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Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., in "Letter From Birmingham Jail," justifies his civil disobedience and chastises the white moderates who value order more than justice, saying that "There are two types of laws: There are just and there are unjust laws. I would agree with Saint Augustine that 'An unjust law is no law at all.'" Although most people would agree that laws and rules are necessary for us to live in a civilized society, to what extent should people obey authority? This chapter explores the dilemmas and dangers inherent in obeying the orders of authority. The chapter begins with Doris Lessing's "Group Minds," which asserts that people living in Western culture cling to the erroneous assumption that living in a free culture means that they are free to make their own decisions. According to Lessing, a lack of awareness of the extent to which groups mitigate or undercut a person's individuality makes that person vulnerable to the pressures of groups. Solomon Asch's "Opinions and Social Pressure" discusses his experiment designed to discover to what extent individuals can be influenced to deny the evidence of their own senses. "The Perils of Obedience" by Stanley Milgram reports on his controversial experiment that tested how far individuals would go in obeying orders, even if carrying out those orders caused serious harm to others. In Diana Baumrind's response to Milgram's experiment, "Review of Stanley Milgram's Experiments on Obedience," she criticizes the experiment's long-term effects on participants and points out the flaws in the experiment's design, which may have skewed Milgram's results. Ian Parker's "Obedience," focuses on both the immediate and the long-term reaction to Milgram's experiment among both the general public and Milgram's professional colleagues and also of the effect of the experiment upon the experimenter himself. "The Stanford Prison Experiment," by Philip K. Zimbardo, discusses the results of his controversial experiment designed to examine the ability of individuals to resist authoritarian or obedient roles, if the social setting requires those roles. Using the threat of world annihilation as a backdrop, Erich Fromm's "Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem" distinguishes between disobedience that is destructive and disobedience that is necessary to preserve the survival of mankind. The chapter ends with "The Organization Kid" by David Brooks, which focuses on the roots of obedience in education and socialization—and particularly the type of education and socialization undergone by upper middle class young people at elite institutions. Note: Internet sources are generally transitory, so if a link given for an activity is no longer available, notify the administrator of this site. The link will be fixed or replaced with a suitable source for the activity.
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