Obedience
Coercion
Stanley Milgram Sound files Just Say No! Malama
I posted the following quote on my Just
Say No webpage, but it bears repeating:
"The Terrific Twos mark the beginning (where a child begins separating
from its parents). In this period a child learns that his name is "Don't".
The child starts saying "No" and this is wonderful. If we would
allow children to say no the way nature and God designed it, we wouldn't
have as many molested children and we wouldn't have to have a national campaign
trying to teach teenagers to just say "no". Child molesters are
like hunters going after prey. They know to look for the most needy and
the most obedient child on the playground"(Bradshaw, 1988).
Tyrants and dictators, like Hitler and Milosevic like obedient people too!
Indeed, so does any sort of leader: military, political, religious.
Even parents and teachers like obedient children!
You too?
There are problems with obedience however. Read the story on my coercion
webpage.
Recently, my wife found a copy of the Hawaiian
Values List circulating around in the schools. Someone had generated
the list, but it had no attribution, and there were also new words written
in on the bottom, some of which could not be read, since this too was a
copy. In any case, I immediately put the whole list up, but then I came
to the word: "Obedience." I was thinking of deleting this word,
but after discussing this with my wife, we came to the conclusion that it
would not be right. But, now I know why we came to this decision. So I could
write this webpage!
There are some very interesting studies on the phenomena of obedience.
The classic studies were conducted by Stanley
Milgram. Check out this great site with actual
sound files from the original experiment!
References:
Bradshaw, John (1988). Bradshaw on the Family, a Revolutionary Way to Self-Discovery.
Deerfield Beach, FL:Health Communications, pg. 150.
Milgram, Stanley, (1974). "Obedience to authority; an experimental
view." New York, Harper & Row.
Miller, Arthur G., (1986). "The obedience experiments : a case study
of controversy in social science, New York : Praeger, 295 p.
Last updated 7 May 1999
Copyright ©
1998-9 by Duen
Hsi Yen, All rights reserved.
E-mail: yen@noogenesis.com
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