Moral Agency
May. 13th, 2004 07:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qosOne of the key concepts that the prof in my "Christian Ethics" class emphasizes is that of moral agency: the ability of a person to choose. We like to think that moral agency is an inherent human quality, but clearly it can be impinged on, surrendered, allowed to atrophy. . .
Today I found an article that referred to a researcher's surprise at the shock the photos from Abu Ghraid have elicited. His position: we shouldn't be surprised. This is what people do. He should know. He's a former colleague of the famous/infamous Milgram, whose experiments with subjects who believed they were inflicting higher and higher levels of electric shock on screaming subjects because they were instructed to do so shattered many of our illusions about how quickly the average person can become someone who says "I was just following orders." This researcher, Zimbardo, did a study in which volunteer "guards" were assigned to keep watch over volunteer "prisoners" and found that the guards quickly descended to startling levels of brutality.
The article is worth reading: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20040513/ts_usatoday/abuselessshockinginlightofhistory&e=3
Towards the bottom of the article, the author writes:
While Milgram's study stands for the proposition that most good people will sometimes follow bad orders, Zimbardo's suggests that sometimes good people don't even need bad orders - none or vague ones will do. Milgram had strictly supervised his subjects, and they did the wrong thing - he called it "surrendering your agency," your self-control. Zimbardo had mostly left his subjects on their own, and they did the wrong thing. He called it "the power of the situation."
This raises all kinds of sobering thoughts about the degree to which people truly "own" their personal moral agency, and the degree which they defer it to others. How many are willing to surrender their moral agency to whatever authority is placed before them, or to the dominant impulses of the herd/mob? How many truly believe in their own moral authority? How many people feel comfortable identifying themselves as "moral authorities" -- even within the context of their own lives? It seems to me that the dark side of socialization is that it can erode the sense of personal responsibility in favor of conformity to society and authority. Some conformity is necessary, but how many of us have been truly encouraged to exercise discernment in this area?
For all that our culture celebrates "freedom" we do not acknowledge the seductive comfort of being under authority, the release from stress that comes from being able to surrender responsibility to someone else -- even an anonymous researcher or "the group".
I want to pursue these thoughts further, but this is all the time/energy I have for tonight.
Today I found an article that referred to a researcher's surprise at the shock the photos from Abu Ghraid have elicited. His position: we shouldn't be surprised. This is what people do. He should know. He's a former colleague of the famous/infamous Milgram, whose experiments with subjects who believed they were inflicting higher and higher levels of electric shock on screaming subjects because they were instructed to do so shattered many of our illusions about how quickly the average person can become someone who says "I was just following orders." This researcher, Zimbardo, did a study in which volunteer "guards" were assigned to keep watch over volunteer "prisoners" and found that the guards quickly descended to startling levels of brutality.
The article is worth reading: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20040513/ts_usatoday/abuselessshockinginlightofhistory&e=3
Towards the bottom of the article, the author writes:
While Milgram's study stands for the proposition that most good people will sometimes follow bad orders, Zimbardo's suggests that sometimes good people don't even need bad orders - none or vague ones will do. Milgram had strictly supervised his subjects, and they did the wrong thing - he called it "surrendering your agency," your self-control. Zimbardo had mostly left his subjects on their own, and they did the wrong thing. He called it "the power of the situation."
This raises all kinds of sobering thoughts about the degree to which people truly "own" their personal moral agency, and the degree which they defer it to others. How many are willing to surrender their moral agency to whatever authority is placed before them, or to the dominant impulses of the herd/mob? How many truly believe in their own moral authority? How many people feel comfortable identifying themselves as "moral authorities" -- even within the context of their own lives? It seems to me that the dark side of socialization is that it can erode the sense of personal responsibility in favor of conformity to society and authority. Some conformity is necessary, but how many of us have been truly encouraged to exercise discernment in this area?
For all that our culture celebrates "freedom" we do not acknowledge the seductive comfort of being under authority, the release from stress that comes from being able to surrender responsibility to someone else -- even an anonymous researcher or "the group".
I want to pursue these thoughts further, but this is all the time/energy I have for tonight.
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Didn't he go to high school?
Date: 2004-05-13 08:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-13 10:03 pm (UTC)Agency issues or not - military types, expecially low down the chain of command are selected and trained to OBEY. To be crude, they're usually young, dumb and full of... Why do you think there aren't many 30 year old grunts? It's not only about the physical endurance (take a look at some of those mature triathletes). War sets people up in situations likely to encourage and engender atrocities and abuse.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-14 05:48 am (UTC)One of my best friends is a former Marine, and I asked him what he thought would have happened if Pfc English, the young woman shown in the photo holding a leash, had refused to obey the order to do that. After all, are not our soldiers told that they are honor-bound to refuse to obey an "illegal order"?
His response was that she would have been hassled by her superiors until she "got with the program", and/or endured recriminations, ostracization, and various kinds of abuse from her fellow soldiers. Add to that the stress and isolation of her location, and you have a situation in which she effectively has been deprived of what I would call authentic free will where anything relating to her duties is concerned.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-14 04:31 pm (UTC)I would have to disagree. Following this logic to its conclusion, the guards in the concentration camps during WWII were not responsible for their actions. Because they "effectively ha(d) been deprived...of authentic free will."
Just because it's difficult doesn't mean you don't have the freedom to exercise your will. Does looking at the negative consequences of asserting your will somehow cause that will to vanish? No. You simply choose to go along with what is easier. That is still your choice.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-14 05:32 pm (UTC)But I will still maintain that truly free choice can be made very difficult in some situations. The military is one. An abusive relationship is another. The subjective experience of what options are open can shift radically in response to extreme environmental pressures, especially with the fear of retribution present.
Which does not release the soldiers from their responsibility.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-14 06:34 pm (UTC)Agreed. But difficult is not impossible. I also feel as you do that sometimes when we are in a situation such as these soldiers or a women in an abusive relationship we may feel that we have no options. But that is not actually true.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-14 04:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-13 10:34 pm (UTC)being independently ethical is really hard. we're group animals; most of us are not really wired very well for it.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-14 05:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-14 05:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-14 06:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-14 05:17 pm (UTC)It raises very difficult questions for me regarding what constitutes acceptable measures of violence for the preservation of others. You don't want to allow the tyrants and bullies and murderers to run around doing whatever they want, but once you pick up your sword or your gun or your big stick to resist, it's a very steep and slippery slope into your own dark side, into becoming the enemy.
This, of course, being a general theoretical statement, and not directly related to "our" stated goals for being in Iraq in the first place.
I was reading this today and thought of this LJ entry
Date: 2004-06-03 05:57 pm (UTC)Re: I was reading this today and thought of this LJ entry
Date: 2004-06-03 08:57 pm (UTC)