I highly suggest watching this entire show on Discovery Channel called ‘Curiosity: How Evil Are You?‘ The show basically conducts the original Stanley Milgram Experiment with modern day participants.
The results are shocking. The experiment showed that today’s society is equally as susceptible as those participants in the original experiment 50 years ago.
Milgram wanted to answer the question on how humans could violate their consciousness and moral code in the name of ‘following orders’. Here is a quote from wikipedia about the experiment:
“Was it that Eichmann and his accomplices in the Holocaust had mutual intent, in at least with regard to the goals of the Holocaust?” In other words, “Was there a mutual sense of morality among those involved?” Milgram’s testing suggested that it could have been that the millions of accomplices were merely following orders, despite violating their deepest moral beliefs.
So here is the really motivating part about this experiment that I wanted to share and get out there. In the show towards the end, they modified the experiment to have two teachers, with one of the teachers being an actor. That actor would refuse administering the shock as it got higher, and the experiment was to see if their fellow teacher who thought this was real, would refuse with them. That they would not follow orders, and follow the path of someone that chose not to shock the learner.
In the show, the non-actor ‘real’ teacher did refuse, and that is very significant to this post.
Jundism is about being the guy that does question authority or leads by example. To be a positive influence within your team, and not fall within the trap of group think. Within a group setting, everyone might have the same doubts about a certain task or person, but until someone comes forward and acts on those doubts, everyone will just go along. It is my hope that you the reader will recognize how important this is. Just watch the experiments if you don’t believe me.
In the video below, this woman was a real participant and practitioner of Jundism, who actually said no right off the get go. She did not go along with the experiment because she actually thought about it. She had the courage to do what is right and go with her guts and moral code.
But she was also very rare, and the show identified how very few people actually said no to giving shocks to the learner. Let alone giving the ‘killing’ or life threatening shock to a learner. It is quite the thing to watch all of these normal everyday people, actually go through the act of harming an innocent person, all because someone said to do it.
What I want to leave the reader with is that if you can fight peer pressure, fight the urge to just go along with the group, and actually question authority or the group, then you could potentially save lives or serious heartache within your company. And it doesn’t have to be serious stuff, and it could be just leadership by example for everyday things like ‘training, fitness, decision making, ideas, innovations, leadership, etc.’. But it could also be leadership by example in ‘integrity’ situations, or deals where a line could be crossed by individuals, and no one else is stepping up to say ‘hey, this is not right’.
There are many facets of a contract and mission where you have the opportunity to show how it is done correctly. If you are the guy that does things right, then you will have a good chance at bringing other folks with you on that path. –Matt
The experimenter (E) orders the teacher (T), the subject of the experiment, to give what the latter believes are painful electric shocks to a learner (L), who is actually an actor and confederate. The subject believes that for each wrong answer, the learner was receiving actual electric shocks, though in reality there were no such punishments. Being separated from the subject, the confederate set up a tape recorder integrated with the electro-shock generator, which played pre-recorded sounds for each shock level.