Should the much ridiculed line - "I was only following orders" be taken more seriously?

Question

Milgram's experiment were an authority figure in a white coat gets people to give someone a remote electric shock in the next room, shows most people will obey orders to this level; most of the people who refused had themselves been tortured or survivors of consentration camps.

I really hope, that if someone I saw as an authority figure told me to kill/torture someone. I would turn around and tell them where to stick it!! With such a high percentage of people doing what they're told could I count myself among that low percent.

Maybe it would help if people cold play the person being tortured.

Answer 1

Its really creepy how most people can displace responsibility and guilt.

Answer 2

I worked as a programmer for the Defense department for a number of years, and I often wondered if what I was doing was ethical. I asked a number of people about it, and the answer that was most common was that designing something for the military to use is morally neutral, since you do not decide how the tool will be used. In other words, anything that is built can be used for good or evil, and it is not the builders who determine this. Some of the people that I talked to felt that any cooperation with the military is bad, but they were in the minority. Extending this to your question, I think that in most cases following orders is the right thing to do, but there will be situations where you have to refuse to follow orders in order to obey your conscience.

Answer 3

definitely. at least until people learn to think for themselves and draw the line somewhere. i saw video footage of that experiment, and two people stand out in my mind...
one guy was convinced the person receiving the shocks was dead, and yet he kept going through the motions, administering the shocks and moving on as fast as he could, as if his only way out of the situation was to keep going and finish. the other guy was actually part of a follow up study where they had the people in the same room with their "victim" and this guy was actually holding the victim's hand down on the electrodes, apologizing to the experimenter for the fact that the guy being electrocuted wasn't cooperating as he was supposed to!
it was sickening. people need to learn that there are orders that should never be followed, whatever personal consequences might come from saying no. until they do, we should be a lot more serious about the following orders line. people actually believe that if they are being told to do something it is not their place to argue, no matter how wrong it is, and they are not responsible for the outcome of their actions. sad, isn't it?

Answer 4

Every person is responsible for their own actions. Every soldier who pulls a trigger, every person who presses the button. Whether 'only following orders' or not, every person has his/her own consciousness.
People know right from wrong. Politicians such as Blair and Bush who are giving the orders are also responsible for the atrocities of innocent victims worldwide.
We must use our own consciousness and be aware that every atrocity that is caused is felt through the universe and affects everything, as we are the universe ourselves.
We need more love and beautiful thoughts to heal this planet.

Would any of you kill because your government told you to?

Answer 5

I think the issue is that if you don't follow orders, you're the next one to be stood against the wall. It's all very well taking the moral high ground on these issues but try saying that to yourself when someone is poking a Luger in your ear.

Not many of us are imbued with the kind of moral fibre that enables us to sacrifice our own lives and those of our families for an anonymous stranger. I couldn't, for one.

Answer 6

I sort of agree with this, IMO it's why people can be indoctrinated into cults given the right conditions, most people can be made to blithely go along, It takes a very strong personality or someone with previous experience to be able to object.

Answer 7

I always question everything, that people tell or ask me to do. People make up there own rules and try to make them sound like a law. "I was only following orders", is not a acceptable excuse. We all have a brain, and gut feeling. If something dont feel right dont do it.

Answer 8

People are obviously easily confused, one only has to look at the delusional people in the world to see clearly that some will willingly follow any 'belief' of other to their detriment.

Answer 9

When it is used to excuse your behaviour, it is unacceptable.
Though we don't all have the moral courage to refuse to do something we know to be wrong, if we do it anyway, we should take the consequences of our lack of courage.

Answer 10

Should definitely be taken more seriously. People should learn to trust their own instincts.