I have always asked myself what I would do in a lot of historical settings. I think after seeing some if the pictures of the lynchings and watching the movie, I began to ask that question again. It is very easy for us to look back in history and ask "why didn't they say no"? But, how do you know that you would have said no? I am by no means condoning the horrific instances of cruelty that have occured in the past. I am merely asking us to examine ourselves and attempt to not be overly critical. The soldiers in the movie killed innocent people, yes. But, they must live with the guilt of following a bogus order for the rest of their lives. Imagine being a German when Hitler was in power. What would make you question his leadership knowing that you would most likely die by doing so? Imagine you were born to parents in the south who own slaves and you knew no other life. Wouldn't you be inclined to follow in their footsteps? Like I stated before, I do not mean to offend or condone any actions of the past. I just think that everyone should examine the fact that we are lucky to be able to think for ourselves and post on something like this. We can say what we want without having a gun to our head. I just can't ignore the fact that some people have made choices in the past that may be wrong, but that at the time seemed right. Haven't you?

I completely agree with you, Erin. It is hard to place yourself in a circumstance and say that you would definitley be able to say no. I asked myself that same question when we watched the video on the shock experiment. How do we know that if we were in that situation that we would be able to stand up for ourselves? And how do we know that we would even have the capacity to question leadership and authority figures? It is easy to look to the past and say, "well what were they thinking? I know better than that." Another situation involving looking into oneself was the Colombine shooting where one of the girls faced by the gunmen was asked if she believed in God. If there was a gun pointed in your face, would you stand up for what you believed in, whether it is moral or religious or anything you have strong feelings toward? In the end I don't think that I will ever be able to say, this is how I will or would have reacted to a particular situation because until I'm confronted with it I won't know how I will react under the circumstances.

Your point is well taken, Erin, and I can't help but apply your thoughts to a long active debate within the historical community.

Is it the right of the historian to apply moral judgements to the events of the past? Is there an absolute right and wrong that can be attributed to any action of humans throughout our history? Or are right and wrong, good and evil, relative and based upon the context of the historical events?

When in 1484 Pope Innocent VIII declared:

It has come to Our ears that members of both sexes do not avoid to have intercourse with evil angels, incubi, and succubi, and that by their sorceriers and by their incantations, charms, and conjurations, they suffocate, extinguish, and cause to perish the births of women

He initiated a terrible period of systematic torture and execution of "witches" all over Europe. At his own deathbed, in 1492, Innocent succomed to an illness that was treated through transfusion, killing three young boys in the process, and by suckling at the breast of a newborn mother. This sounds deplorable to our modern ears, but in the 15th century context, when modern medicine and the revelations of science are centuires away, can the modern historian hope to understand such actions?

How are we to interpret such wild, backwards behavior? Surely tradgedies such as this cannot be judged by the same type of morality that guides our behavior today.

Take for example the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. These were a group of very average soldiers like any battalian forced to wage war in this remote part of Indochina. But, the circumstances of the war, the body count, the invisible enemy, the booby traps, all led to a mindset that enabled everyday people to commit acts of such unimaginable horror that the historian is tempted to deplore them as evil. But this is not our role. Certain things can be learned from these incidences, but to judge them as right or wrong is not always appropriate.

Another example of this type of historical delima is found in the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945. Surely this military triumph for the United States prevented a land invasion that could have cost the USA hundred of thousands of lives, and even more for the Japanese; but, the casualties would have been focused on the lives of those involved in military positions, not necessarity on an innocent population, such as that that was completely destroyed in Hiroshima.

It's an interesting question, and one that I consider every time I read about some atrocious behavior that another human in the past committed. We are a flawed species, and much of what our generation is responsible for (energy crisis, biodegradation, bigotry, murder) will all be accordingly judged in history, but this does not mean that we were evil to invent the automoblie or do harvest rainforests for its resources..we just didn't know any better at the time! But I think we are learning..

I agree that I have often wondered what I would do in the types of situations such as genocides and the my lai incidents and so on. What happened seems so wrong to us and we wonder why no one did anything to stop it, but I can't honestly say that I know for a fact that I wouldn't have gone along with it. It is so easy to judge people looking in from the outside.
I think that these people did these things because they were so easily influenced. It goes back to the whole blind obedience thing. Personally I think that it is important for me to know where I stand on issues and to know where I won't be compromised and to really dig into what people are teaching me so that I know whether I agree with it or not. If you have that kind of grounding, then hopefully you will be less likely to be shaken from in given those circumstances.
Given this, I still can't say I know what I would have done. I seem to be evaluating and re-evaluating things that I think are important all the time. At this point in my life I am still trying to figure it all out. I should hope that I would not go along with the crowd if what they were doing went against what I thought was right, but I am human, and humans do strange things sometimes that they never thought they would do.

It is so easy to look back now on history and see what went wrong in certain situations. The saying goes "hindsight is 20/20". There is no way to specifically say I definitely would have done "this" in that situation. I would only hope that I would be strong enough in what I believe in to stand up for what is right. You have to be strong in your own character and beliefs and just know that you are a strong person, and now knowing what happened, maybe we are better equipped to make decisions that would relate to the situations like the one the experiment presented. I know that I really respect authority but I won't do something that I think is wrong. Where that puts me... I'm not sure. I agree though, it is pretty scary to see what lengths people will go to when tested by authority.

I'm glad this topic was brought up. A lot of people look back on certain situations and wonder how people could have been so cruel. But if we grew up in the same time we probably would have done the same thing. It was just their way of life and they grew up in that environment. In the future people might look back on our generation and think we did some terrible things when we think they are fine now. If I were in those situations I probably would have gone along with everyone else because I would not have known better. And I can't say for sure if I would stand up for what I believed in if a gun was pointed at my head. Unfortunately, fear can get the best of us sometimes. Everyone needs to put themselves in the other person's shoes, and think about how society was before they say "I would have stood up to that". Education is important to help us learn from our mistakes and not let our judgements get in the way. A lot of us would have done the same if we were in the same situations as in the lynchings or My Lai.

"It is very easy for us to look back in history and ask "why didn't they say no"? But, how do you know that you would have said no? I am by no means condoning the horrific instances of cruelty that have occured in the past. I am merely asking us to examine ourselves and attempt to not be overly critical."

"I just think that everyone should examine the fact that we are lucky to be able to think for ourselves and post on something like this. We can say what we want without having a gun to our head. I just can't ignore the fact that some people have made choices in the past that may be wrong, but that at the time seemed right. Haven't you?"

You've made some really good points here. It is, in fact, very easy to ask "why didn't they say no?" All the while, we envision ourselves always "doing the right thing". The right thing is not always easy to define, in truth. While we may not have lynchings to say no to, I do propose that we think about the ways that we can say no when the opportunity arises (and it so often does). Change takes place when enough people have the courage to say no together!