Is Anti-Obedience Training Either Necessary or Possible?

But most of the time, it is.

edited 21st Sep '12 1:22:45 AM by TheHandle

Threadhoppers!

Usually threadhoppers will at least read the OP. The story is very well-written and easy to read, too, and it's an amazing tale.

Military and emergancy personell are trained slightly, depending on their role.

But here's the thing, these people also go through insanely horrific situations. That's why I brought up Spec-Ops: The Line. Those guys went though hell, that warps their ability to always be able to discern situation.

All the more reason to give them help in handling it, yes?

If that is actually possible at the moment.

You can't drop in warm fuzzies and kumbaya tapes in the middle of a warzone. You can't always pull your troops out, drop in support or send in backup.

Ideally we can send our troops back to a secure location every night with their families and hot cocoa waiting for them. But we know that's not true. I've had too many friends sent to Afghanistan and Iraq and know more than I wish I did.

Even if we do everything right, that still doesn't stop what the enemy can do, will do, and what effect that has, such as Afghan police forces killing their American counterparts.

No, I meant "help" as in "train and prepare".

Again, how is that truly possible? Basic is meant to shut you down and make following orders completely instinctual. Your AIT is specialized on how to preform your MOS to the best of your ability, speciality schools such as Jump School just teach you how to shut up and do something the proper way to the point of instinct as well.

There is not a lot of room in the Armed Forces for such counter intuituve training or even the questioning of orders. These are the guys who will make you scrub a floor you just spent 4 hours cleaning yesterday.

Same with EM Ts. You do an neck brace like that because the closest hospital has the tools to handle it that way. Doesn't matter if there is a different way to do it, or even a better way.

I get that it's hopeful and I'm not saying it would be impossible, but it's just the roles who have to do the hardest jobs are possible because they follow orders without question.

The Bravo Two Zeros and Battle for Haditha's, didn't happen because of orders in the field, they happened because poor planning and/or management before they even got in the field.

Maybe in a law school or better yet, a financial institution, there can be successful anti-obedience training. But in Military, Security, or Emergancy agencies? Not so much if at all.

We were discussing public schools and university settings, actually.

Plus, it doesn't seem that hard to drill into all these discipline-types not to obey some specific orders. "Don't Eat People. Don't Kill Babies. Don't Kill Women Or The Elderly If They Don't Have A History Of Being Combatants." Stuff like that. After all, Just Following Orders was never an excuse: if their superior officers told them to impale themselves on their bayonets, would our reflexively-disciplined soldiers do it?

Let me put it this way. In The Bible and The Quran, God himself tells Abraham to decapitate his own son Ismahel and sacrifice him in His name. Abraham complies. Thrice he was stopped from completing the movement, and thrice he tried again. Then God replaced Ismahel with a lamb. It was all a Secret Test of Character, see. The moral of the story being, do what God tells you to do even if it looks absurd and unreasonable and unfair and downright evil, and hope for the best, because God is always right in the end.

If God came to you telling you to kill your son, or your little brother, or some other helpless child you care for, without giving you a reason other than "because I say so"... would you do it?

edited 22nd Sep '12 10:19:04 AM by TheHandle

Unless you're a student at Kinderheim 511 I don't see why the Milgram Experiment relates to the average University or Public school system.

EDIT: to Handle,

We do tell our soliders not to kill civilians are commit torture. Guess what, Guantanamo still happened. Massacres still happen. And sometimes our soliders have had to shoot children because that kid picked up a gun and fired on them. (Going to Bradeburn's point what is right isn't always "moral".)

The Soviets learned this when they went into Afghanistan that their version of a kid is not the Tribal version of a kid. Morality is relative.

Most of our Military horrors did not come from orders, but from mental breaks and soliders loosing their shit.

God? Really? I don't believe in God so if I began hearing a voice telling me to kill my son, I'm going to a mental health specialist.

edited 22nd Sep '12 10:29:59 AM by Gabrael

As in, the folks you mentioned (military, paramedics, paramilitary) do rather exceptional, jobs. They are a small minority. As a norm, learning to not become an immoral bastard just because someone tells you to do so with a stern look is something desirable, and I for one argue that it should be taught at schools and/or colleges as basic education on how to be and remain a decent human being. At the very least, everyone should be taught about these experiments, which constitute rather more useful and relevant Scare 'Em Straight tales, in terms of the hazard of being faced with similar problems throughout your life than, say, Little Red Riding Hood or Hansel And Gretel.

In an environment where kids, women, or the elderly are combatants, treating them as such is perfectly okay and you shouldn't break a sweat about it. When Assad's soldiers shot babies point blank, it wasn't a case of shooting an enemy.

As for God, nice copout. I'm not asking you if you believe in God, I'm asking you if, God telling you to kill your son, would you do it? Do I need to go over "the thought experiment assumes God exists and that he has proven this to you to your satisfaction"?

edited 22nd Sep '12 10:35:04 AM by TheHandle

I thought we had common sense and morality to govern that. Most majors such as business and finance already have required ethics courses.

And most crimes and acts of douchebaggery aren't done by orders, they're done by choice. The guys at Enron knew what was going on. They complied by choice and only used "following orders" as an excuse just as many others did.

EDIT:

Assad's soliders are being bastards. There is no excuse for them. There is a big difference between ignoring a possible fraud in a bank becase your boss told you not to worry about it and crimes against humanity. We even put our soliders on trial for Haditha.

And my answer to God is not a cop out. You can't compare a nonexistant sky cake with humans. But okay, let's play along and say some big guy in the sky comes down and tells me to kill my son.

I'd rather tell him to fuck himself and burn in hell forever than hurt my kid because a god who will order the murder of an innocent person for no reason other than to feel the love is not worthy of worship to me.

edited 22nd Sep '12 10:43:32 AM by Gabrael

Well, I"m pretty sure if you start hearing voices in your head you're probably schizophrenic. Schizophrenic people usually can't tell what's real or not. So you probably wouldn't have the ability to tell the voices to "fuck off".

It's not enough to know about ethics in theory. You have to prove, at least to yourself, you are able to follow them under pressure.

Obeying orders is a choice also. It may be a choice between your very life and obeying that order (or even "just" your job and that order), but it is a choice nonetheless. As for Assad's soldiers, comparing them to bastards implies that it's their upbringing that's wrong. A person is not exeemed of their responsibilities because they have a Freudian Excuse, the same way that a person's good deeds don't become unremarkable just because they'd had great parents and teachers. But upbringing, also known as training, plays an important role, and there are people who will not pull a trigger in such a situation.

As for God, that's a good start indeed. But, you know, Muslim families still sacrifice a lamb each year to celebrate that thing Abraham did, that ultimate act of blind faith. It means that a lot of people do place value on doing stuff because they're told by an authority they trust. And I suspect Muslims are hardly unique in that matter.

Actually, the ability to tell what's real from what isn't is rather well-understood, neuroglogically, and it isn't an on or off button, but a continuum. You call someone Schizo when they're extremely bad at telling fiction from reality, but there's lots of room between that and being knurd (seeing things exactly for what they are).

edited 22nd Sep '12 10:58:21 AM by TheHandle

Lets not derail this into a religion thread. The topic is the usefulness of anti-obedience training.

@Gab: I cant tell what your position is. You seem to be simultaneously arguing that "common sense and morality" in combination with ethics classes are sufficient for the general public, but that soldiers and emergency personnel cant use this and wont benefit from it? If that's your position I will dispute both points.

"Unless you're a student at Kinderheim 511 I don't see why the Milgram Experiment relates to the average University or Public school system."

You are aware that the Milgram experiments didnt involve uniformed people?

It seems to me that it would be difficult to implement correctly, but I think that it could be valuable.

Peer pressure is a very real and very dangerous thing, and it can lead one to behave in impressively ill-advised ways. I cannot see anything wrong with making the students aware of this fact, and letting them know some of the cases in which it caused people do to egregiously bad stuff.

However, I'd advise against attempting to train independent thought through "roleplaying" scenarios. I'm pretty sure that, rather than impressing kids with the danger, that would make them roll their eyes at the whole silly thing.

edited 22nd Sep '12 12:31:38 PM by Carciofus

As I said before, I had psych in both undergrad and graduate as well as when I graduated from the police academy. I am very aware of Milgram, Zombardo, Skinner, the whole nine yards. It goes well with my religious studies degree and my work in religious terrorism.

The average person doesn't need anti-obedience training.

But if you are going to train soliders, emts, etc. the same way you will civilians. Milgram's study is interesting, but is very isolated the average person will not have to be in a situation to test if they would have to disobey or not, especially at the expense of someone else such as pain.

But Emergancy services devote their lives to trying to solve human pain. So we cannot treat them the same. Their stressors, tools, contexts, are totaly different. And we do train them well. But they are under far different situations to test them with very little predictibiliy over what will happen, let alone how they react.

As our military guys already pointed out they are heavily specialized already.

And if calling someone who shoots babies a bastard is giving implications on their raising, then change it out for asshole, idiot, inhuman, any other profanity or insult you wish.

What's the point of using profanity if it doesn't even try to be accurate? You might as well call them "You Big Stupid Doodoohead" or something like that. And, at least in my culture, implications that you weren't raised well sting much more than anything pointed at your person or that of your parents. Upbringing is very important, though of course it does not determine everything.

That said, why do you believe most people would not need anti-obedience training? What do you know, and how do you know it?

As a Christian, I am certain you are more than familiar with the immense importance of looking up at earthly authorities telling you to do atrocious things, sometimes on threat of death or worse, and being able to say "no".

edited 22nd Sep '12 1:39:16 PM by TheHandle

I think the point Gab is trying to get across on military and Emergency services in general is they train you to act reflexively as well as the necessity of following the orders of superiors in general.

In emergency or combat situations quick and accurate reflexes are often the difference in life or death situations. It is very easy to be dropped into a survival situation and have reflexes kick in and your body is moving before your brain can react. You hone those reflexes with training. Problem is it is far from perfect and friendly fire and untintentional shootings happen. All of that is complicated by mental, emotional, and physical issues and problems as well as the course of an individuals experience.

Part of training also does entail encouraging a strict hiearchy of obedience to leadership in general. The idea being your assorted leaders are ultimately responsible for your actions at large. Individuals are also held responsible for their actions. Leaders are there to guide you. However like I mentioned above all the human factors make this a very mixed bag.

In the U.S. Military we are trained still to the best of my knowledge the differences between a lawful and unlawful order. Things like openly gunning down unarmed civilians, executing prisoners in the field without a trial, and a list of other orders can lawfully be refused. However it is not as simple as saying no.

The UCMJ Uniform Code of Military Justice outlines what is and is not lawful actions. Additional factors can complicate or alter what orders are and are not legal in any given conflict or situation. Things like local laws can change the way things are done. For example in WWII best efforts were made to not blast every historical structure turned fortress into rubble. Without obtaining special permission to do so you could get into a lot of trouble.

here is a good article on the catches and pitfalls from the U.S. military perspective on law

It is not so simple as you would think.

Military members are trained and taught to avoid doing various heinous acts. They are frowned upon if not outright discouraged sometimes violently so. However various situations unbalance people in both mental and emotional ways or physical injuries can lead to behavrial changes (see studies on excessive agression and violence in relation to brain injuries and PTSD).

Even the most stalwart and moraly upright person can be worn down mentally, physically and/or emotionally to the point where something breaks and they do something they should not do. War puts nearly immeasurable stress and strains on civilians and military both. This is just regular combat. Things like a guerilla war where the enemy blends in with and is frequently aided by locals regardless of your actions are frequently extremely stressful psychologically as well as emotionally. You can only push a group or an individual so far before something gives.

Now the reactions may not all be the same but sooner or later someone is going to lash out with something they are trained to use in stressful and perceived dangerous situations. That is violence. The results are predicatably tragic and horrific in a myriad of ways.

Considering how much we are grinding our forces in the sandbox in high stress and high danger situations that all but gurantee something is gonna break and someone is gonna lose it I am surprised we have not had more serious nasty events.

Now compared to certain events like ethnic cleansings, you are dealing with a different set of stressors combined with combat and violence. Same thing with the troops in Syria. They are under military influence and are faced with a host of issues that "Try men's souls" so to speak. Some people when pushed are going to do thing they will likely regret others may fake it, others may resist. The results are impossible to gurantee.

I am willing to bet the Syrian soldiers have a less thoroughly defined or entrenched military law code like the U.S. does or even received any training like U.S. troops do.

There is also a difference between small groups out of a larger whole committing atrocities due to heavy mental and emotional stressors alogn with the associated break downs to an army at large who is openly practicing group wide crimes.

Now when something bad happens and it is reported up the chain it is the responsibility of leadership to act on it. Failure to deal with atrocities in general or white washing are usually signs of politics and personal reasons to hide such things. Best way to deal with this is to try and select better leaders in general.

Keep in mind the military does it's best to take an individual and drastically alter their view of themselves, their view of society, their role in society, their expectations of society, and change it to one that better matches the military. You are being pushed to better match the military societies views and to distance or reject civilian societies perceptions in general. The results vary widely despite the best efforts in selection of indviduals and nature of training. The personal experiences of the indviduals consitently alter the outcome of that training and their behaviour in general.

Now take this to the civilian world where there is a much wider variance in individuals, coupled with a much wider range of variables and situations, your going to get a much wider array of results. This is also not counting influences and educational experiences that would go against this training. The chances of such results not only being the ideal outcome but surviving an individuals experiences or integration into environments like the military or police become very narrow. The odds are stacked against such efforts. Especially if the training is focused against obeying orders.

The military trains in carefully controlled environments and deliberately tries to cause certain situations like commonly shared stresses and punishments for example to train people. Your contact with the outside world is severly limited, you are frequently reminded you are not an individual and are forced to refer to yourself in such fashion under pain of punishments. The efforts are constant otuside of sleeping and continous for up to 3 months or longer.

The point is despite intense and controlled training environments the results vary quite a bit not only from individual to indvidual but from training group to training group. No mater how thorough the training or how intense you make the moral aspects the training people are going to forgo or ignore it if the situation combined with individual and personal factors cause trainign to be pushed to the way side. Rules of engagement and conduct expectations are brought up on a regular basis especially in a combat environment.

School environments are a lot more loose then a military training setting. Outside of a few exceptions like police, fire, and emergency services there are few civil agencies that utilize an environment like the military does.

Unless you are going to submit a signifigant portion of the population to highly controlled education and training environments (very impractical for the record) your levels of success are going to be rather low in general.

Yes we still use training but under very specific circumstances and even then that is not gurantee.

We get better results by encouraging the various facets of society to influence smaller groups of people into adopting more moral behaviour then institutionalizing said behaviour in academies or schools. Encouraging parents, churches, youth groups, etc to educate children has gotten us farther the making this some mandatory requisite. Not only is the exposure to these environments far more constant then a scholastic experience, they often have a lot more influence over an individual then an instructor would.

De Marquis you of all people should know how much variation can unitentionally filter into a training environment that does not shut out as much outside influence as possible. Also how difficult such a thing makes it to ensure training sticks in way that you want it to. Also that numerous outside influences can degrade the training and alter viewpoints and attitudes counter to the training you wish to instill.

I find the desire to try and make society better through moral trainign a noble goal but institutionalizing it to be impractal. The perceived effectiveness of said efforts to be unrealistic especially in the light of individuals various experiences exposure to various ideas.

Handle you are missing the point. No insult in any language would be strong enough to accurately describe creatures who commit crimes against humanity.

And I am getting rather tired of repeating myself:

The average person will never be in a position to choose between hurting another person and their life. If Milgram or Zimbardo tried to do their experiments in this age they would be shut down.

Now a closer form of obedience issues would be the examples I gave of a boss telling you to overlook a possibly fraudulant transaction, another possible violation of civil or company order like sexual harassment, that sort of thing. And as mentioned before, even though most degrees and individual companies already have training involved for these situations.

But unless you live in someplace like Somolia, the chances of the average person being ordered to kill, maim, or suffer anyone else is practically zero.

The peer pressure to not report a friend for stealing a candy bar is not the same as the pressure a solider about to search what they think is a IED factory. Hence why I keep saying we need that line drawn because the contexts, training, everything is totally different.

A thoguth that occured to me while walking.

Instead of focusing on the population at large we should focus on the various positions of leadership. Leaders and I mean real leaders not buzz word leaders have tremendous impact on people indvidually and in groups.

This is still challenging and has it's own unique set of problems but it would be easier then the scatter shot aproach of trying to educate the population at large. Imagine the impact on the German society and the world if Hitler had been a more moral individual.

The good leader impacts far more people then simple education ever would.

People should do stuff because it's right, not because someone cool tells them to.

What is "right" for one person might not be "right" for another, and definitions of "right" may vary in high-stress situations in particular.

Well, this conversation has gotten interesting. Since so many people have posted so many interesting ideas, I'm just going to address general points rather than individual posters.

Re military people have to be trained to obey orders and follow procedures exactly- that point was conceded already, I don't think anyone is arguing that the army should be turned into a democracy.

On the other hand, based on T's wall of text up there, it actually sounds as if the US military is already doing many of the things we're advocating here. What if I suggested that civilian educational institutions should borrow some of the techniques the military uses to train things like decision making? Ironically, I think this might result in some interesting outcomes.

Now, as to the idea that the general public can't benefit from such training. I'm afraid that I do not share the optimistic idea that people today have too much common sense to ever participate in oppressing someone. Every day, somewhere in the world, someone is collaborating with an oppressive regime. Every day, someone makes a populist appeal based on prejudice and division. Just ask any member of a minority if US is immune to is.

The training is neede, the training exists, and the training works.