The Myth of Choice_ Personal Responsibility in a World of Limits - Kent Greenfield [49]
Knowing what we know about the human tendency to obey orders and respect authority figures, we should not be surprised that so many participants put themselves at risk by staying in the lodge. The irony is that this was a self-help event ostensibly designed to help participants take control of their lives. Instead they were put in a situation where they were physically and emotionally weakened, subjected to undisclosed risks of physical injury and death, and intimidated by an authority figure whose validation they cherished.
The “warriors” may have seen the sweat lodge purge as a test of courage. Do I have the strength of will to withstand the heat? Am I brave enough to take the pain of the purge? In hindsight, we understand that the purge was seen as an act of courage only because Ray had identified it as such. Staying in the lodge was in fact dangerous and harmful, with no real benefit. It was courageous only in the way that forcing yourself to break your own finger with a hammer is courageous. In hindsight, the genuine act of courage was to question Ray’s methods, ask about the risks, demand care for those in distress, and leave the sweat lodge. But that demanded the emotional and psychological wherewithal to challenge the authority figure. It is a measure of the difficulty of such a challenge that most people in the lodge were more willing to risk injury or death than push their way through the tent flap.
I attended a self-help event in the late 1990s, held in one of the World Trade Center towers. The two-day seminar, for which I paid several hundred dollars, was focused on helping participants make better decisions and take control of their lives. Thinking back on it now, I realize that much of the training was not about teaching people to act from strength but intimidating them to act from weakness. At the beginning of the event, people were asked to stand up if they were not committed to the process. Those who stood were then challenged to explain to the hundreds of people in the room why they had doubts. It did not take long for most people to sit down. (I never stood up. I remained seated not because I was committed to the process, but because I was not sufficiently committed to my skepticism to stand up and explain it.)
After a few hours of self-help medicine, we were asked to promise to return from lunch at the appointed time and not be tardy. It was ostensibly a measure of how prepared we were to take responsibility for our decisions and actions. I remember hurrying back from getting a sandwich. But I wasn’t motivated by self-empowerment or a sense of responsibility. I was scared of being ridiculed by the leader if I was late.
Many self-help experts are truly focused on helping people take control of their lives and make better choices. Unfortunately, many gurus and religious demagogues do the opposite—take advantage of our tendency to respect authority and obey rules in order to build a following and to assert an intimidating influence over those followers. When churches or self-help businesses become more about the charisma of the leader than about the needs of the audience or congregation, there is a risk that people are in fact being led away from self-empowerment and toward dependence on an authority figure.
Of course, behavior sometimes needs to be changed. We might need the harsh words of a physical trainer to prepare us for a race, or the demands of a drill sergeant to prepare us for combat. We might need a doctor in a lab coat to instruct us to eat less fatty food. We may need a parent to tell us to move away from thin ice. And we may need the words and charisma of a self-help guru to help us build habits that are emotionally, socially, and physically healthy.
But we now know that these beneficial effects take advantage of the same tendency to respect authority and follow orders that allowed Ray to incite people to risk their lives.