Law-Abiding Citizens Would Surely Never Commit Atrocities

Are some cultures crueller than others? What is so good about law-abiding?

Image by Gerd Altmann

Yale professor and social psychologist Stanley Milgram is known for the experiments on obedience he conducted in the 1960s. In one such experiment, he determined to prove that German people were more susceptible to authoritarianism than Americans. The idea was that law-abiding citizens would not tolerate, or at least participate in atrocities.

Hold On

I stopped reading the article at that point. I made a note that would turn into this thought before continuing reading. It must have been my experience having lived under ostensibly corrupt government structures, but that logic did not hold for me: how does law-abiding negate atrocity-committing? You would have to trust the justice system to deliver justice rather than just uphold the law. Moreover, you would also have to believe that such a justice system is error-free, or at least think it to self-correct when unfairness passes a set threshold.

Lethal Electric Shocks For The Masses

Milgram’s experiment proved that 60% of humans, regardless of culture or nationality, age or gender, will follow the orders an authority figure gives them despite their cruelty. Today, we would…