Today our society raises us to believe that obedience is good and disobedience is bad. We are taught that we should all do what were told and that the people that are disobedient are almost always bad people. Society tells us this, but it is not true. Most people will even be obedient to the point of causing harm to others, because to be disobedient requires the courage to be alone against authority. In Stanley Milgrams "Perils of Obedience" experiment, his studies showed that sixty percent of ordinary people would agree to obey an authority figure even to the point of severely hurting another human being. (Milgram 347).Disobedience is not always wrong. The truth is sometimes it is necessary to be disobedient. In Hebrew mythology, human history began because of an act of disobedience, Adam and Eve gained independence from nature by disobeying God and eating an apple. (Fromm 377). Mans development has largely been affected by being disobedient to authority. Authority that has tried to prevent new ideas and keep things as they are, so that authority will remain intact. Its as though we are allowing society to imprison us by accepting the roles assigned to us (Zimbardo 375).Obedience is a behavior deeply ingrained in us. It is often an impulse that overrides ethics and sympathy. There is much evidence of this, including the Holocaust. It was not just a small group of deranged individuals that committed these atrocities, it was people who had blind obedience to authority. The tendency to locate the source of behavior disorders in a particular person or group underestimates the power of situational forces. We are prone to obey because when we are obedient to an authority it makes us feel safe and protected. We cant make mistakes because the authority decides for us. We cant be alone, because the authority watches over us. So, no matter what our behavior is, it can be justified on the ground that we are only following order...
