Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem

By: Aaron Schwartz
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:26:58
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From the very childhood most parents teach their children to be obedient and stress that obedience is a virtue, and disobedience is a flaw. That is the opinion accepted in the society. There exist a lot of religions that teach us to be obedient. But is disobedience really a demonstration of someone’s rottenness or is that something different? Erich Fromm has stressed out several aspects that show us the contrary. He believed that disobedience is always an act, a manifestation of someone’s will or idea. He also stated that obedient man is actually a slave, not a fully developed human being. Third his statement that can be read between the lines: that the efforts of disobedience move the progress.

Disobedience is an act. To be obedient is easy: you just go with the stream. To be disobedient means to take a risk, and disobedient individual nearly always realizes the consequences of his action. Therefore, disobedience is a demonstration of a) character b) thoughts c) constructive approach. It is also one step forward compared to obedience, as it can possibly lead to some changes. “One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws” (Martin Luther King, Letter from Birmingham Jail). Disobedience can also be a manifest of someone’s moral values while obedience doesn’t give a chance to express these values.

Obedient man is actually a slave. An obedient person follows the rules, which were created before, regardless of the fact whether the game directives are fair or not. “Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones” (The Lottery by Shirley Jackson). This story is a vivid demonstration of how people become slaves of an uncivilized tradition. The scientists have once held an experiment: they put five monkeys in a cage and put the bananas in it. Each time one monkey tried to take a banana, all five were stroken with current rush. In some time, when a monkey wanted to take the fruit, others started hitting it. That’s how the tradition was created. And then scientists changed the monkeys in the cage one after one, and turned off the current. As s result no one was hit by the current, but the monkeys went on terrorizing the one that wanted to take the banana.

That is a pure example of obedience in its worst meaning. And Fromm tells us that such cases are intolerable. A human should not be a slave of the tradition, like those monkeys, but a thinker and thus disobedient one. The efforts of disobedience move the progress. Fromm stresses that without the disobedient people, without the prophets and revolutionaries there could be no way forward. He also expressed a thought that such changes in the society, the existence of prophets and leaders would be unnecessary if all people were disobedient in the sense of realizing their actions, and not blindly obeying something.

According to Erich Fromm, disobedience is not a vice. It is the manifest of a true human being able to think and interact with the outer world. He expressed a fear that “Human history began with an act of disobedience and might end with an act of obedience”, which actually meant that the mankind is going the wrong way – the way of making everyone standard. Fromm sees this way as a deadlock. Society can only be truly human if it consists of thinking people, who are more disobedient than obedient.

Fromm sees the increasing influence of power of state, society etc. on an individual in our times. The pressure of power makes people alike, not able to reason and criticize; and such people cannot be disobedient. So, for the sake of life this should be stopped … and tomorrow is with those who are DISobedient!

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