One of Karl Marx's less well-known quotes mentioned that "religion is the opiate of the masses", referring to religion's ability to release humans from trivialties such as free thought(who needs free thought?) as well as giving man the sense of empowerment that it bestows upon the common man. Since this organised religion that Marx spoke of is merely a modified, sanctioned, souped-up, tricked-out, Super Soaker 3000 form of obedience, we could further desalinate his statement to come to the inevitable conclusion that it isn't religion, but obedience in general, which drugs and clouds the judgment of society. The staggering similarities are immediately apparent - Like drugs, certain aspects of organised obedience allow man to feel a sensation of unshakeable power, as they have in my own experience. Which could explain my skepticism on religion as a whole, but thats another issue for another time. However, much like drugs, mindlessly obeying and going with the majority takes away a person's capacity to think straight. Okay, most people don't even think straight on a regular basis, which is obviously a sign.

Case in point : Killing is bad, almost everyone knows that. There's an economical principal behind it, but that doesn't change the fact that killing is bad. Yet, the Christians of the past who set out on a glorious crusade to wipe Muslims off the face of the earth and then wipe their butts with Muslim hides never felt that what they were doing made them feel powerful and omnipotent. It would be altogether myopic and stupid to say that they had no moral reservations about what they did. Yet, what they, and many others of dubious morality, such as Madonna, Justin Gatlin or William Shakespeare, are monstrous in the public eye. And there is no doubt that they are just as human as any of us, just that they were doing what the organised religion said to do. Similarly, all of us, I don't care who you are, have done something at some point of time to make us feel powerful and raring to race with that ferrari, only to look back and realised that what we did was in fact, rather scummy. Such incidents, in fact, shine light on the darker, unexposed, unheralded side of human nature with regards to the willingness to obey despite potential moral repurcussions.

Similarly, unless we are the most obstinate of our race, we probably would have given in to the expectations of a group even though it wasn't a reflection of what we actually thought ; This is where the "don't underestimate stupid people in large numbers" T-shirts came from. Easier to just go with the flow than tire yourself out constantly defending your ideals and failing miserably. On some occasions this desperation to act or think in a certain way requires one to belittle, smite, stomp on and castrate another person in the process of "proving" myself to the group - A brotherhood test, if you will. The question is, people, as seemingly moral human beings with all the traditional capacity to love, feel, and to experience emotions, betray some of what makes me human in order to gain a sense of power by obeying the group? If the answer is yes, it certainly seems like a troubling response, because one would be hard-pressed to find a human who has not experienced one of these incidents for themselves. Is it therefore, ironically, human nature to betray others for the sake of power? Again, the answer is troubling - this would place such historical monstrosities like Adolf Hitler and Vlad the Impaler in the same category of regular humans. Indeed, there is a bit of a monster in every one of us waiting to be unleashed like Martin Yan's vegetable chopping skills.

Humans are tempted by the power afforded by a group - some humans very obviously affected more than most - however; this temptation, if acted upon, does not place an indelible stain upon their moral standing. It merely adds another layer to the complexity of what we call human morality. Can anyone say whether it is moral to betray another for one's own personal profit? Some might say that it would be immoral not to follow that what gives you pleasure, even if it involves a certain sacrifice on the part of others. Morals are inherently relative; there is no set of rules that everyone, or even the majority of people, can be said to subscribe to. And yet, most, if not all, laws are based on a perceived set of "common morals" that supposedly permeate every human within the jurisdiction of these laws. The minority who do not follow these laws are branded as criminals and deviants - and some rightfully so - but that does not mean that everyone who disobeys one of these moral laws is a brutish criminal. They could have the mentality that personal pleasure is paramount to the individual, and who are we to tell them otherwise? After all, we punish them because it is to our benefit in the end, no matter how we try to argue it for the good of society, that's all bull in the end. The answer is that these deviant attitudes are harmful to the all-powerful institution known as society, and society has a certain power to instill whatever it pleases into the hearts of those that are blind to everything but society in its most pure, absolute form.

Similarly, not all that are crimes are immoral, and all that is immoral may not be considered crime - yet another fault of having a common law. Many people, overly conceited females ecspecially, see adultery as a heinious crime that should have the offendor subject to a lifetime sentence of watching blonde chick flicks. Yet, in some countries adultery is a crime not punishable by law. This is largely due to social pressure again - Higher-ups all have a greater propensity to commit adultery, what with table-climbing secreteries and closed-door "massage specialists"(well, technically yes, since they specialise in relaxing one muscle in particular" so adultery is dealt away with altogether at times.

This reliance on society, and the willingness of people to obey it without question or objection, does indeed reflect an unsavory aspect of the human psyche. It is often disturbing to hear stories of people such as Adolf Eichmann who, had he not been born in the era of German fascism, would likely have risen to be a prominent and well-meaning member of society, and perhaps a celebrity chef or a reality show participant while he was at it. But due to the pressure from his superiors, he was able to commit terrible acts of genocide against the human populace. This begs the question: are we so different? The Milgram experiment shows that most people had few reservations about torturing their fellow humans, and it is easy to assume there were some that thought of their participation in the study as their duty, and it is likely they felt a strong sense of power by carrying out this "duty", even though it was at the expense of other humans. It is equally easy to assume that the people who had this mindset constitute the majority of our society. Certainly those who have the ability to perform their duty quickly and efficiently rise easily to the upper echelons of politics and corporations, and it is primarily these two factors that control and shape our society. So it is a short logical leap to conjecture that that those people who have such a hand in the way our society is formed are the same people who show few objections to situations that pose moral questions. This is simply the way our society is structured, but it is also disturbing to a significant degree.

Aside : This is why "dogs" exist. Not literal dogs, but I think we all know what I mean by "dogs".

What is moral about obedience? Is the fact that it empowers the individual who obeys sufficient grounds for the majority of people to obey without question? Or should we, as humans, be constantly committed to looking out for one another? These questions, as well as many more about the morality of obedience, may never be answered sufficiently. The most we can do is speculate as much as possible as to what it means to be moral or obedient, or whether they are inherently good or bad, and ultimately live out our ideals, albeit within the confines of society. However, we can assert that obedience has an extremely significant impact on people, and it does much to sway a person's individual morals, no matter how resilient or intelligent the person in question is. The willingness to obey seems almost genetically ingrained in our DNA, and can sway our actions far more than we'd like to believe, to the point where it has the ability to destroy our formerly-held set of morals for the mere sake of the power afforded by the collective consciousness of the group that we are obeying. In this sense, obedience can truly be said to be the opiate of the masses - Just like the big man said.

I had no idea what that was about, I'd probably have to read it again just to understand it.

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And in case anyone was wondering, I got BCE. Not spectacular, but not as awful as I expected it to be.