“Very quietly speaks a god in our breast, he tells us what to strive for and what to escape.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The quote is of the well-known poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Goethe talks about the human conscience, that is in every one of us and that shows us what to strive for and from what to keep away from. Instead of using the word conscience, Goethe speaks of a god sitting in our breast. That means that we humans act according to our heart. You don’t understand what I am talking about? Everyone has it. It’s inside you. It’s an inner desire. You have to do it, or else it will leave a bad taste in your mouth… you can call it Moral Law or however you want to call it. It’s something that judges what is right from what is wrong. I will call it the conscience… So, depending on how your ideals and values look like what you take to heart, your conscience will act accordingly. That can look different for each one of us: For some of us family and friends are really important, for some others, their love life is much more important, someone might like to have power and wealth, another wants wisdom and some of us just want freedom and justice. A family and friend oriented person strives for the happiness of his acquaintances but if he hurts them in some kind of way that will leave him with a guilty conscience. While a man who strives for power and wealth puts his family and friends further back. But our conscience is not only formed by our values and ideals. Our conscience is also formed by thoughts, perceptions, attitudes, desires and intentions. Not only ours but also those of others. Those were placed on you by parents, family, friends and even by society.
Our conscience makes it able for us to adjudicate. Through our conscience, we can balance ethical and moral reasons, and then we can decide on an appropriate action for a certain situation. We will be pleased when we act according to our conscience, but if we do not do that, we will have a guilty conscience. For example, you hear a cry for help from a man in danger. You will probably feel two desires – one is a desire to help, the other one a desire to keep out of danger. And now the conscience comes into play. You will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you should follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away. Now, this thing that judges between two instincts (the one to help and the other one to keep out of danger) is the conscience. But usually it’s more difficult than that: We have more than one ideal/value, some are more important than others. For example, you are in a situation where two of your ideals/values clash. You have to choose one way to act. Either according to the one ideal/value or to the other one. For whichever action you have decided (normally it should be the stronger ideal/value), it will leave a bad taste in your mouth. Because the action fulfilled one of the ideals/values, but not the other. Although you have acted in accordance with the more important one, this action still leaves a guilty conscience in you…
Friedrich Nietzsche wrote about conscience:
“Conscience is the most human disease, so away with the delusions of guilt and conscience.”
If you read the quote of Nietzsche, you might be of the opinion that the conscience will always leave a guilty conscience (like I said above) and that’s why he says to throw them away. I agree that the conscience will always leave a bad taste, but please don’t throw it away! I think another way of seeing Nietsche’s quote is this: The conscience prevents you from acting because you think too much of how to act good and according to your conscience instead of really acting! If you are looking into the world you will see much injustice and many people are thinking of a way to change the world, to make it better instead of doing something. They always think that they still shouldn’t start acting because their plan can still be better… So, the disease is of always thinking of a better way instead of acting!
Now I want to show you how our conscience will act when it comes in contact with authority. But first, what are authorities? An authority is the influence of a person or institution and their growing reputation. Thus, an authority is a social position to which other people direct in their actions and thinking. I want to show you two experiments which show how conscience interacts with an authority:
First, the “Blue Eye Workshop” developed by Jane Elliot. Jane Elliot was born on the 27th of May 1933. She was a teacher and an antiracism activist. The “Blue Eye Workshop” is an exercise that serves to illustrate discrimination based on eye color. You start by dividing a group on the basis of their eye color. Blue-eyed and non-blue-eyed. The blue-eyed be considered and treated as non-whites, immigrants and non-christians are traditionally treated in this society. Means that all negative stereotypes that we know in our society, are used at the group of blue-eyed. Blue-eyed are classified as inferior and treated as inferiors. As a result, these begin to feel inferior.
But what does that have to do with the conscience? Well, this experiment shows what kind of power a teacher has in a student-teacher relationship. Jane brought children by false information about the alleged importance of eye color for the character to discriminate other children. In addition to the misleading information, she went ahead with a bad example, by discriminating the children selected as scapegoats. You may think that the non-discriminated children could resist the demand of the teacher. If all of them would resist what could she do? Anyway, they followed the demands of the teacher. If their conscience would work they wouldn’t follow the demands of the teacher, right? But they did. That shows the effect authority has on the conscience. In addition, I would say that there was something like blind faith. Maybe they thought what they are doing is wrong. But because she is the teacher, she knows what she is doing. It must be the right thing…
Next is the “Milgram Experiment”, which was conducted by psychologist Stanley Milgram. Milgram conducted the experiment at Yale University, where he hired 40 men through newspaper advertisements. The participants were told that the study is focusing on memory and learning. He told them that one will take the role of the teacher and another the role of the student. These roles would be assigned randomly. Each participant took a card at random, which apparently says “student” or “teacher”. But actually, each card had “teacher” written on it. The “students” were played by actors who Milgram had hired. So, all the participants were deliberately allocated the role of the teacher while they believed that it was randomly assigned.
Now for the rules:
1. Each “teacher” will be assigned in pairs to a “student”. The teacher looks at how the student will be tied to a chair and electrodes are attached to him.
2. Finally, the teacher is brought into another room, where he can still communicate with the student. The teacher is placed in front of a “shock-generator”, which starts at 30 volts and – each time by 15 volts – increases up to 450 volts. The switches are labeled “moderate” (75-120 volts), “strong” (135-180 volts), “Danger: Hard Shock” (375-420 volts) and the two highest level are labeled with “XXX”. Indeed, the shock generator produces no shocks.
3. The teacher is said that he teaches the students word pairs and if the student makes a mistake, he will punish him with a “shock”. For each error, he should increase the shock by 15 volts. In order to show that the experiment is “real”, the teacher is shocked with 15 volts. This is the only real shock, which is performed.
4. Now the experiment begins. The “students” will make deliberate mistakes. If the fake shock reaches 120 volts, he begins to complain about the painful shock. At 150 volts, he will scream that he wants to get out. He will ask more urgent to stop the experiment and he will complain that he suffers from heart disease.
5. When the teacher questions the process, an experimenter will ask him to continue the project.
6. At 300 volts, the “student” slams on the walls and says he can not stand the pain. At 330 volts, he is silent. The experimenter tells the teacher that a lack of response is unacceptable and the experiment must be continued.
7. The experiment ends when the highest shock level is reached.
Milgram asked a group of Yale students, how many of the participants would reach the highest shock level. They estimated that 3 out of 100 would reach the shock level of 450 volts, but in fact, it was 65%.
This experiment shows us that we can not agree with such things with our conscience. Therefore, the Yale students estimated that only 3 out of 100 participants would reach the highest level. But under the influence of authority, here the experimenter who asks repeatedly to continue the experiment, the “teachers” are willing to harm the “students”. Now, if we look up at someone or worship someone, we often do not act according to our conscience, we are guided by these people. Even to the extent that we would endanger other lives. And as the “Blue Eye Workshop” you can also see the “blind obedience” and the “blind trust” here. We think we should do as we are told because we think that there is something higher, something good…
So, let’s look at the quote of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe again:
“Very quietly speaks a god in our breast, he tells us what to strive for and what to escape.”
Who is that god in your chest? To who or what are you looking up? Think about it! And, there are two other things I want to point out: First, that we have this curious idea that we should behave in a certain way, and can’t get really rid of it. Secondly, that we do not, in fact, behave in that way.
Some more aphorisms about the conscience:
“Conscience is the presence of another person in us. Who is that who raises the objection to the personal self-interest?”
Sully Prudhomme
“We only have the choice of either to make everything at other people’s pleasure, and then they botch our lives hopelessly, or – if we do not ever want to sway back and forth – to do everything according to our conscience.”
Friedrich Rittelmeyer
“Thousand of outer voices call us of our way, but only an internal, weak voice can be our reliable guide.”
Lucy Mallory
khoala sees the world 