Apparent cruelty can restore political order and loyalty

Evidence

If harming a person involves direct bodily contact, the perpetrator is denied the comfort of unnoticing the causal link between his action and the victim’s suffering. The causal link is bare and obvious, and so is the responsibility for pain. When the subjects of Milgram’s experiments were told to force the victims’ hands on to the plate through which the electric shock was allegedly administered, only 30 per cent continued to fulfil the command till the end of the experiment. When, instead of grasping the victim’s hand they were asked only to manipulate the levers of the control desk, the proportion of the obedient went up to 40 per cent. When the victims were hidden behind a wall, so that only their anguished screams were audible, the number of subjects ready to ‘see it to the end’ jumped to 62.5 per cent. Switching off the sounds did not push the percentage much further - only to 65 per cent. It seems we feel mostly through the eyes. The greater was the physical and psychical distance from the victim, the easier it was to be cruel. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 440 (#expands, via linked claim)

There are two different schemas. The first seems to correspond to the state that we call “normal,” that of a protective or security-based sovereignty—what might be called the protectorate. In this case, political authority is structured by what Hobbes calls “the mutual relation between protection and obedience.” The sovereign protects me, and it is because he protects me that he has the right to force me to obey him. Schmitt condensed this into the formula “Protego ergo obligo”: I protect, so I am obliged. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 558 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Since some of these lines of alignment were mutually contradictory they also contributed to the stability of the state. Thus, for example, clan solidarity amongst the Darod of the ex-Protectorate and Somalia was to some extent offset by differences between north and south stemming from the separate colonial traditions of the two regions, and vice versa. — I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali_ Nation…, 432 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Without coercion, virtue becomes hypocritical and crisis turns permanent; The destruction of bodies constitutes the foundational norm of modern political space. — Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics, 20; Legitimate political authority rests on an exchange of protection for obedience. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 558 (+5 more)

Related

• Obscuring the causal link between action and suffering sharply raises obedience (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Legitimate political authority rests on an exchange of protection for obedience. #complicates (0.80) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 558
• Obscuring the causal link between action and suffering sharply raises obedience #expands (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 440
• Successful dominant politics must produce recognizable experiences people embrace #qualifies (0.72)
• Cross-cutting and contradictory loyalties helped stabilize the new republic #complicates (0.72) — I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali_ Nation…, 432