The Perils of Wilful Blindness

I have always wondered how people can blindly obey commands when they should/could see that things are not what it should be. Nothing can be explained by one reason, witness the horror of the holocaust. Or even as simple as the Emperor's best clothes fable. Fable or not, the fact is, some things are obviously not right, yet no one questions or at least raise issues.( I dont mean that kind of online ranting)

Reading this article extracted from Review section in Straits Times today helped give some perspective.

"...most people, when asked to perform a wholly unethical act, will do so. This is not because they are bad people. Such behaviour, Milgram argued, is inevitable when we join organisations because our focus shifts, from being good people to doing good work. And we see good work as doing what we are told.

We aren't just obedient; we are also highly conformist...... In other words, what we see depedns on what we know others have seen. Seeing is a social act....

.....Most challenging of all is the critical need to celebrate mistakes and value debate. Mistakes are how we learn and cultures which hide them learn nothing. Likewise, the organisation in which there is little debate turns out to be the one where there is little thinking."

Margaret Heffernan====================================
Debate should not be merely a rhetoric of pitting verbose skills or clever manouvering of viewpoints. And true, cultures which hide mistakes learn nothing.

But which culture will admit mistake and learn? And how many leaders can allow and initate debate?

And is conformism so inevitable as stated by Milgram? It depends on what one values....