or torture the rest - Pol Pot, Nuremberg, Stalin, and more recently the Ukronazis in Ukraine. From what I've read, the concentration camps of the "allies" of WWII were no better, and in some ways quite possibly worse, that the German camps - and many of us are aware of the level the Japanese took to "the fine art of incredible way to torture humans." This problem, and a problem it is, rears its sociopathic head in every historically relevant situation. No "people" are immune, no nation is immune. There is no point burying our heads in the sand - a peaceful transition will always be the better option, if we can ever get enough sheeple to join hands in a government-overturning kumbaya. Short of that, revolution and tyranny must rein for the period of transition. I am not envious of those living in large American cities at this particular point in history. Good luck to those who are, Zenaan