Essay on The Role of Power in Obedience - 1381 Words

To Obey or Disobey: The Role of Power in Obedience People’s decision to obey or disobey the law is based on how much power (in its various forms) they perceive the law to have behind it. The power of coercion is one maintained by every government in human history: the power to punish. The power of legitimacy is a much more subtle power: the power to appear as an authority and let others presume that you know best. While enforcing law, authorities will exercise both these powers. Both powers underscore government and society’s ability to control us and to get us to obey. Why do we obey? Stanley Milgram’s Obedience to Authority, a series of experiments in which subjects were told to administer what they believed to be high-voltage†¦show more content†¦Although there was no actual law that the subjects had to comply with the authorities, the authorities were perceived to have enough power for the most of the subjects to follow their instructions completely and without question. Because of the results in his study, Milgram hypothesizes that we have a â€Å"human predisposition† to obey our authorities in the face of power. (Cover 223) So why does it seem that we naturally tend to obey? It may not be purely human nature. Peter Kropotkin argues in â€Å"Law and Authority† that it is the government’s power to impress upon us the importance and necessity of obedience that molds most of us all into law-abiding, obedient members of society. According to Kropotkin, the government uses education as its main weapon, brainwashing us from an early age into thinking that the law reigns supreme above everything else in our lives: â€Å"Cleverly assorted scraps of spurious science are inculcated upon the children to prove necessity of law; obedience to the law is made a religion; moral goodness and the law of the masters are fused into one and the same divinity.† (Kropotkin 159) The heroes we learn about in school are those who obey the law and defend it against the bad guys. This brainwashing does not stop when we become adults, for society, media, and literature all continue to reinforce within us respect for the lawShow MoreRelatedA Few Good Men Analysis1331 Words   |  6 Pages Lee Hami lton, and Crispin Sartwell directly or implicitly discuss the power of situation. Stanford professor Zimbardo’s â€Å"The Stanford Prison Experiment,† analyzes and explains his experiment, in which twenty-one male Stanford students were assigned roles as guards and prisoners in a simulated prison. He summarizes the extreme behavior and reactions that resulted in early termination of the experiment, and discusses the power of situational factors in altering the subject’s expected behavior (ZimbardoRead MoreDisobedience Vs Obedience1700 Words   |  7 PagesIn society, obedience to authority is ingrained in humanity from an early age, causing some individuals to blindly obey orders without contemplating the credibility of the source. 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