Why do we obey bad orders?

If you look at everything in the lens of Pain and Pleasure, then you will miss a third element, conditioning.

Conditioning is what happens when you relinquish you conscientious thought process over to pre-programmed responses.

Some common pre-programmed responses:

• Saying “thank you”
• Holding the door
• tipping glasses.
• Getting agitated when you see a letter from your utility company, even without opening it.
• Salivating over the smell of food.
• Getting stressed out on April 15th.

What is boot camp? It is the process of building up both physical and mental strength to endure the riggers of being a soldier. However, it is also the process in which the military uses to condition your responses of patriotism, obedience, threshold management, and more. Some of these conditioning factors are very admirable. However, I have a problem with two of them. Patriotism is the zeal of one’s country to the point of being nearly a religious zealotry. People in and out of the military have fought and killed enemies and allies alike in the name of patriotism. Treason laws are actually based on this concept to some degree. However, if you are going to have a state, then you will have to have some clear definition of treason, and a proper response. But lets get back to the other aspect of conditioning that I want to talk about, obedience.

There are more than one form of obedience, so I will narrow the scope some. Obedience with free thought of problem solving, and blind obedience. People who survive the military, and many who become members of Veterans against war, are people who somewhere in their military career became the first form of obedient, while the second generally are the ones who get violent, many times just verbally, even in simple discussion.

The blindly obedient person does and thinks what he is told to do and think, because it sounds right, since he is not equipped to evaluate against other forms of discussion. Many of his highly educated thought processes include a historical view that is very slanted with a patriotic view of each historical event.

Americans are evil, Muslims are evil, French are evil, Germans are evil, Chinese are evil, Japanese are evil, Italians are evil, etc… Each of these phrases has been used by one or more groups of people in my life time alone. Why? The people have been in a social boot camp that promotes this one way thinking. I have yet to meet an evil German or Iranian. I have yet to meet and evil American. I have met several people who have a very confused view of humanity, and confuse the masses to be clones of a dictated stereotype.

A dictated stereotype is a description of a class of people that has been stated a fact from one or more sources, and presented in such a manor that “it must be so”, or “he’s crazy if he doesn’t believe that”, and my favorite “everyone knows this”. At each stage in my life, there was a different stereotype being promoted. Had I listened to each one, I would have ended up being a mass-homicide suspect. Oh thank God, I had the wisdom in my youth to question the reality of all media, and my friends, so that I wouldn’t get caught up in those lies.

So I think you now have enough background information for me to delve into the core of this post.

• Are we really liberating people, or are we re-enacting Vietnam, and creating a river of blood to satisfy the god of lies?
• When you pull that trigger, are you really targeting a terrorist, or since you are on their soil, are you targeting a domestic liberator against an oppressor?
• If your home is being occupied by a force that claims benevolence, while killing neighbors, would you still want them in your home?
• If you raid some person’s home over a late utility bill, and treat it as a swat raid, is that really appropriate?
• Is shooting a dog, that is fenced in, really in self defense if you have no rational reason to enter that fenced in area?
• Because the guy next to you is your buddy, does that mean it is right for him to break the law, and you don’t report him?
• Is it right for a legislator to tell you to use lethal force against people who are not harming a single person?
• Is it right for you to obey a law that was written for you to use lethal force against people who are not harming another person?
• Is it right for a legislator to tell you to steal the property of another person, on the grounds of what it “could be used for”?
• Is it right for a legislator to tell you to steal the property of another person because by harming that one person, they are now contributing to your salary, and theirs, and a trickle amount to the welfare of the people?
• Is it right for you to use force, or the threat of force, against people, because you or your signing authority boss has a piece of paper stating that they get to steal and claim it is legal?
• Is theft right then it hurts the masses, and feeds the entity that is doing the stealing?

There is nothing on the list above that hasn’t happened in 2015. That means that there is a conditioned response of obedience in the people doing these horrible things, which is overriding their normal human factors. People don’t normally attack and harm other people who have not wronged them. That would be a pain response.

People would normally give freely to others, because that is a pleasure response. However, we are seeing neither here. Maybe the obedience has been so preprogrammed to trigger a pleasure response when obeying, or a pain response when disobeying. But the habitual process of just plain obedience is the core here.

We obey bad orders, because we are still unconscious and don’t think about the order, or what the outcome beyond the mission perspective is on the outcome.

Blind obedience works in opposition to empathy. This is why I am starting to believe that addiction is also a blind obedience. Sure and addict will find and fight the addiction, but if he fails, then it is because the habit has become divisive against his own empathy for himself.

I’m not saying that he isn’t feeling sorry for himself, but he is being trapped in that self pity, and loathing, rather than mourning what needs to be let go, so he can move on.

A guy loses his wife and turns to the bottle. Do you think that this is being in mourning over the loss, or this is now pity? A guy loses his job, is this pity, or mourning, when he turns to escapism?

Blind obedience, Addiction, Violence, etc, they are all the same face of the beast that is just wearing different makeup. They are all anti-empathy. You give up your empathy, you give up being the core of human. Too much of our society promotes relinquishing that empathy for other gains, and we see what we get.

If you want to see someone get past their dangerous traits, then feed their empathy. You are transformed by the renewing of your mind. Not by the drugging of your body.