The My Lai Massacre: A Military Crime Of Obedience By Herbert C. Kelman

This cynical approach in his article causes one to reevaluate their mindset; knowing that nobody is morally perfect makes us as people accept the humanity we all possess. While Sartwell focuses on the traits that made people genocidal killers, Szegedy- Maszak focuses on what made them sadistic torturers. According to Szegedy- Maszak traits that are necessary for torture are “authorization, routinization, and dehumanization” (76). These traits differ from Sartwell’s traits because they involve removing oneself from the traits that make us human. Szegedy- Maszak includes a testimony from one of the psychologists that says that these traits “ seem to tantalize someone’s moral compass, making it possible to do things that might be personally distasteful ” (77).

Being hated or praised by his people is a sector that comes with the high ranking of a prince. A prince cannot possess all the qualities that are regarded as honorable. Some of a prince’s acts that appear to be wicked are beneficial to the state. Due to the impracticality of a perfect ruler, a prince should contain some aspects of evil, despite the hatred of his people. What some may believe to be the acts of a malicious ruler are, in fact, in the best interest of the state.

The works of Dittmann and Golding imply that people will be more violent in a survival situations that are difficult to exit because they provide the person with an ideology to justify their actions so that they will not be held accountable. In the article “What makes good people do bad things?” the author states that situations can foster evil by “Providing people with an ideology to justify beliefs for actions”(Dittmann) and by making “exiting the situation difficult”(Dittmann). Golding examines these points in his novel through his character Jack, one of the older boys who fills a

Indifference need to be gain awareness and be stopped. He develops his claim by narrating the dangers of indifference, and how it affected his life then, describes how wrongful it is to be treated in such a way. Finally Wiesel illustrates examples of how indifference affected the world. Wiesel’s purpose is to inform us about the dangers of indifference in order to bring change about it. He establishes a straightforward tone for the president, ambassadors, politicians, and congressmen.

Cruelty is a word that can be defined many ways; however, I believe it means the “intentional and malicious infliction of physical suffering upon living creatures.” Stanley Milgram, a Professor of Psychology at Yale University, created an experiment in order to measure the willingness of a subject to obey orders from an Authority figure who instructed the subject to fulfill acts that would harm another individual. In Milgram’s Research article “The Perils of Obedience” and Lauren Slater’s Book Opening Skinner’s Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the twentieth century; they both also explore the topic of whether or not humans are innately cruel. Although some people may argue that people inherently cruel because of what transpired in the Catherine Genovese case, the results of the Stanley Milgram obedience experiment, and both the seizure and smoke experiment by Darley and Latane, these cases do not show that they were cruel because the subjects were influenced by diffusion of responsibility, authority and social cues. In Stanley Milgram’s “Obedience Experiment,” the experimental design was very simple. “Two people come to a psychology laboratory to take part in a study of memory and learning.

In the excerpt title “On Civil Disobedience” by Mohandas K. Gandhi describe injustice and a way to encounter it as well as his experience. Gandhi begins by explaining two types of injustice, people can encounter (taking the damage and violence). The author continues to provide his opinion about injustice. He describes satyagraha (Sanskrit), nonviolent resistance method, and how it works. Moreover, the author describe his belief (satyagraha) and how country or nation is controlled indirectly by the people.

On the other hand, the slave morality was a reaction to the dominant noble morality, where it denounces its oppressors as “evil” and then declares oneself as well based on the choice of punishment taken (Nietzsche, 1994, p. 12-15). The slave morality led to qualities like altruism, selflessness, and duty. The reaction is attributed towards negative feelings like resentment, hatred, and introspection which creates a moral framework that is not in touch with itself (Nietzsche, 1994, p. 12-25). Moreover, through violence slave morality defeated noble morality and replaced them, for instance, the French revolution. Therefore, Nietzsche disagrees with Kant on categorical imperative and considers it cruel because it is a projection of

Erich Fromm writes that revenge can be differentiated from normal defensive aggression in two ways – first, it occurs after the damage has been done, and hence is not a defence against threat, but of a much greater intensity; and second, it is often cruel, lustful and insatiable, where the problem of vengeance is a social problem that must be resolved in the complex interaction between the victim, the perpetrator and the social group . Therefore the revenge of the Illuminati is an example of justice going awry and taking over when society’s institutions fail. Because when justice is not forthcoming from a higher authority, people will and do take justice into their own hands. Acts of vengeance are the result. Punishment through retaliation is the typical response to breaking the rules of justice.

What exactly these boundaries are, and how to enforce them, is a source of controversy. Proponents of Just War Theory, such as John Rawls, believe that “in the conduct of war, a democratic society must carefully distinguish three groups: the states’ leaders and officials, its soldiers, and its civilian population” (Rawls 114), and there exist international laws and statues that provide heavy protection to civilians during wartime. As a result of this human intuition to fight fair, civilians have certain moral rights during wartime, despite any uncertainty around the logistics of these moral rights. The intentional killing of innocents during wartime violates these rights and oversteps the moral boundaries of

Oedipus’s weakness is in his judgment. For instance, Oedipus has poor judgment in rational thinking. To demonstrate, because of Oedipus’s poor judgment, he releases his anger in a violent manner without thinking through about his actions. Since Oedipus have poor judgment, he justifies his actions by thinking it’s okay to harm others back if they harmed him first. The leader roughly ordered me out if the