Imagine playing a friendly game of Simon Says. “Simon Says: touch your feet. Simon Says: move your chair forward. Move it back. Oh! You’re out! Simon Says: punch your neighbor in the eye.” Whoa there…Simon seems to have gone way off the deep end. I would never hurt another person just because someone told me to, you’d probably think. Only, there is someone who proceeds to punch their neighbor. “Why’d you do that? What’s wrong with you?” the neighbor would wail in anguish. Now the game is ruined. Everyone is scared of Simon because although he didn’t physically commit the foul, he was the power that brought pain.
People in positions of power have the ability to control the actions and thoughts of others, while maintaining absolution for anything that happens as a result. Just like in the game, Simon instructs all the players on what they should do. Despite what their leader instructs, each player is fortunate enough to have free will over what they do and don’t do. Because of the individual free will, Simon can never shoulder
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Observed during the Holocaust and studied later at Yale University, authority can be used to manipulate people into doing just about anything. In a study of obedience, the Milgram Experiment tested how individuals would respond to being forced to administer high voltage shocks to a person behind a wall. Even when the unseen person would scream and beg for the shocks to end, the experiment overseer would tell the test subject to continue giving shocks. The results of the study showed that people were willing to bypass their morals in attempts to follow orders from an authoritative figure. Unfortunately, many outsiders would assess this situation and fail to realize that the terror does not lie within the people who submitted to the viscous instructions, but within the person who commanded them and watched the ordeal unfold from the