[Mrs. Don-o]

It's hard to explain, and impossible to justify, this woman's apparent passivity in going through with an abortion that she did not want to have. But it's comparable to any number of other situations where people are inexplicably passive in cooperating with what they know is wrong.

You yourself, I'm sure, have read about mass murders where the heavily armed murderer, for example, enters a classroom and says, "OK, everybody line up against the back wall," and behold, everybody does. When that guy killed those ten little Amish schoolgirls in Nickel Miles, PA, he first told the adults and the boys to leave the room: and they did.

In Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram's famous Experiment 18, he tells students ("S") to administer electric shocks to other students ("C"). The "S" students think they are working with the professor and are part of the team, but actually it is they who are the "subjects" of the experiment. The "C" are the true collaborators with the professor and are never actually being shocked, but are playing the part.

In the end, the professor was ordering the "S" group to administer what they thought were dangerous and painful shocks to the "C" group--- shocks supposedly up to 450 volts-- as part of the "experiment." The "C" group would be crying out, screaming and writheing with pretended pain, and yet 37 out of 40 "S" students continued to administer the full range of "shocks," even when they believed them to be in the fatal range.

It was a troubling experiment then, and it's still troubling now. People will cooperate with outrageous acts when told to do so by an authority figure in a setting where obedience is clearly expected.

Like I said, it's hardly justifiable. But it happens all the time.

[RKBA Democrat]

“You yourself, I’m sure, have read about mass murders where the heavily armed murderer, for example, enters a classroom and says, “OK, everybody line up against the back wall,” and behold, everybody does. When that guy killed those ten little Amish schoolgirls in Nickel Miles, PA, he first told the adults and the boys to leave the room: and they did.”

Yes, I’m familiar with how people tend to act passively when faced with evil acting under the color of authority. The stalinist and Nazi holocausts are even more notorious examples. Yet it still doesn’t justify the passive or active complicity of those involved.

Thank you for reminding me of experiment 18. It’s a great moral lesson that should be taught to kids.