Anna Marie E.

Juan, BSAT3-2 January 25, 2012 Philo101 Reflection Paper: Obedience To Authority

Thou shall not killone of the Ten Commandments which might have been wrongfully ended if the experiment was done for real. It might be violated. Yes, I was dismayed and shocked at the same time for having read the article, Obedience To Authority, written by Stanley Milgram. I thought that this experiment is quite alarming. Ordinary people, like you and me, tend to obey someone even if it is somehow immoral. I was thinking that if I am the one participating in the experiment where I have to give an electric shock to a person who I dont know in the first place, will I be really have the guts to do it? How will I ever do it if that person didnt do anything wrong to me? I was really upset about the results of the said experiment. I had read some parts of the book written by the same author about the same context. There was a part there that covers the incident where Mike Wallace of CBS News interviews a participant of the Vietnam War. The soldier said that during the war, they did everything as what they are told to dogather people (men, women, olds, and babies), huddled them up, make them squat, and shoot them or drop a bomb in the exact place where the people are gathered like a small island. This I think is not as immoral as the above experiment. Why? It is because all is fair in war. It is just reasonable if people are killing one another, since it is WAR. Everyone is like mad and furious. If you wont kill you will be the one to be killed. Ok. What I just cant understand about the experiment done is that why the participants cant refuse the authority even if it is not in their own will to give a

person an electric shock. Is being obedient really matters to them in this case when it seems so ruthless? Will the participants pride be hurt if he did not continue obeying the experimenter and just quit? Actually, there is a question of ethics arising from me when I read this. Authority, I guess, is really something. We can see that in this very society. Maybe, it was just a practice that people have learned that when experts tell them something is all right, it probably is, even if it does not seem so.