In the 1960’s Yale University psychology Professor Stanley Milgram studied obedience. In the aftermath of the Nazi regime in which millions of Germans participated in horrible acts the issue of obedience was of special interest and concern. Milgrim wanted to answer the question: “Could it be that [Adolph] Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?”
An experiment was created where a volunteer labeled a ‘teacher’ shocked a ‘student’ if the student answered a question incorrectly. A man in a white coat over saw the experiment and guided the ‘teacher’ to continue to shock the ‘student’ even when the teacher was afraid he was causing injury.
The student wasn’t really being shocked but just yelled as if he were. The range of volts sent by the teacher to the student ranged from 15 to 450 volts. At 250 volts the student would pretend to be injured and at 350 might become silent as if unconscious.
The ‘teacher’ would get concerned. Turn to the white coated experimenter and beg to stop. The teacher would simply state…. continue the experiment.
Fully 62 percent of all ‘teachers’ gave the full 450 volts to the student when told to do so. Even when the student stopped yelling in pain.
We are now living a Milgram experiment. All of us. We continue to ‘give shocks’ and go about life. Trump is the man in the white coat and all of us are bitching and moaning but we keep flicking switches. We keep playing the game.
Mexicans
Muslims
Transgender
Women
LGBT
Health Care
Nature
And now he is threatening nuclear war and all we keep doing is bitching.
When are we going to just say no to the man in white coat? Why are we being obedient?
He may kill millions.
He is evil. What he is doing is evil.
We will all be complicit.
We need to stop him NOW.
Thomas Balistrieri
Worcester, MA
- See video from Milgrim’s original experiment HERE.
(Editor’s Note: Stanley Milgrim’s test results are disturbingly persistent. You can read about a recent replication of the study and a 10-minute video about another HERE.)
(Commoner Call photo, 2017. Open source and free to use with link to www.thecommonercall.org )