In 1961 social psychology experiment by Stanley Milgram asked subjects to play a role of a teacher, and question the learner, who was connected to a shocker, and if the latter gave incorrect answers, the former had to increase the volts on the control board. The experiment was conducted in two separate rooms, first room had the teacher and the experimenter (the authority), who gave the subject commands to continue on with the experiment if one had hesitations; and the other room had the learner, who in fact was a recorded message with incorrect answers and screams of pain. The experiment showed that 65% of the subjects had continued with the experiment all the way through, eventually giving the victim up to 450 volts. As Milgram writes in his book on the experiment, “many subjects harshly devalued the victim as a consequence of acting against him”. They believed that the learner deserved to get shocked because of “his own deficiencies of intellect and character”. Other people who did not agree with punishment still have continued because of the authority figure in the room, who told them to. This leads to a very horrifying conclusion that most of us are either incredibly cruel, or unable to stand up to the authority. Even though the experiment was done in the 60s, and I believe the influences of globalisation have given our generation, what Richard Rorty calls, “sentimental education”, and we are more likely to empathise with other people, and understand the notion of human rights a little bit better; however, this experiment shows how easily our minds are tricked into judging and attacking someone we believe to be less intelligent or deserving to be punished. Whereas the lower intelligence and the flaw of character should provoke a completely opposite feeling, empathy and desire to help. We consider animals to be less intelligent and therefore justify our consumption of their meat, and this experiment proves that the same concept works with humans, even though we don’t stoop to cannibalism, it is not right to justify hurting someone on the bases of their intelligence. There is still the question of, why people are afraid of the authority and agree to act wrongfully, just because someone, who they consider an authority figure, told them so? There are two different outcomes in this question, one is that people are not willing to question the authority, and the other is that they are simply removing responsibility from their shoulders by playing a role of a soldier, who just does what the commander says. When some subjects were not content with the progression of the experiment, they still have continued to “punish” the victim, simply because the experimenter told them to continue. The lesson here is that ultimately we are the ones who are doing these things, no one can make us do something, it is our choice. We have the freedom to choose what we do, how we react and act upon certain situations. Physical limitations aside, we are able to do anything and break the social constraints that bind us to be cruel to any living being. The choice is ours, you can be a soldier, or a victim, or you can take control of your actions.
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