Obedience to Authority Essay Example

Obedience to Authority Essay Example Obedience to Authority Essay Obedience to Authority Essay Obedience is a virtue, disobedience is a vice (Fromm 267). In Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem, the author Erich Fromm implies that to be a human an individual must be free to obey and disobey (272). Being obedient requires the removal of freedom, which comes from expressing your thoughts, feelings and emotions, without any boundaries or pressures from other individuals. An obedient individual is submissive towards anothers will and does not have very much freedom. Obedience occurs and can be analyzed when there is a setting of power and expectations to follow authority and a shift in viewpoint. The Stanford Prison Experiment can be interpreted in terms of Milgrams findings on submission to authority. In The Perils of Obedience, Stanley Milgram conducts an experiment where individuals are forced to violate their conscience and to either obey or disobey the dissolute demands of an authority. The experiment tests the extent to which individuals will obey immoral commands when they are ordered to inflict pain on to learners. The teacher is a genuinely naà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ve subject who has come to the laboratory for the experiment. The learner, or victim, is actually an actor who receives no shock at all (Milgram 223). The experimenter orders the teacher to ask word pairs to the learner; for every word pair wrong, the learner gets shocked with increasing intensity. The individuals administering the shocks would do what was expected of them, [obeying] the orders of the experimenter to the end, punishing victim until they reached the most potent shock available on the generator. After 450 volts were administered three times, the experimenter called a halt to the session (224). The teachers did what they were told to do, even when the learners produced loud cries and screams; they simply obeyed the rules and performed their assigned tasks because it was expected of them. Milgram learned that, the experimenters physical presence has a marked impact on his authority (232). If the experimenter was present in the laboratory rather than on the phone, the teachers would refuse to do their assigned task less than if the experimenter were on the phone giving orders. In The Stanford Prison Experiment, Philip K. Zimbardo conducts an experiment where a group of males are selected to be prison guards or prisoners in a mock prison. The setting of the experiment was designed, as if it was a real prison. The prison guards were allowed to keep order in the prison by any means necessary; they obeyed the rules and performed their jobs as expected of them. They made the prisoners feel powerless, arbitrarily controlled, dependent, frustrated, hopeless, anonymous, dehumanized and emasculated (Zimbardo 256), simply because they were obeying rules. The authoritarian nature of the guards became serious when they insulted the prisoners, threatened them, were physically aggressive, used instruments to keep the prisoners in line and referred to them in impersonal, anonymous, deprecating ways (260). In order to fit into the setting the guards were in competition with each other to be stronger and more respected. They wanted to follow the behavior of the good guards [which] seemed more motivated by a desire to be liked by everyone in the system than by a concern for the inmates welfare (261). We learn that if the setting requires an individual to become an authoritarian, others will be submissive and obedient towards them. Also, the expectations to follow authority are highly regarded until a shift in viewpoint occurs within the individuals. A shift in viewpoint occurs when an individual realizes what they have done or are doing is not civilized and wrong. The essence of obedience is that a person comes to view himself as the instrument for carrying out another persons wishes, and he therefore no longer regards himself as responsible for his actions (Milgram 231). After the shift in viewpoint, obedience follows and the individuals dont regard themselves as being responsible for their own actions. The individuals feel responsible to the authority thats directing them but not responsible for their actions done in return to the command of the authority. An example in Milgrams experiment was a woman, Gretchen Brandt, who refused to continue on with the experiment after she administered 210 volts. We came here of our free will. If he wants to continue Ill go aheadIm sorry. I dont want to be responsible for anything happening to him. I wouldnt like it for me either. (Milgram 223). She kept proceeding at the experimenters command until she realized that she had the freedom and right to refuse. She did not want to be held responsible for the harm of the learner so she implicitly tried to leave the blame on the experimenter. In Zimbardos experiment, a prison guard gave his perspective on what it felt like to be a guard in the experiment: What made this experiment most depressing for me was the fact that we were continually called upon to act in a way that was contrary to what I really felt inside. I dont feel like Im the type of person that would be a guard-it just didnt seem like me, and to continually keep up and put on a face like that is just really one of the most oppressive things you can do. Its almost like a prison that you create yourself-you get into it, and it becomes almost the definition you make of yourself. (261)  The guard implies that you become a prisoner of your own obedience. He treated the prisoners unfairly because he wanted to be seen as a good prison guard. As a result, at the end of the experiments, the teachers and prison guards dont see themselves as being responsible for their actions; they hold others responsible for their actions. The teachers implicitly blame the experimenter and the prison guards implicitly blame the higher authority. In order to be obedient, individuals must be provoked by some sort of authority for the shift of viewpoint to prevail and become successful. Milgram implies that, [obedience is] socially organized evil in modern society (233). Therefore, in conclusion, obedience is a vice because it is an immoral practice, which causes human beings to play the blame-game in life.

Governments role in planning essays

Governments role in planning essays A century before the Golden Age of Athens, a Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, said the problem of human society is to combine that degree of liberty without which law is tyranny with that degree of law without which liberty becomes license. Planning is also about a group of laws, a set of rules to guide people and governments in decision making. Considerable differences in detail exist between planning processes in various nations. Many nations of Europe and the Orient follow the British method. In many countries there is a strong national input in planning. In the United States, variation is subject only to constitutional limitations. In general however, planning can be divided into two major categories, that of the private sector and government regulatory agencies. The right of the government to regulate the private sector is under constant challenge by those who feel that ownership of land includes the right to do with it what one wishes, provided the rights of others are not violated. As cities have grown in size and complexity and land has changed hands frequently, however, regulation is often needed. Some sense of order has to be established and accepted. Planning takes place at all levels of government. Local communities, cities and counties enact laws and ordinances which, under state laws or local charters, define the areas of planning that they are constitutionally allowed to carry out. In some instances, federal laws require specific planning to be done if a given community seeks financial assistance through one of the many programs under Federal control. In passing the laws and ordinances dealing with local planning, the cities and counties are supposed to prepare comprehensive plans, for land use, circulation, health, housing, energy, safety, education, recreation, conservation and the other elements that relate to the social, economic and physical structure of the community. The legislative bodies in most cases create p...

Health Information Systems Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Health Information Systems - Essay Example Located at the northern end of the Stanford University campus in Palo Alto, California, Stanford Hospital & Clinics has been serving the humanity since the beginning of the 20th Century when Cooper Medical College was adopted as Stanford University's School of Medicine. As of now, the hospital provides advanced patient care and treatment related to a number of complex disorders related to Cardiac, Cancer, Neurosciences, Surgery, Organ transplants etc. The quality services being provided include basic primary care to advanced treatment and procedures. Working in close association with the Stanford University School of Medicine the hospital services are not just limited to practitioners but the medical student community too gets to know the practical aspects of medical treatment. This helps them in building a strong foundation for becoming good medical professionals. The hospital has more than 1900 medical staff together with 85o Nursing staff to take care of the customers. Thanks to t he continuous emphasis on quality care, Stanford Hospital & Clinics has been ranked 16 amongst America's Best Hospitals in a study carried out by U.S. News & World Report in the year 2008. MS office applications have made a deep impact on the way we function in our offices or deal with official matters. Stanford Hospital & Clinics is certainly no exception. ... The official wings in the hospital are mainly divided in two groups; The HR or Personnel Department: This department is mainly entrusted with maintaining the records of the staff and recruitments. Different types of MS office applications are used in this department. For example MS Word is primarily used on all computers for writing memos, reports, press releases, circulars, notices, publicity materials etc. MS Excess is used to maintain the database of the medical and support staff. This is a very useful tool for maintain the seniority and service records of an individual working for the Hospital. While preparing records of monthly salaries and other remunerations, MS Excel is the best tool. Calculating the salaries, adding perks, deducting taxes etc. require lot of calculations. If done manually, such calculations prove very cumbersome for the clerical staff and there are more chances of mistakes. But with the help of MS Excel the process become quite easy and there are far less chances of error. It also results in saving lot of man-hours and results in better efficiency for the staff. At times, doctors or some of the public relation professionals need to go out and attend some conferences. Therefore, they are in need of some facts and figures about the Stanford Hospital. The MS PowerPoint helps in preparing slides for such presentation. Similarly, the Departmental Head can also prepare his/her lecture for the students on the MS PowerPoint. This way the process of communication becomes quite effective and interactive and the points are well taken by the intended audience. The Record Keeping of Patients: The process of record keeping is very crucial for the reputation of the hospital. Such record keeping not only helps in better care for the patient, but