A 9/11 conspiracy couldn't be kept secret for long?, page 1

Ah, many would be surprised as to how sheepish people can be. A little pressure from an authority figure, or a group of peers, and behavior can be critically altered from what we perceive as normal. Take, for example, the Nazis. Masses of Germans were totally brainwashed, no? Well, behold the power of psychology.

Check the Milgram Experiment. It's a classic example of how people will behave as they're told, when they're told, by an authority.

The experiment (and I apologize for digressing somewhat) went basically like this: a subject was told that he/she would be delivering electric shocks to someone based on their responses to certain questions. A wrong answer would illicite a shock, which grew in intensity with each wrong answer, into lethal amounts. In reality, the subject wasn't really shocking anyone, but an actor would be playing up being shocked.

The experiment was to see how far the subject would go in following orders, even when it was clear that he was causing extreme harm to another human being, right in front of his own eyes. Sort of like Vader watching Palpatine fry his son Luke without (at first anyway) doing anything about it, eh?

The experiment showed that 2/3 of the subjects, despite all the pleading of the actor whom they thought they were clearly severely shocking, carried out the entire thing, into ridiculous amounts of electricity, simply because they were being pushed on by an authoritative figure. They were torturing simply because they were being told to. Just average people. They objected here and there, but nonetheless continued all the way until the end. The other 1/3 stood fast and refused to complete the experiment after certain voltages. I don't think anyone really protested until they were past 300 volts, though.

And out of all the participants, and even though some objected and stopped, Milgram noted that none offered the actor whom they thought they were shocking any help at all, at any point.

We can be very cruel and obedient beings. It's in our nature, and unfortunately isn't unusual at all. Orders will be followed, and even when rank is broken here or there, there are still enough people following orders to control damage. Coverups would be easy peasy today, especially considering the situation with corporate major media. En masse, nearly all individuality is overridden, as in mobs, and the result is a single group individuality.

[edit on 21-12-2005 by bsbray11]