Reply #32: Obedience can be a dangerous thing

[gollygee]

One of the things Nazi Germany has been blamed on is the strongly punitive style of discipline parents in Germany at that time used, and how they stressed obedience as the most important thing a parent could teach a child. How do you get so many people to go along with something so awful? Obedience.

from: http://www.lifeseminars.com/askalison/0401.asp

Children grow up much faster than we would like, and we can’t make their decisions for them and protect them for ever. When the teen years arrive, our kids only have a few years to prepare for independent adulthood, and nature drives them to become increasingly independent. But if they’ve been taught to obey, they don’t know how to think through their decisions beyond “What do mum and dad say?” Their ideas of right and wrong are based on what they have been told rather than on deeper concepts like “Does it harm anyone?” So they move out into the wider world without any idea of how to make their own decisions. And they look for someone new to obey. Enter the peer group, or the charismatic adult leader, or the persuasive boyfriend. They transfer their obedience to someone new, who may or may not share their parents’ values. They haven’t learned how to evaluate someone’s values, or to make their own decisions, other than the decision to obey or not obey. They become followers. German psychiatrist Alice Miller (no relation) has studied the way in which the obedience-oriented child-rearing in the Germany of the 1930s led to the Nazi regime. People who were used to obeying their parents obeyed their leaders even when their leaders ordered them to commit unspeakable crimes.