Ordinary people, an order to carry out
On the axis: Vision of humanity · the ordinary person under authority
That ordinary people inflict the worst on a mere order: is it a latent cruelty waking up, or proof that circumstances, not nature, decide our acts?
This problem is brought out by the thought experiment The Milgram experiment:
In a famous psychology experiment, a scientist asks ordinary volunteers to inflict ever-stronger electric shocks on a stranger each time he answers wrong, in the name of a study on learning. The stranger, an actor, cries out, pleads, then falls silent. Despite their visible distress, most volunteers obey up to the level marked "danger: severe shock", simply because a lab coat keeps repeating: "The experiment requires that you continue."
Stanley Milgram (1963)
What does this obedience teach us about human beings?
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Anchors: Arendt · Hobbes