Blind Obedience While sitting in church on Sunday going through the same motions of every Sunday, my son leans over to ask, “Why do we have to stand up for this prayer?” My response “because we are supposed to”. Reading “The Children’s Story” by James Clavell, made me think a little more about this question that I had no answer for. A person needs to be able to explain why he does what he does. Children are innocent and unknowing; they are like a blank piece of paper waiting to be filled up with
Dangers of Blind Obedience Exposed in The Lottery Most of us obey every day without a thought. People follow company dress code, state and federal laws and the assumed rules of courtesy. Those who do disobey are usually frowned upon or possibly even reprimanded. But has it even occurred to you that in some cases, disobedience may be the better course to choose? In her speech "Group Minds," Doris Lessing discusses these dangers of obedience, which are demonstrated in Shirley Jackson's short story
to generation"(Tan). Chinese mothers were "taught to desire nothing, to swallow other people's misery, to eat my own bitterness". Yet, the daughters do not have this blind obedience to their mothers. After the piano talent show fiasco, a quarrel broke out between June and Suyuan. June did not have this blind obedience like a Chinese daughter, " I didn't have to do what my mother said anymore. I wasn't her slave. This wasn't China" and refused to be the best, perfect, as what her mother wants
Hamlet, even though Hamlet was poisoned first. Many of the characters in Hamlet blindly sealed their fates by so willingly following others around them. A good example of this is Ophelia. I believe Ophelia's death was deserved, because of her blind obedience to her father. She wasn't able to see through Hamlet's antic disposition. If Ophelia wasn't so feeble minded sh... ... middle of paper ... ...eople in that moment would have thought that something was wrong with the drink. Especially in
Animal Farm by George Orwell, the pig Napoleon uses specific tactics to gain power and control over the animal farm. Some of these techniques include controlling information through education, scapegoating, use of fear, swaying public opinion and blind obedience. Throughout the novel, the most prominent way that Napoleon gained power was through controlling the education that the animals received. In the beginning of the novel, Snowball believes in educating all of the animals on Animal Farm, young and
Obedience to authority is the basis for modern society. Without obedience to laws, parents and other authority figures, modern society would be unable to function. No human social organization can function without some degree of obedience to authority, as the alternative would be anarchy leading to total chaos. However, there are of course different levels of obedience ranging from a group of people following their leader, such as on a sports team, to extreme religious cults. Almost everyone will
than others. While it important to maintain respect for the rules of society, there are boundaries that indicate the difference between followership for protection, and blind obedience. With total obedience, society becomes more dangerous because the leaders of it can push whatever ideologies they want. The point at which obedience to an authority figure becomes dangerous is when society pushes people to become a hivemind which rejects ideologies of
Blind Obedience The Holocaust was an inhumane genocide constructed by Germany elected leader Adolf Hitler, which began January 30, 1933, and ended May 8, 1945. Many participated in this inhumane genocide by simply obeying blindly. The result of blind obedience, total eleven million deaths. During the Holocaust, the factors that contribute to people to blindly obey are that it is ingrained that everyone must have obedience towards authority, it fulfills psychological needs and fear of consequence
The issue of morality, concerning absolute obedience within the military, has been debated inside courtrooms and all areas of society for decades. Is it possible for there to be positive and negative acts of blind obedience? In his article “The Perils of Obedience,” Stanley Milgram administers an experiment in order to understand the negative side of blind obedience (Milgram 77-89). His findings prove that people display a higher probability of hurting others when ordered to act out. Likewise
number of crops that year. Although some of the people in the town would like to get rid of the Lottery, they are not allowed to because without it they would not have a good harvest. The town was run by blind obedience and the people knew nothing other than the yearly lottery. Blind obedience is people following what they are told to do because it is all they know. They are blinded to the corruptness of what they are doing because it is all that they have ever been exposed to. Although the main
Obedience and Submissiveness in Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett's pessimistic attitude about the existence of man lead him to write one of the best contemporary plays known to the twentieth century. Even with its bland unchanging set, clown-like characters, and seemingly meaningless theme, Waiting for Godot, arouses the awareness of human tragedy through the characters' tragic flaws. Charles Lyons feels, a character's attitude of the space in which he lives, shows a range of detail
Throughout history, obedience has played a crucial and important role in countless numbers of peoples’ lives. Obedience is practiced and learned by everyone. As we can observe from Milgram’s studies, it doesn’t take only poor, uneducated people to be blindly obedient. Educated people can be just as prone to become obedient to authority as uneducated individuals. In, “The Lottery”, by Shirley Jackson, there is evidence that suggests a phenomena between being blindly obedient and respecting tradition
Obedience is “compliance with commands given by an authority figure.” For example, when your mom asks you to do your laundry, and you actually do it. The idea of blind obedience, however, is following directions just because someone told you they should be followed. There is no real authority, just that assumed by you or society. For example, those who follow the laws are victims of blind obedience. We as a society give meaning to the laws and pretend
are known for their obedience and unbroken loyalty. They would do anything to please their masters; even put their selves in dangerous positions just to satisfy their authoritative masters. The question at hand is, would a human act just as obedient, no matter the circumstances? Some may deny that humans would be as accommodating as man’s best friend, but just a glimpse at past history could reveal otherwise. The Holocaust is a prime example of this notion of blind obedience. Nazi soldiers revealed
which results in the death of a fellow marine. Once again, the topic of blind obedience is revived in this major motion picture. The authors Stanley Milgram, Herbert Kelman, Lee Hamilton, and Philip Zimbardo address their concerns with blind obedience in their articles. Milgram, a former psychologist at Yale University and author of “Perils of Obedience,” conducted a groundbreaking experiment that dealt with the levels of obedience people possessed when orders were established to inflict physical pain
The Cost of Obedience The Nazis follow through with Hitler's plan to exterminate the Jews. Many of the soldiers who work at the death camps were not even members of the Nazi party originally. However, most follow orders obediently It begins with one subject strapped into a chair and an electrode strapped to his arm. He is the "learner." The "teacher" is ordered to ask the learner questions and to shock the learner if he answers incorrect (New Life). t is 1919 in Germany. The Army's political
The author of “The Lottery” wrote this story “to shock the story’s readers with a graphic demonstration of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives” (Jackson 211). This story reflects human behavior in society to show how although rules, laws or traditions do not make sense, people follow them. Throughout the story the three main symbols of how people blindly follow senseless traditions were the lottery itself, the color black, and the hesitation that people had towards the
Factors Influencing Conformity and Obedience Conformity: Three reasons that influence conformity are the ones I am about to list below: Compliance with parties: Compliance is almost the same as conformity the difference between these is that in compliance there is a request for a person to behave in a certain (an act of compliance) way although this doesn’t have to be stated. We are doing this so that our behaviours don’t stand out or upset the majority. In many occasions these
Bystander effect and obedience to authority are theories that can be compared and contrasted. Bystander effect is, for example, when someone is publicly in need and even though there are many people passing by or in the area, no one stops to help because they’ve seen no one else stop to help. In a video called The Bystander Effect they did an experiment to test the theory by having an actor lay by the steps of a busy area in Liverpool and moan “Help me”. The actor, Peter, was passed by many people
underlying principles in humanity: blind obedience to authority and the fear of the repercussions of contravening. Similar to the focus of this study, the dreading of consequences and trusting higher authority are the basis of the plot in The Lord of the Flies, where William Golding depicts a large group of boys (aged twelve and under) stranded on a desolate island that are left to configure their own law and order. The essence of this novel is clear; the blind trust of authority in societal situations