Just Do What The Pilot Tells You Analysis

In “The Genocidal Killer in the Mirror”, Crispin Sartwell argues that the average citizen can be convinced to commit atrocious crimes under the right circumstances from the premise that the traits to become a genocidal killer are not that uncommon, using examples from recent history such as the Holocaust in Nazi Germany and the Rwandan Genocide. Sartwell clarifies that although most people delude themselves into thinking that they wouldn’t partake in genocide if they were placed in a similar situation as many have before, it would take a “moral hero” (Sartwell 118) to refuse the opportunity given the circumstances. On the other hand, in “Just Do What the Pilot Tells You”, author Theodore Dalrymple claims that people's response to authority in respect to their obedience is what leads the average man to kill countless others. While both authors address the fact that it doesn’t take a malicious person to engage in genocide, Sartwell focuses more on the qualities that people who commit genocide commonly share, Dalrymple seems more concerned on how people react to authority in

He continues to specify that these traits could trigger the instinctive malicious feelings that have been demonstrated repeatedly throughout history. Sartwell drives his point home by mentioning that “If the same thing were happening in my town to people ‘not like me’ in some identifiable way, I would take the same approach. Many decent people have” (Sartwell 119). By stating this, he builds ethos with the audience considering that he doesn’t put himself above the average man, and implies that he would be capable of perpetrating genocidal acts under the right