Stanley Milgram, Meet Ayn Rand: Understanding Compliance in Terms of Free Will
Those who believe and profess the misinformation of yesterday, now that approval has been granted for this term to lose its first three letters, tend to think that the authority was wrong, not them.
If you’re reading this article, you’ve heard of Stanley Milgram’s legendary experiments into compliance with orders from authority figures. Born out of the Nuremberg Trial and Eichmann defenses, they have been repeated over many decades with the same results, with the original purpose being to test the infamous defense – Ich habe nur befehle befolgt – “I was just following orders”, that, although not unique to the National Socialists, is associated most with their excuses during their trials. Perhaps the most noteworthy element is that this was not only for subalterns; the first Nuremberg Trials were for two dozen senior National Socialists, all of whom pleaded not guilty to the charges brought against them, and many of whom, including most notably Eichmann in his separate trial in 1961, uttered variations upon Ich habe nur befehle befolgt, despite being in the upper echelons of the Nazi Party. Milgram’s experiment shocked many people at the time, but its findings that most people will comply with an authority in undertaking an action that they might question as unethical or causing harm, even when the non-aggression principle isn’t being violated against them, have been repeated with great consistency over the years. The responses from participants in the experiments often match those given in the Nuremberg defense, for people appear to “experience a reduced sense of responsibility” if they have been ordered to enact unethical behaviors, and there is growing evidence that people genuinely feel this way. Even though they are the ones who carry out the actions.
Over the last few years, many readers of this page and similar journals will have felt this personally. Breezing through comment sections, one reads from people who are baffled about their family’s or former friends’ actions over the last two years. The anger and bewilderment are largely threefold: why people around them were compliant to the point of harm; lacking repentance for doing so; and why many people repeat claims that, mere months before, they had been decrying as false, and for which they were screaming for banning and unpersonning of those who dared to utter such ‘misinformation’, that just months later, was now declared ‘fact-checked’ information by the same ‘authoritative’ sources.
Although there are myriad reasons, including phenomena such as the Hawthorne Effect, the Milgram experiments provide a general psychological explanation. In short, in addition to other psychological effects, that might include feelings of safety in following a crowd or fears of retaliation, those people who currently profess claims that they previously hounded others for doing, with little if any apology for doing so, or were happy to strip liberties from others, didn’t feel much personal responsibility, or have told themselves things that reduce their sense of personal responsibility. However, how do we explain this philosophically?
Most well-read people are familiar with Milgram’s work. However, most literary people are ill-informed about Ayn Rand. Even among conservatives and libertarians, her work is frequently misunderstood, and it took me a while before understanding it fully. The traditional answers to the Nuremberg defense, that legal responsibility is separate from one’s perceived notions of responsibility, that this is a common psychological coping mechanism of those committing evil, or that the defendant is well-aware that they are lying, are sound arguments. However, Rand’s Theory of Free Will explains Milgram phenomena very neatly philosophically, and this can provide the secret to resisting Milgram predicaments, as well as understanding other people’s behavior, and the likelihood of their choices, in Milgram situations. When understood properly, Rand’s Theory of Free Will sounds like something from a motivational speaker hired to give an office training pep-talk, but it is very empowering.
Ayn Rand is a bit like Goldstein in Nineteen-Eightyfour. Everyone thinks they know her work and can tell you why she is wrong. However, I ask you to challenge the most well-read of your friends, even those who are libertarians or conservatives, to explain her philosophy to you. Rand’s work is difficult to explain to others partly because it is far-sighted, but partly because she uses commonly-employed terms in very different ways from their standard use. She did this quite deliberately. Similar to someone like Francis Bacon in painting, for instance, Rand, being largely self-taught and working outside mainstream academia, could be free from its biases and limits, but this also made her choose to present her work in the novel, quite literally, providing clear and memorable examples of her ideas, but often requiring further philosophical explanation for readers to grasp fully. For instance, her work on the mind-body dichotomy largely ignores metaphysical questions that lead philosophers into volumes on qualia or dualism; instead, she discusses the impact on human society of believing that intellectualism and ideas are separate from the real world and production; that material production is somehow separate from the realm of the mind, or that the world of intellectualism and ideas is somehow nobler than that of the practical person.
Rand’s Theory of Free Will is the main theory developed in The Fountainhead and supports one of the core tenants of the fully developed Objectivism, that humans have the capacity for reason, but it is their choice whether to exert it or not. Her Theory of Free Will is not about the biochemistry of the brain, nor the metaphysics of how an organism could exercise free will. Her Theory of Free Will is that an individual has their own power of reasoning, and thus has choice, which one can decide to exert or not. Choices are often limited, but, nevertheless, one has choice. Consequently, although an individual’s options are limited by factors outside their control – where they are born, the family into which they are born, the situation around them, the natural talents and physicality they are born with – their outcomes are nevertheless from their own choices. If you are in an abusive family, it is not your fault that you are born into it. But the choice exists to leave it. The choice might come with difficulties. But, nevertheless, there is an option. Rand argues this in the contrast between the two main characters of The Fountainhead, Howard Roark, who, despite having everything seemingly stacked against him, has success by forging ahead with his own choices to not compromise on what he thinks is correct. His classmate, Peter Keating, does the opposite, compromising constantly, doing what he thinks others want or believe rather than developing his own ideas and sticking by them, which initially brings him great success materially and in his career, but in the long-run, destroys his career and personal life, for he is found out over time to lack the qualities one needs for longevity, and, in Rand’s lexicon, lack a self. A key point that people misunderstand is not that one shouldn’t compromise; it’s that one needs to understand when one has a choice and that one has the ability to act on it, and when one should compromise, and when one shouldn’t.
This is not always easy. I once had a student who came from a very rich family. His parents bought him a house and a car when he was still at university (the stuff of dreams!) Nevertheless, he hated his father. I am unsure exactly why, but based on things he said, I guess that they were both two strong personalities that would always clash and his father was very controlling, the kind of person who thinks that being a father is to provide material goods and opportunities for his kids and planning their future for them, as opposed to building a relationship with them and trying to find out what they are interested in or would like to do. His hatred for his father was palpable, and most of the personal issues he suffered seemed to just stem from issues he had with his family. However, Rand’s Theory of Free Will says that his predicament was not determined by his background, nor culture, nor personality traits. It was caused by his choices. Despite his hatred for his father, he had decided to continue relationships with his family, causing him to butt heads with his father frequently, and suffer a feeling of enslavement to the family because of finances. It was a stellar example of how tough this can be sometimes; he had had a part-time job, the kind that millions of young people all over the world get when they are young, but bemoaned how most of the money went to the rent of his grubby little hostel room and had barely enough money for entertainment. He couldn’t give up the family money in order to be free of those he felt smothered by. But, in his situation, that was the price of freedom. Certainly initially, at least. But maybe he couldn’t see that far.
Those who now believe and profess the misinformation of yesterday, now that approval has been granted for this term to lose its first three letters, tend to think that the authority was wrong, not them. They think that the information was wrong, but not them, when they repeated this or believed it themselves. This way of thinking destroys one’s personal agency.
Philosophically, the Milgram phenomenon occurs when people don’t believe they have free will, in Rand’s understanding of the term. Subordinates and even high-level officials, even the person right at the top, frequently tell themselves that there is no choice. In doing so, they are limiting themselves psychologically, for they are limiting their own self-agency. This is what will lead them to believe that the responsibility of their actions is the responsibility of someone else. Worse, often not only that their choices are someone else’s responsibility, but that someone else was responsible before the action they undertook was undertaken. Those who now believe and profess the misinformation of yesterday, now that approval has been granted for this term to lose its first three letters, tend to think that the authority was wrong, not them. They think that the information was wrong, but not them, when they repeated this or believed it themselves. This way of thinking destroys one’s personal agency. I’ve seen it personally in many people. When I have told them that what they are saying now is what a year ago they said was incorrect, they will talk about ‘new information’, even if this information was the disinformation of last year. If I say that the information given from particular sources was wrong, they might not even be able to admit this easily, although many will. But if I say that they were wrong, nearly everyone I have spoken to personally balks at this. It is this that shows the true basis of their actions. As they don’t think that they were wrong, they don’t believe that they have much free will.
I suspect that, apart from cultural influences, the reason for this is that people feel ashamed about being wrong. But the point is not that you shouldn’t or can’t be wrong. The point is to accept that you could be wrong, and often you don’t know what the truth really is. Consequently, the answer to this predicament is to have humility. Having a well-developed sense of self-agency actually breeds humility much more than arrogance. It is for this reason that Rand’s work is often misunderstood, although those are separate essays.
I have thought a lot about it over the years, and I think that the reason this is difficult for many people is that, additionally, you don’t feel you are wrong when you don’t know something, because those who should have taught you didn’t teach you. Everyone has felt the frustration of learning something, and then the frustration of asking why someone didn’t teach you this earlier. I certainly have. The answer to this is that those people, be they friends, family, teachers or fellow citizens, are 100% responsible for not having done this, even if they were ignorant. The term responsible doesn’t have to be so serious, although it can be; it just means that it is based on decisions that they made. However, it is hard to admit not so much that your parents or those around you taught you wrong, but were ignorant. It creates a well of potential issues – anger that you didn’t have better luck – if they were wrong about that, what else are they wrong about? – what does it show about their conceptions of their own self-agency? You aren’t responsible for that. But you are 100% responsible for your choices regarding the information given to you, for not questioning it, or not trying to learn about this yourself. During this process there will be a lot that you don’t learn, as humans don’t have enough time to do so. This, again, breeds humility: responsibility is often just admitting that you were wrong. However, many people only use this term when trying to chastise someone or penalize them for something, which, again, might be why people don’t put Rand’s Theory of Free Will into practice.
Those National Socialists who were tried, even the elite ones who were found in the middle and later-half of 1945, compromised on things that they shouldn’t have, and lied to themselves, either with ease or with effort, that what they were doing was essential for the times; it was helping the country; it’s good for one’s career, or numerous other crap that they must have told themselves, that resulted in pleas of not guilty, astoundingly, in the most famous trials in history. In doing so, it is easy to see how the notion of self-agency required to have resigned at some point, refused to sign something, hell, to just question a suggestion put forward in a meeting, let alone take risks like an Oscar Schindler, would have been burned down to the wick. Milgram’s participants did the same thing, reducing their notion of self-agency, and therefore their conception of their continued actions as being their own choice, by telling themselves that the authority was asking them, even though they were the person that flicked the switch; the situation demanded it, even though they had doubts. And so on. And when people have been compliant to the point of harm, or claim things that just a short while before they were harassing others for claiming, without a whisper of apology or admission of some sort of wrong, they can only do this when such thoughts drown out any of the choices that make up self-agency. This is their responsibility, not yours. Even if it hurts, take whatever relief you can from this, and remember that this piece of wisdom is what can arm you against the authoritarian, bullying forces whenever they come your way.