Disadvantages Of Obedience

According to Dictionary.com obedience is to comply “with an order, request or law or submission to another’s authority.” Obedience is a component in social behavior and everyday life. However, there are different forms of obedience such as blind obedience. This is where an individual follows direction without any question or moral perspective without knowing they are causing harm. Such form of obedience can be hostile and perilous to the people involved. This can be seen in the atrocious deaths of the Okinwa Residents, the brutal torturing at Abu Ghraib, and the dictatorship like power from the Milgrim and Zimbardo experiment. With such implications of obedience from the experiments and case studies, this paper depicts how human independency …show more content…
The objective of necessary obedience is based on moral values and aims for a better outcome of a society. This enables a society to stay on a good steady path without negatively affecting people in the environment. This form of obedience is not apparent in all cases discussed above. Interestingly, dangerous obedience or “extreme” obedience involves orders that cause more maltreatment to the individuals than good. This type of obedience can be considered immoral. Blind obedience which was mentioned earlier, is a form extreme obedience that is significant in the Okinawa case. The civilians in Okinawa were attempting suicide strictly because of the order and aims of the military. There was more harm than good. This is an example of how extreme obedience failed. Individuals who are underneath authority and follow commands without question also fall into this category of dangerous obedience. This concept helps understand military processes and its relation to Abu Ghraib. In military courses and drill training soldiers are taught to let go of their ego, and pride to follow direct orders from sergeants and higher military officials without question; blind obedience. Which helps explain why these horrific blood bath type events occurred at Abu Ghraib. The same is seen in the Milgrim and Zimbardo experiments, where the …show more content…
Threatening or harming others due to orders from a higher power does not mean one should necessarily follow them. In the Abu Ghraib situation, soldiers should be allowed to make decisions of their morals and values. This is what the Morality and Military Obedience article touched on. The goals of a society when regarding obedience should be for positive outcomes. It should be based from what we learned about necessary obedience. I will end this paper with providing a practical example using necessary obedience and extreme obedience. Lets imagine a soldier is called out from his general to arrest a gunman. The gunman has managed to kill many innocent civilians. Regarding obedience the soldier can either arrest the gunman as directed but risk the lives of more innocent civilians in the process or to instantly kill the gunman. Either way just because the general asked for a certain demand does not mean that it is the best for society. The point being made is that extreme obedience is not always the answer if it can cause great harm to a society. That if an individual has a choice like the soldier in the example above, to follow others or proclaim their individuality; they can make the decision