The laws of mere mortals.

Laws are made by men, not by the Gods.

We've been conditioned, programmed as it were, to do as we're told, to the point where if an authority figure tells us to do something against our normal inclinations, we do it with barely a question. I learned of a certain experiment conducted some years ago to test how far we will go to follow orders.

The study was called the Milgrams Obedience Experiment. I won't go too much into the specifics of the experiment here; if you want to learn more, click on the hyperlink. A bare bones outline of what the study entailed however, is a willing participant who was told to repeatedly shock another participant if they answered incorrectly to the questions the first participant was told to ask. They were told this study was organized in order to test the learning ability of the subject, but in fact they were the ones being studied. Unbeknownst to the participant, the subject being shocked was an actor and no real shocks were administered. Yet even when the participants became worried as to the state of the individual they were, in effect, torturing, they did not stop the experiment. "Shock" after shock was administered. The tortured cries of the pretend subject can be heard reverberating through the testing area. The shocks keep coming. And then the screaming stops.

Wading through mountains of videos by present-day imitators, I finally found a link to some original footage of one of Milgram's test subjects. The video goes on and on as the subject gets shocked over and over. When asked, after the true nature of the experiment was revealed to the participant, why he didn't stop administering shocks, no clear answer was given. The man repeats, "I wanted to stop, but he (the scientist) kept going 'keep going'!"

Another researcher who saught to perform the same experiment in our time published his findings in an article I found while searching for more information on Milgram. He says in his final paragraphs, "I found no evidence for gender differences in obedience." and "Participants who were high in empathic concern expressed a reluctance to continue the procedure earlier than did those who were low on this trait. But this early reluctance did not translate into a greater likelihood of refusing to continue."


We will do as we are told, even when such an order means pain or death to another human being. An order is an order, and, like good soldiers, we obey. In the end, 65 percent of the participants did not stop the experiment. Sixty-five percent. Do you know where you lie?

The fact of the matter is, people like our Antigone who stand against laws or the orders of the state are far and few in between. We look up to them, admire them for their strength to be one against many. Or...we destroy them, condemn them as outcasts; after all, the state cannot survive if too many individuals refuse to follow orders. So what do these findings make of us? Are we intelligent, rational beings with a choice to do right or wrong? Or are we slaves to figures of authority, doing anything and everything simply because we are told to do so? Why do we believe we are less to blame if we are told to do something than if we do that something of our own accord? Are we Antigones or Ismenes? Can we ever really know.