Moral Dissonance and Virtuous Disobedience

by Scott Chastain

                “I was only following orders,“ claims any number of people accused of perpetuating atrocities from the Nazis to our own soldiers.  In our society, we are taught that obedience is a virtue, and disobedience is a vice.  We  ask our parents why we should do this or that, and the stock answer is “just do what you’re told!”  It is clear as religious fanatics across the seas are ordering men to hijack airliners and fly them into skyscrapers, as governments around the world are ordering the genocide of their own citizens, and as we review the dog-eared history books, that sometimes disobedience is a virtue.

                While we must maintain obedience to various authorities in many situations in our society, we must also learn that sometimes we should disobey authority as it is also evident that we must instruct our citizens to know the signal that says it is time to disobey.

                Obedience is essential in any ordered society.  We simply cannot live without it.  Violence, theft, invasion of human rights, and plain old-fashioned anarchy would ensue!  Obedience serves us to such a great extent that our nobler institutions would crumble without the balance and stability it provides.  It works for us. 

                Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist who conducted several controversial yet important experiments on obedience, wrote, “Obedience is as basic an element in the structure of social life as one can point to.  Some system of authority is a requirement of all communal living, and it is only the person dwelling in isolation who is not forced to respond, with defiance or submission, to the commands of others.”^[i]

                Disobedience, on the other hand, is far more typically discouraged.  What we are less likely to consider is that disobedience plays an important and useful role in our everyday lives as well.  Henry David Thoreau summarized this succinctly, “All men recognize the right of revolution;  that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.”^[ii]

                Indeed the very nation known as the United States of America was founded on acts of disobedience!  The Boston Tea Party, the Continental Army, Bunker Hill, and the Declaration of Independence are all tokens of these acts that liberated America from the yoke of King George and his cruelty.  Disobedience, therefore, can be a virtue.

                Erich Fromm, a student of the human psyche and its individual and social contexts, wrote an excellent essay, “Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem,” concerning the importance of disobedience.  He profoundly notes, “Indeed, freedom and the capacity for disobedience are inseparable; hence any social, political, and religious system which proclaims freedom, yet stamps out disobedience, cannot speak the truth.”^[iii]

                The importance of disobedience has been underscored only to our own peril throughout history. The slaughter of the indigenous peoples of the world by the Europeans, the Nazi Holocaust, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ethnic cleansing in the Baltic Republics and Rwanda, terrorism, and the use of chemical weapons to suppress a revolution in Russia;  all of these and many others could have been avoided had the people who were following the orders to commit these atrocities disobeyed!

                The problem arises when we must draw the line between useful obedience and destructive obedience.  What is the cut-off point?  More importantly, is there any way to effectively implement a plan that would instruct the peoples of the World on when they should become defiant?  I believe there is.

                Stanley Milgram’s experiments were basically testing the disability to operate morally when faced with an authority giving immoral orders.  His findings were terrifying.  Essentially, the subjects were ordered to give another human electric shocks ranging in sequential order from 15 volts to 450 volts.  The shocks themselves were not actually given, but the subjects were unaware of that.  Twenty-six out of the original 40 administered the full dosage, and none stopped before they reached 300 volts!  What Milgram noted is that most of his subjects grew progressively more tense as the voltage increased.  This would indicate there is probably a moment in time when the first twinge of doubt enters the mind of the obedient.

                If this is the case, and I have every reason to believe that it is, then we should exploit that moment.  For the sake of this paper I shall refer to that very first doubt or tension as moral dissonance. 

                Moral dissonance isn’t a new concept.  Cognitive Dissonance occurs when one’s behavior doesn’t jive with one’s beliefs or attitudes.^[iv]  Moral dissonance occurs when one’s attitudes do not jive with what one is being ordered to do.  Our Saturday morning cartoons have long depicted this event with the image of the little angels and devils that appear to torment the characters.  In the Disney animated film, The Emperor’s New Groove, the character Cronk was continually being given immoral orders, and was therefore perpetually molested by these spirits.  In the end he finally overcomes them, but more often than not, he obeys the orders (the devil wins).

                Some may argue that moral dissonance doesn’t appear universally.  Did Adolph Hitler experience it?  I cannot answer that.  Milgram noted that Adolph Eichmann, a Nazi officer, was sickened when he toured the concentration camps.  In any event, that is wholly irrelevant.  We cannot prevent tyrants from wanting to become tyrants.  We can, however, possibly teach those who find themselves in a position of moral dissonance from being given those tyrannical orders to act.

                Doris Lessing, in her article “Group Minds,” left a standing challenge:  teach disobedience in school.  I see her bet and up the ante.  I suggest not that blind disobedience, or even dispassionate behavior be taught, as she suggested,^[v] but instead to teach our children how to respond to moral dissonance.  This seems daunting, but it would be relatively easy to do, especially at the high school level.

                First, we must demonstrate how to identify moral dissonance when it occurs.  To do this, the teacher must order the students to do something that would be obviously immoral (although for the sake of safety, not something dangerous).  The teacher should then stop the experiment, and tell the children that they are not to do what he or she just ordered.  “The difference between the relief you feel right now, and the tension you just felt, outlines what moral dissonance feels  like.  When a person gives you an order, and you feel that sensation, you should pause and ask yourself this question, ‘Despite the authority of the person who ordered me to do this, is it right that I do it?”.  If you answer ‘no’, then refuse to do it.”  This is a rudimentary sampling of what the teacher might say to the student directly following the experiment itself.

                I cannot say with any authority that such a system would work, but we at least have the comfort of knowing that it hasn’t really been attempted yet.  If it does work though, it will change the world.  Nothing great comes from a stagnant mind.  All progress originates in the minds of those who dare to think differently, break the mold, strike new ground, and defy custom.  In the light of growing international tension, and a seemingly insurmountable problem with political corruption, the time to act is now.  If we wait too long, or never manage to see selective disobedience as a virtue, the cost could be grave.  My life, your life, and the lives of our sons and daughters are the stakes.  Do we want to take that risk?