Conformity and obedience to authority

       I am not sure how many of you follow the news of the world, but there is a dramatic changes happening at this moment in the Middle East known as “Arab Spring.”  People whom are curbed for many decades are coming out on the street, facing those dictators, and push them out of power. However, there is also a large population whom are fighting, desperately, to back off the demonstrators and fending the rulers. Many people might wander; why people are defending dictators?

There is an explanation for that:

     Obedience to authority is part of life routine, people follow the ruler’s orders even it was wrong. It never happened people tell the authority “NO” before and facing the government is unusual thing for the public to accept. I believe this part, in the Middle East, comes from religion that blended with their culture. There is an Islamic saying “the ruler is a shadow of the God and its Caliphs on the earth.” This makes people slaves for the authority.

       Another thing is the fear of revenge. People, whom were harming other people following the desire of rulers, are afraid they will get the same thing from potential new authority. I totally agree with them if they do, because it is true, the new rulers or the new course of government will harm all others who were affiliated with the old government. The best example of that is Iraq. After the invasion of Iraq the United State put only 55 people on the arresting list but millions of people lost their jobs because of their affiliation with former government, ignoring the sociological explanation for what they did was only the routine of obedience to authority.

      The only leader in the history who recognized that fact was Nelson Mandela. Mandela was able to recognize that people might harm other people by following authority, but this does not make them deviants. He issued what he called “National reconciliation” and he asked people that had being used by government, to visit the victims and apologize to them. Many of those people turned to be a good member of the society at the end.