How good are you when you think no one is looking?

The lethal dose

You may be familiar with Stanley Milgram’s infamous psychology experiment of the 1960s, where ordinary volunteers administered what they believed to be lethal electric shocks to other humans simply because a man in a white coat told them to.

Though in many cases reluctant, volunteers nevertheless went against their better judgement, administering shocks because they were told the accountability for the experiment lay with the ‘experimenter’.

In the past week, rioters, also assuming they would not be held accountable, ran amok in Britain’s streets.

Moral compass

So you and I are unlikely ever to be tempted to riot, but could we be sure that we would have refused to administer apparently lethal shocks in Milgram’s experiment?

Like me, you probably feel pretty confident that you would somehow be different to most of the participants. You would be stronger, you wouldn’t submit like that to authority that goes against your morals or go with the flow so quickly.

But can we be so sure?

As a Christian, unpopular as it is, I believe in moral absolutes. The current zeitgeist, however, is more in favour of post-modern relativism, which cannot claim such absolutes. This leaves true adherents lacking self-control and relying on external enforcement such as the police to keep them in order.

Although appalling, is it any surprise then that so many young people, lacking this internal compass and disdainful of the police, would go out to riot and loot? Why not, if they think they’ll get away with it?

Road rage

Horrified as I was by what I saw on the news, I was reminded that I can’t claim any moral high ground.

Like so many times before, whilst driving to the shops, I found myself impatiently shouting at other drivers from the security of my little Micra. I didn’t like the person I was being and would have been mortified if anyone else saw me acting like that.

I realised my revealingly bad behaviour was due to anonymity.

We are all culpable, when we think no-one’s looking – MP’s claiming extravagant expenses, drivers flouting speed limits, teenagers making illegal downloads.

If you or I were waiting behind a slow fellow shopper in a queue in Sainsbury’s or if they accidentally bumped our trolley, we would just carry on as normal and be polite. Who wouldn’t?

But is that because we are naturally polite? No, it’s because we are naturally afraid. Afraid of other people’s reactions, afraid of not coming across as nice – of being caught.

As soon as that obstacle of accountability is removed, as soon as our faces aren’t so easily seen through the car windscreen or are hidden behind hoodies, we become who we are – impatient and selfish individuals. And, as the riots have shown, it’s scary.

Accountability

Acknowledging this fallibility hurts our misplaced sense of pride. It means our true nature is not pleasant. It means that we need a consistent source of accountability.

A lack of the absolute means that it is not possible truly to live out atheistic relativism without a descent into chaos. It is only in God that we find the essential absolutes, an accountability to something other than ourselves, whether we acknowledge it or not.

But weak as we all are, we have nothing to be afraid of. The beautiful truth is that God has shown himself to value mercy over justice. He forgives tirelessly each time we come to him in repentance. Accountability to him is no chore but a great privilege, and one from which our nation would greatly benefit.