Comparing Erich Fromm's Disobedience As A Psychological And Moral Problems

The articles “Just Do What the Pilot Tells You” by Theodore Dalrymple and “Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem” by Erich Fromm both can be linked to the movie A Few Good Men. The article by Dalrymple is about himself sitting on a plane with a woman when she expresses that she doesn’t obey authority. He gives her several examples of how she obeying authority blindly and that obedience is far from abnormal. The article by Erich Fromm tells us that mankind is taught to obey orders and disobedience is a vice. He thinks that today in society obedience can be the end of mankind due to weapons of mass destruction. Fromm believes people must have proper judgement when given orders on whether to follow. In the movie A Few Good Men a man is killed by accident due to the following of orders. The attorney Lt. Kaffey searches for the truth on whether they were actually given the orders. In the end, it is found that the order was passed down the chain of command and was followed out by the killers …show more content…
Fromm alleges that too much obedience can end human history and evil will be able to control mass amounts of people to follow their deadly deeds. People will be too worried about earning national honor instead of themselves and the welfare of other people. Though the author believes too much obedience is a large flaw, he insinuates that disobeying is only acceptable when their is a good reason to deny authority power over oneself. Fromm shows this when he reasons “if a man can only obey and not disobey, he is a slave; if he can only disobey and not obey, he is a rebel (not a revolutionary); he acts out of anger, disappointment, resentment, yet not in the name of a conviction or a principle” (125). Fromm concludes his article by emphasizing that if obeying and disobeying isn’t in equilibrium mankind could find the end to