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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(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.