While in Berlin touring, cycling and visiting some of the holocaust monuments I thought about the consequences of humans becoming abstract concepts.
If someone in a position of authority orders you to do something contrary to your sense of what´s right and wrong, what do you do?
“We were just following orders” – A common statement in the Nuremberg trials and probably what Nazi soldiers told their grandchildren.
@Berlin. An image to remember that we must fight abstraction
The Milgram experiment tested some mind blowing hypotheses regarding obedience to authority – If someone in a position of authority orders you to do something contrary to your moral code or to your sense of what´s right or wrong. To what extent would it be possible to harm severely other person?
Broadly in this experiment a group of teachers would be ordered to administrate a series of electric shocks to students. Alongside the teachers there were figures of authority(scientists), ensuring that every time teachers felt uncomfortable with the experience they were ordered to continue the experiment, meaning, electric shocks would become more severe.
In reality no shocks where given to students, but teachers didn’t knew that, as students were instructed to shout, expressing discomfort and pain.
We all agree that each and everyone of us would stop before doing any serious harm, right?
Wrong!
- When teachers could not see nor hear the students, only 35% refused to continue, 65% would go through the entire experiment reaching 475 Volt and thus hypothetically killing a student.
On the other hand:
- When teachers had to physically put the students hand on the shock plate 70% quitted early;
- When teachers were in the same room but didn’t have to touch the student 60% quitted early.
The bad news is that the Milgram experiment is today carried out today in many offices…
Abstraction in today’s world is no longer restricted to physical space, it includes the abstraction of numbers.
The bigger the organization, the bigger the physical distance to their users/costumers/employees, and when we divorce ourselves from humans we are like Milgram volunteers, capable of inhuman behavior.
The physical separation between services/products that organizations provide and humans on the receiving end can have a big impact on human life, mostly on the lives of people who cannot be seen or heard.
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