In A Few Good Men, director Rob Reiner portrays the court case of two Marines named Dawson and Downey, on trial for the murder of another Marine, William Santiago. Santiago was killed due to a code red ordered by Kendrick and Jessep. Dawson and Downey felt that they are innocent because they were just following orders. The same situation arises in “The Perils of Obedience,” by Stanley Milgram. Milgram believes that everyone is inclined to be obedient but not hold responsibility, and proves this by including an experiment where while administering shocks to learners, teachers would only continue when being told to do so and when they were told that they are not responsible for what happens to the learner. This experiment shows that although …show more content…
This code causes Dawson and Downey to place their own unit in front of all things. This implies that Dawson and Downey would perform any action, no matter how horrible, in order to keep their unit in check. In the film, It presents Dawson as the stronger of the two young Marines. Dawson has been reprimanded by his superior, Kendrick, because he had not followed all orders he was given, one being a code red. Because of this, Kendrick knows that Dawson will never disobey him again, and orders him to perform a code red. Dawson follows through with the order and even orders Downey to assist him. In the article, “The Perils of Obedience,” author Stanley Milgram believes that obedience is “deeply ingrained" in every being. This implies that when someone of authority demands something be done, it will be done. The same idea is presented in the article, “The My Lai Massacre: A Military Crime of Obedience,” by Herbert C. Kelam and V. Lee Hamilton. This article provides evidence that soldiers are more than willing to perform any act, no matter if the order is unethical or unclear. Milgram’s article proves Dawson and Downey’s argument to be true that they were just doing their job. The article by Milgram also provides an explanation for obedience as one harboring their own anger, which makes following orders that hurt someone else almost easy. In A Few Good Men, Dawson is …show more content…
Kaffee talks to Dawson and Downey and states, “...from now on, "Willy" is Private Santiago. You start calling him Willy and all of a sudden he's a person who's got a mother who's gonna miss him” (Reiner). This implies that Kaffee does not want Santiago to be seen as a person, but rather just a name. In the article, “The Stanford Prison Experiment,” author Philip G. Zombardo speaks of the prisoners becoming dehumanized. Their identities have been replaced with matching and revealing smocks, they are referred to as numbers, and they have to live in cold and empty cells. The prisoners are obedient to the guards partly because they no longer feel like they deserve to stand up for themselves. The guards themselves are stripped of their personalities as well when they all have to wear matching uniforms, but in return they are given power. When the prisoners lack confidence and self respect, it is implied that they will more than likely become submissive to the guards who have growing confidence and power. The article implies that when assigned a position, whether it is pleasant or not, many will conform to this position and live it. This is apparent in A Few Good Men, when a character named Markinson knows that what he is doing is wrong, but continued to do it because he is a high rank and is in power. In the article, “The Perils of Obedience,” by Stanley Milgram,
Ruth Karlsson is the director of Released and Restored program. Her topic was about helping the inmates in prison to become humble educated people, so they do not return to prison. Her first main point was making us college students understand the huge problem we have with the Nebraska state prisons. She first explain how many state prisons there were in Nebraska, which was ten. Then Karlsson want us to understand how many people are in prison…
Jeff McMahan probes the morally-provocative question, “is morally permissible for an individual to join the armed forces if he will thereby become an “unjust combatant?” I will present two arguments to debate this question, epistemic justification and pacifism. I will implore the use of Reserve Police Battalion 101 as a historical example to support my conclusion that epistemic justification, or the moral permissibility for a man to join the armed forces in defense of an unjust cause, as the stronger of the two arguments. Before progressing any further, it is imperative to have a foundational understanding of “just combatants” and “unjust combatants,” as McMahan understands theses terms.
Police ethics training is a vital aspect needed to comprise a successful and principled police department. The required reading for a police ethics training course must be compelling and relatable for police officers to identify with the material and grasp its importance. Therefore, I would require police officers to read Brotherhood of Corruption, Walking with the Devil, chapter one: Introduction to the New Police Accountability in the book The New World of Police Accountability, and chapter three: Police Ethics: Use of Force, Investigations, Interrogations, and Lying in the Criminal Justice Ethics textbook by Cyndi Banks. All four of these readings cover a variety of topics that are essential for police officers to be knowledgeable of. The
These individuals had to follow their orders and ignore their own moral laws to prevent disobeying the law. This shows how people need to focus more on following their
While arguably one of the defining psychological studies of the 20th Century, the research was not without flaws. Almost immediately the study became a subject for debate amongst psychologists who argued that the research was both ethically flawed and its lack of diversity meant it could not be generalized. Ethically, a significant critique of the experiment is that the participants actually believed they were administering serious harm to a real person, completely unaware that the learner was in fact acting. Although Milgram argued that the illusion was a necessary part of the experiment to study the participants’ reaction, they were exposed to a highly stressful situation. Many were visibly distraught throughout the duration of the test
Since literature has been analyzed and questioned for hundreds of years, I think it is safe to say that it is a platform for expression. Not just expression of the author, but expression of that time period. The world’s overall actions, issues, and movements all influence the author greatly. Thus, creating an author's education, which is all seen through the piece of art. This is exactly how Arthur Miller wrote his play, The Crucible.
Since the beginning of the human existence, man has always dominated and ruled over one another be it empires, corporations, or small groups. Authority and obedience has always been a factor of who we are. This natural occurrence can be seen clearly through the psychological experiments known as The Milgram Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment. Both of these studies are based on how human beings react to authority figures and what their obedience is when faced with conflict.
Stanford Prison Experiment Philip Zimbardo questioned, “What happens when you put good people in an evil place? Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph?” (Zimbardo, 1971) In 1971 a psychologist named Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment on the effects prison has on young males with the help of his colleague Stanley Milgram. They wanted to find out if the reports of brutality from guards was due to the way guards treated prisoners or the prison environment.
Moral corruption is not being concerned with the distinction between good or bad, or right or wrong and only focusing on one’s own mean to the end. Moral corruption leads to the failure of distinguishing between what is right or wrong for them and only care about what the person feels is right. In Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood and “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor displays moral corruption through several characters including Asa Hawks and Hazel Motes from Wise Blood and the Grandmother and the Misfit from “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” In Wise Blood, Hazel Motes is a person whose behavior or attitude sets him apart from others and then there is Asa Hawks who is an evangelist and thinks it is right to falsely preach and is a fraud.
As explored through Darling’s observation in Budapest, an authoritative body requires obedience from a target population to exercise control. After arriving at Budapest to steal guavas, the children meet a guard for the first time in Budapest. The arrogant and lofty English-speaking guard constantly commands the children to leave Budapest, for example stating, “I demand that you wipe it off right now” when Bastard spits on the street (108). Yet in the eyes of the children, “Everything about him looks like a joke and [they] know he is a waste of time” (107). Because the children, especially Bastard, are not fearful and do not respect the guard’s authoritative position, the guard’s commands are disobeyed.
Unit 1 Written Assignment Literature Review of article on Standard Prison Experiment Introduction This article concerns the Stanford Prison experiment carried out in 1971 at Stanford University. The experiment commenced on August 14, and was stopped after only six days. It is one of the most noted psychological experiments on authority versus subordinates. The studies which emerged from this have been of interest to those in prison and military fields due to its focus on the psychology associated with authority.
Normal People Behaving Evil The Stanford Prison Experiment was an experiment to see if normal people would change their behavior in a role-play as a prisoner or a prison guard. The experiment was conducted by Dr.Philip Zimbardo in 1973 at Stanford University that caused numerous amount of trauma to prisoners by prison guards in their role-playing position which forced Dr. Zimbardo to officially terminate the experiment six days after it was introduced. Due to the cruel aggressive behaviors from the guards, the experiment led to a question, "Do "normal" people have the capability of behaving badly?" The answer to that question is that most likely an individual who behave normally will have the capability of expressing evil behavior due to the environment that they are surrounded.
This quote shows how the magistrate was not at first attempting to resist the empire, but was led to once he found out the
Obey or disobey and to be, or not to be: that is the
In the movie Crimson Tide, we look to the question ethical decisions, and what someone would do when thrown into a situation that made them question themselves, and who they serve for. In this example, when serving in the United States Military, once a solider is given orders, that solider must follow the orders out and not to question them. The trust between the solider and the higher command giving orders is almost based on blind faith. The solider relies on the higher commands decision of protecting democracy, even if someone, or a lot of people are killed. Is it an ethical decision to follow a commander’s order even if it means killing mass numbers of innocent civilians?