Milgram Experiment (Derren Brown)

This is something that I have been dwelling on for some time. Milgram's experiment, "Obedience," has been reproduced many times since he first made his film about it in the early 1960's.

Each repoduction of his set-up has resulted in the same statistical conclusions: about 60% of us will do whatever is requated by a person perceived as an authority figure.

Like some asshole in a lab coat.

If you cou0ple this with the notion that about one-out-of-twenty-five of us are without conscience; that is to say, sociopaths without any small internal voice to guide behavior to realms in which one considers others, then you have a rather dangerous situation.

"The Sociopath Next Door," an interesting book by clinical psychologist Martha Stout, proposes that a full four-percent of us are without conscience. Abel to do anythinbg without care about how it may affect others. Violence included.

Suppose that one of those four-percenters obtains a position of great political power over those sixty-percent of people who will do just about anything to please an authority figure..,

What results?

We know now.

Again.

Let us not allow psychopaths to obtain control of the most powerful nation in the world the next time. We can do better.

We must do better.