The Milgram experiment -- thoughts?

[Wm777]

I have often wondered how railway personnel who heard rumors of what happened in the Nazi extermination camps, saw fully loaded trains heading to them, drove the train engines and returned with empty wagons, adjusted tracks and signals to facilitate the running of the railway system and then would end a shift and return home to their families coped with their daily work.

You’re speaking in general, so you have a harder nut to crack in solving your question. When you get to specifics, the answer could go either way; and, additionally. one can only speculate on what the situational awareness of people was.

I understand what you’re asking.

In a more modern sense, I think the internet is probably the biggest culprit, when it comes to learned behavior and social programming. One way to see the effects of it is, if you watch old comedy from the mid-80’s, and compare it to more contemporary comedy.

For instance, if you want to make a millenial laugh - half the time you can just send them an emoticon, and they’ll be rolling on the floor… Want to ruin their day? Give them a thumbs down on a post, and you’ll launch a new soap opera over it… Try studying some techno music, and you’ll find it has less to do with actually playing an instrument than developing an interesting sort of playlist, more like a deejay’s spin…

On the other hand, if you study the pre-computer culture, when we didn’t have emoticons - although perhaps we were Cold War babies… you’ll see a different kind of humor… Bugs Bunny, for instance, was a Cold War propaganda response to Hitler, and - even though Bugs is only an animation - he nevertheless represents a characterization people could relate to as a way of laughing at and fending off Hitler’s uber “serious” and defeated charades and Gestapo-driven dictatorship… The wildly eccentric and escapist music and comedy of the 80’s (e.g. Emo Phillips, Sam Kinison, Bob Nelson, etc) reflects this, as it was born of it…

You could push it back even further - to the point when people didn’t have cars or electricity… The entertainment was more like a community dance, and the people played their own music, and the talk was probably more sympathetic toward the human condition, although it’s easy to see where cultural divides were more striking for the same reason… Perhaps these cultural divides allowed grace to abound all the more when people reconciled…

In any case, the appearance and influence of external authority (which is really what the Milgram experiment aims to assess) will always be there, and there will always be the need for cooperation… But, ideally, we should have enough agency to commit to our own beliefs, especially in Christ… We will fall and make “mistakes”, as Christ himself fell along La Via Dolorosa, but then to see the hands that cured so many pierced with nails tells me I can draw from Christ’s wellspring of grace to show mercy to others, too…

 

[Jimbo]

I might be being overly simplistic here… but to me the Milgrim experiment just pointed out that human beings are fallen. The Church has been saying this for centuries. The lab coated social scientists had to have an experiment to prove it.

Someone mentioned the Nazi Party. I think one of the things about ‘Never again’ is that we have to realize something like the Nazi’s could come to pass in pretty much any nation. It will just look different.

Was Stalin’s Russia with the Holodomor better than the Nazi’s? Maybe in degree (not trying to genocide an entire race) but they were still dehumanizing and bumping off millions.

Would an evil totalitarian State look like the Hugo Boss dressed SS Members in the United States?

I doubt it. It would look different whether it came from the left or right of our society, but it would be uniquely American.

Is it frightening? Yes. But it highlights our fallen state.

 

[Wm777]

I was just tying to think of the Milgram experiment in the opposite sense… where the person pushing the buttons would be the recipient of the pain…

I came across of all things - the Unabomber… because there was some speculation that the Unabomber’s actions were at least partially motivated by a psychology experiment in which he took part whereby he was subjected to extreme humiliation… Humiliation is not among a mathematician’s highest virtues, so for a mathematician to be wrong is humiliating and kind of like a form of torture for them (no kidding)…

I dont know the details of the study, but the timeliness of the study was parallel to the Milgram experiment - both of which appear to be post WWII, Cold War era studies…

Harvard's Experiment on the Unabomber, Class of '62 | Psychology Today

The Milgram experiment took place around 1959, which was the same year the Unabomber participated in the Murray humiliation experiment at Harvard… Since the findings in the Milgram experiment were intended to serve as cursory evidence in the Adolf Eichmann trial, I’m assuming these competing Ivy League Universities were likely studying the same thing, although from different perspectives - as part of a post-WWII anti-Nazi propaganda movement… If this is so, it seems arguable the Milgram experiment - was part of a more general and far-reaching study…

Even more disturbing and timely is that 1959 was the year renowned Nobel Prize winning mathematician, economist and game theorist John Nash’s schizophrenia set in full swing… Nash’s studies in game theory were Cold War era economic behavioral studies in how to bluff and lie to win a war… His major findings would have been published around 1950-1953, but then he moved on to work for the RAND institute over the next decade… So it would make sense he could have possibly known of Murray and Milgram, although I have no proof of it… but the problem is his studies have been linked (by some people anyway) to his condition, since he dealt with lies and the stress was known to exacerbate his symptoms…

I guess my point is - what we have in these experiments and see in these scholars is a whole lot of head games… and it was all post-WWII, Cold War era fallout…

From a Catholic standpoint - it wouldn’t work, however… We don’t believe in lying, so the “bluffing” component we see in game theory, the Milgram experiment, and even Murray’s experiment at Harvard (as inflicted upon Kackzynski) wouldnt form the basis for a just war… A lot of Pope’s have for this reason been said to side with Adam Smith’s economic theories… It’s as if - once people get caught up in a web of lies - no matter how mathematically calculated a peaceful outcome might be - it’s still not conducive to the peace that faith and trust brings…