Very few people (and certainly not I) have a thorough understanding of the power structures that determine the course of our country and the world. In previous posts I’ve discussed a shadowy and powerful elite whom some refer to as “the powers that be” (PTB), who exercise power and influence over events far more than most people are aware of. One of their primary methods is to create an alternate reality, which is necessary in order to convince the American people to continue to play the GAME that has been laid out for them.

I discussed the awful consequences of this in a follow-up post: a nation in which war, imperialism, and an obscene mal-distribution of wealth are accepted as a matter of course. Even genocide and torture are taken far less seriously than they should be. Yes, Americans if polled would say that they are against those things. And yet, too many of us passively accept these things when performed by our country in our name.

The underlying problem, I believe, is excessive obedience to authority.

The PTB strive mightily to create an alternative reality which people can accept. In pursuance of this goal, the worst abuses perpetrated by our country are barely talked about or covered up: They worked us into a fit of hysteria over the 9/11 attacks on our country (before that it was Communism and the Cold War), and used that to justify an invasion of a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with those attacks; they do everything in their considerable power to prevent Americans from learning about the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis whom we have killed in the ensuing invasion and occupation of Iraq; and few Americans are aware of the multitude of covert actions in which our government has overthrown sovereign governments for a variety of nefarious reasons.

A prerequisite for these action is story line in which we are the good guys, and all those who get in the way of the PTB’s goals are the bad guys. Such was the case with the Native Americans who occupied our land before the first European-Americans arrived; as it was with the African slaves who so much improved the financial lot of the slave masters; and the Mexicans who occupied territory that the PTB wanted; and a multitude of individuals and peoples over the years who were inconvenient to the PTB; and on and on and on. Anyone who questions this reality, much less tries to do anything about it, is painted as “unpatriotic” – or worse.

Again, it all boils down to obedience to authority. Those who are sufficiently obedient will recognize the reality that the PTB paints for them; they will not object to it; they will go along with it, they will support it; and they will even go off to war and fight for its goals and its “glory”.


Some clear examples to demonstrate the problem of excessive obedience to authority

The Milgram experiments
In his book “The Authoritarians”, Bob Altemeyer describes the obedience experiments of Stanley Milgram. In the most famous of these experiments, men were recruited for the experiment through newspaper ads. They were told that they were participating in a “memory” experiment, in which they would play the role of “Teacher”. Their job was to deliver electric shocks to a “Learner” whenever the Learner gave the wrong answer to the memory test. The Learner’s role was to purposely give wrong answers, thereby necessitating that the Teacher deliver progressively higher voltage “electrical shocks” to the Learner with every wrong answer. Unknown to the Teacher, who was actually the subject of the experiment, the Learner was part of the research team, and the “electrical shocks” were fake, as were the Learner’s reactions to the “electrical shocks”.

At 75 volts, the Learner gives a grunt, simulating pain. By 120 volts, the Learner shouts “Hey, this really hurts”. By 150 volts, the Learner shouts “Experimenter! Get me out of here. I won’t be in the experiment any more. I refuse to go on”. By 270 volts the Learner is hysterical, screaming “Let me out of here. Let me out of here. Let me out of here. Do you hear? Let me out of here.” At 345 volts the Learner fakes unconsciousness or death, but the experiment continues. After 450 volts is used three times, the experiment ends.

If the “Teacher” at any time during the experiment turns to the Experimenter (who is the authority for the experiment) and suggests that the experiment stop, the Experimenter explains in no uncertain terms that the experiment must continue. The purpose of the experiment is to see how far the “Teacher” will go before he puts the welfare of the “Learner” above obedience to the Experimenter and refuses to go any further.

Prior to conducting his experiment, Milgram asked 39 psychiatrists how many “Teachers” would go all the way to the third use of 450 volts. They all said that nobody would do that. Yet, of 40 “Teachers” participating in the experiment, 85% of them went past 150 volts (the point at which the Learner demanded to be let out of the experiment), and 62% went all the way.

Altemeyer sums up the results, and beyond:


Milgram also conducted variations of the experiment. If the Learner was seated right next to the Teacher (thereby increasing the potential for empathy), the percent of Teachers who went all the way was reduced from 62% to 40%. And if the Teacher was allowed to observe a fellow teacher refusing to participate, the percent who went all the way was reduced all the way to 10%.

Ordinary Men – Observations of obedience during the Nazi Holocaust
Christopher Browning, in his book “Ordinary Men”, describes similar findings in real life situations during the Nazi Holocaust.

On July 11, 1942, Police Battalion 101, led by Major Wilhelm Trapp, was ordered to the town of Jozefow, to kill 1800 Jewish women, children, infirm, and elderly. Major Trapp told his battalion of about 500 men that anyone who wished not to participate could step forward and be relieved of the assignment. Only one man stepped forward. The man was verbally berated by his Company Commander, but true to his word Major Trapp intervened on behalf of the brave man. Then another 10-12 men stepped forward to be relieved of the killing. The remainder of the battalion was moved out to participate in the killing (though some of them surreptitiously managed to avoid it).

Altemeyer summarizes the situation:



How to explain such excessive obedience to authority?

Of course the good majority of Americans are aware of the Nazi Holocaust and accept it as something that happened. But most Americans believe that something like the Holocaust could not happen in this country. Americans they believe could never do something like that. But Milgram’s experiments suggest otherwise. They suggest in fact that the excessive propensity for obedience to authority may be much more universal than most people realize. What could explain such depressing results? Here is Altemeyer’s explanation, which I tend to agree with:


But what about Milgram’s ancillary experiment, in which the Teachers were allowed to observe a fellow teacher refusing to obey the authority, in which the percent of Teachers who increased the voltage all the way up to the max went down to only 10%? What explains that? Altemeyer attributes that to the role of peer pressure. He says:



Right Wing Authoritarians

Altemeyer defines authoritarian followers and authoritarian leaders (also known as “social dominators”). He defines authoritarian followers as having the following three core characteristics:

1) High degree of submission to authority
2) Willingness to attack other people in the name of the authority
3) Highly conventional attitudes

Altemeyer provides a 22 question personality survey that measures a person’s right wing authoritarian follower propensity. He calls it the right wing authoritarian (RWA) scale because in the United States the great majority of authoritarians are politically right wing, and even if they are not politically right wing, their personality is right wing.

I discuss authoritarian followers (RWAs) in detail in this post. Specifically, I discuss their tendency for submission to authority, conformity, hatred and cruelty, and cowardice. You might recognize that all of those traits, individually or in combination, help to explain the results of the Milgram experiments (as well as the Nazi Holocaust, other genocides, and much of the passivity of the American people in the face of atrocities committed by our government in our name).

Altemeyer sums up RWAs like this:



Gradations of the RWA trait

But how do we explain 85% of men in Milgram’s experiment willing to continue to shock people beyond the points where they beg them to stop, and 62% willing to continue until they’re dead? Surely 85% of Americans are not RWAs, are they?

Altemeyer explains that it’s more complicated than that. The RWA trait is not simply an either/or proposition. There are many gradations of the trait, and the vast majority of us have at least some of the characteristics of the RWA in us:



Resistance to authority

If Altemeyer is correct – and I believe he is – then one of the biggest underlying problems facing our nation and our world today is the tendency of the bulk of humanity towards excessive obedience to “authority”. That trait allows the authoritarian leaders – the “social dominators” – to use much of the rest of us as tools for their malevolent purposes.

How do we change that? That’s a tremendously difficult question, and Altemeyer has no easy answers for it. Basically, he says that it’s a matter of education. People need to be educated in school and in their personal lives that obedience to authority is not the virtue that the PTB make it out to be. For the sake of a better country and a better world, it is far more important to question authority than it is to offer blind obedience to it. But the PTB have control of our educational system.

So how do we change the mind set of the world? Altemeyer speaks of finding common ground with those who are more RWA than us; creating a system that makes a liberal education affordable and accessible to everyone; and being a role model through non-violent protest and through being willing to question or buck authority when we need to.

I have never been in a situation similar to those depicted in the above noted accounts of Police Battalion 101 or Milgram’s experiments. So I can’t say for sure how I would react in those situations. But I can give a less dramatic example from my personal life: About 25 years ago I was a physician in the U.S. Air Force, and I was treating a pilot for a sexually transmitted disease. In accordance with Air Force policy, I asked him who his sexual contacts were, so that we could contact them and make sure that they were treated with the appropriate antibiotics. He refused to tell me. We argued about it for several minutes, and finally I told him that he would have to give me the information or else I would turn him in. That’s when he told me that he was gay. Consequently, I was required to turn him in even if he didn’t have a sexually transmitted disease (In those days, there was no patient-physician confidentiality understanding in the U.S. military, as there is in civilian life – I don’t know if that rule still exists today). If I turned him in (or if he named his sexual contact) he would lose his job and his pension – everything. That put the matter in an entirely different light. I had to stop and think. How could I do that to somebody and live with myself? So I made a deal with him. If he promised me that he would notify his sexual contact I would let the matter drop at that.

Doing that didn’t take much courage. There was almost no chance that the Air Force would ever find out about my failure to report him. What it took was an ability to question the rules that I was supposed to operate under. I stopped to question those rules, and I determined that they were inhumane. From there, the decision was easy. I simply decided that I was a human being first and an Air Force officer second. That’s the way I look at it anyhow. I think that the world would be a lot better if more people did that more often. I also think that the good majority of DUers would have made the same decision that I did in those circumstances, but that most Air Force physicians at the time would not have. The military is a very authoritarian organization.


Our current situation

Bob Altemeyer, who has studied authoritarianism for several decades, believes that authoritarianism poses a great, if not the greatest danger to the world today. In the last part of his book, he summarizes his major findings and explains why the combination of psychopathic authoritarian leaders (otherwise known as “social dominators” or the PTB) and authoritarian followers poses such a great danger to us (This was just after the 2006 election, I believe) :


Altemeyer speaks of the need to question authority rather than to render blind obedience to it. He ends his book with:



Some things for humanity to think about

I think it’s appropriate that I end this post with some quotes that Larry Ogg gave me just today (Come to think of it, those quotes must have given me the idea for this post), since they summarize the dangers of excessive obedience better than I can say it.

From Frederic Bastiat


From “Failure to Quit”, by Howard Zinn