The Milgram Climate Experiment

Ray Katz
6 min readAug 18, 2022

Are we all shocking the guy in the next room because some important looking guy in a white coat with a clip board is telling us to?

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

We are slowly waking up. We’ve been hypnotized by people wearing suits telling us crazy things. We’ve been believing them. But what they keep telling us is cruel and insane.

It’s not that politicians and businessmen are inherently cruel. Although it’s true that the economic system (and a culture that supports the economic system) brings out the worst in them. We reward greed and accept cold-hearted financial calculations taking precedence over human kindness and empathy. All humans have capacity for both. But our leaders are hypnotized by their own power, their authority, and the culture of the world into which they were born.

Just like us ordinary folks who are going along with them. Or have been, up to now.

The view of the world that we share is the one we hear over and over again. It’s the one we see on TV, on the internet, in movies and our personal and public discussions. But it’s not really OUR view and it’s a view that seriously contradicts reality itself.

Milgram and Obedience To Authority

There’s a famous experiment — you may have heard of it — about obedience to authority. The experimenter was Stanley…

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Ray Katz

Internet pioneer. But I’m most interested in stabilizing the Earth’s climate and promoting our common humanity. WeAreSaners.org