If You Don’t Read This Blog, We’ll Kill This Writer

The title, of course, is a parody of National Lampoon’s famous January 1973 cover:  If You Don’t Buy This Magazine, We’ll Kill This Dog.  That magazine cover ranks as one of the greatest of all time.  The dog’s face is absolutely priceless, conveying real emotion about a perceived threat.

I don’t know how many were induced to buy that issue, but if its satirical incorporation of emotional extortion and appeal for obedience and authority are any indication, I suspect their circulation numbers did show an increase.  Besides, it targeted our better natures.

The reverse was perhaps best showcased by Dr. Stanley Milgram during his experiments of the early sixties.   In these, he had participants, “teachers”, supposedly administering increasingly larger charges of electrical shocks to their “learners” if they gave incorrect answers.  The “teachers” were told it was a study testing the effectiveness of punishment as a learning tool, in actuality Milgram was interested in the scope of our obedience to authority.  In the initial experiments, 65% of the “teachers” systematically increased the shock all the way up to 450 volts, even though they expressed distress doing so.  The experiments exposed our willingness to disregard our own better morality when assured we’d be held blameless.  The basis for conducting these stemmed from the defense of Eichmann, et al, in answering for their crimes against humanity: they were “only following orders.”

One criticism of Milgram’s work expostulated that the subjects may indeed have been aware that they weren’t really harming anyone; that their victims were faking it.  A decade after Milgram, Charles Sheridan and Richard King decided to test this idea.  In order to do so they had to really induce suffering.  Naturally, they could not do this on actual humans; the law wouldn’t allow that.  Their experiment became known as Shock the Puppy.

In Shock the Puppy, Sheridan and King took a ‘cute, fluffy puppy’ and asked the participants to give it real electrical shocks as a training method.  As the puppy did wrong, the shocks supposedly increased in voltage.  The puppy was given a shock that made him jump (some articles suggest a progression of bark, jump, howl).   Of the 26 testers, half men, half women, only six men refused to continue on with the experiment.

The outcome of these, and similar experiments, suggested that only those who disregarded authority, were unafraid of disproval, and held themselves personally accountable, ‘rebels’, if you will, had the internal fortitude to stop the infliction of pain.

They’re still conducting these types of experiments, though I believe with only human subjects.  Participants are still told it’s a study on the effectiveness of punishment as a method of learning.  The majority are still willing to inflict torture.

Now, I’m not advocating for blanket civil disobedience. Civilized society needs rules.  It needs persons of authority.  But these experiments have shown how great our capacity to inflict suffering is.  We need rebels when our humanity is at stake.

I would like to think I would not shock the puppy.

I first learned of Dr. Milgram’s experiments on obedience some years ago.  There are numerous articles, editorials and videos posted on line.  If you are interested in learning more, perhaps Wikipedia is a good place to start  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

- Shawna Katan, Port Alberni, BC