compliance nation

I just finished watching a movie about the lengths the American people will go to when they believe they
are complying with law enforcement!

Here is the storyline of the movie:
At a fast food restaurant, the manager, Sandra, is having a bad day. Suddenly, she gets a phone call from a man claiming to be a police officer who has a complaint that one of her young female employees has stolen from a customer. At the orders of this authoritative sounding stranger, Sandra takes the apparent accused, Becky, to a back room to search her before she is picked up. Once there, the phone scammer manipulates the gullible personnel into participating in Becky's sexual humiliation that grows more twisted with every new sucker on the phone. Only when one final person has the conscience to revolt do they realize the crime they were tricked into, which the real police are hard pressed to solve.

The whole time I watched I could not believe that the director expected us to believe that any of this could possibly happen until it was all over and I found out it was based on a true story! So what would make so many
people do so many immoral and unethical things just to comply with an authority figure? Is there not something seriously wrong with the American people in general? The only thing that this even comes close to in comparing to is The Milgram experiment, where people believe they are giving shocks to hidden persons!

I don't understand why we have devolved into these mindless automatons hell bent on following the will of those
we see as superiorly authoritative! Have we no will of our own? Are we so desperate to be told everything? All this makes me think of where do we learn this ability to do unquestionably for authority no matter how wrong it seems?
All I could come up with is the Public schooling system! The problem is I have always questioned everything in life
and I have gone to public school, at least up until 1984 and so I ask to you ATS where did it all go horribly wrong?
Have I drawn some wrong conclusions? Where do we go from here?

Oh by the way if you haven't already figured out the name of the movie? Compliance!

reply to post by nosacrificenofreedom


This was a storyline of SVU also.

The antagonist was played by Robin Williams....great show and worth the watch.

Go talk to a hacker, they've been doing this "social engineering" trick for years

reply to post by nosacrificenofreedom


Think it goes back a bit further,they didn't have American schooling in Germany and yet most Jews went compliantly to the trains.I'm not being racist,just saying that I asked my mom when I was little and first learning about the holocaust. I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that knowing you were going to your death,you would just walk on a train car and not fight back when you had nothing left to lose.My mom couldn't explain it so I started reading up on it.

Which brought me to Stockholm syndrome. Which is interesting how people reacted during they're captivity.

Definition
Stockholm syndrome refers to a group of psychological symptoms that occur in some persons in a captive or hostage situation. It has received considerable media publicity in recent years because it has been used to explain the behavior of such well-known kidnapping victims as Patty Hearst (1974) and Elizabeth Smart (2002). The term takes its name from a bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden, in August 1973. The robber took four employees of the bank (three women and one man) into the vault with him and kept them hostage for 131 hours. After the employees were finally released, they appeared to have formed a paradoxical emotional bond with their captor; they told reporters that they saw the police as their enemy rather than the bank robber, and that they had positive feelings toward the criminal. The syndrome was first named by Nils Bejerot (1921–1988), a medical professor who specialized in addiction research and served as a psychiatric consultant to the Swedish police during the standoff at the bank. Stockholm syndrome is also known as Survival Identification Syndrome.

Now I could go on and on about what I think are the motivating factors that cause some people to do this.But for simplicity I'll just say that I believe there are always some people that find it easier to 'get along' than to have the guts and take the chance of standing up for themselves and having to risk anything to fight back.

Yes unfortunately it is in our collective psyc to bleat like sheep and go to the slaughter.

reply to post by Dimithae


I realize what you are saying and I believe this goes far beyond the Stockholm syndrome!
For one the people this has been done to all knew those that were treating her as a criminal!
The caller who was pretending to be the authorities was not there in person and had no
way to hurt these people other then in the manipulation of her mindless coworkers!
All those that have been diagnosed with Stockholm were willing victims but this girl
was pleading for this to stop! They are similar but I don't agree that this is the same thing!
I believe this is more about doing immoral acts because an authoritative figure tells you
to do it!

You should really watch the movie to see how utterly pathetic all these people were especially
the victim and the manager! We act unquestioning to those we consider authoritative Whether
it's our representatives or police that we are willing to do immoral actions to almost any point!

So I have been wondering as I've stated already where this has come about and if this is the case
for the majority of the people living in the US then are we doomed to live in tyranny because
of irrational reverence for Authority? I believe the lack of rebellion already shows this to be true
but I wonder how far TPTB can go before we will stand against this kind of unchecked power?
Will we ever take any action to prevent ourselves or our children from coming to harm or is it
already too late?

Unfortunately, not surprising. Look at the famous Milgram experiment on obedience. His conclusion at the end of the experiment (40 male participants) was that "Ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human being." 65% of the participants in the experiment flipped a switch they thought could kill the other person. I found this compulsion to obey startling.

Milgram Experiment