Compliance with Dr. Aaron Kheriaty
E11 | Forbidden Conversations
Masking. Standing 6 feet apart. Showing vaccine passports whenever you enter a public space. Whether you agree or disagree with such measures, those are just some of the ways we were asked to comply during the pandemic. Pupils of history will recognize that this situation is not unique and that compliance has been used both for good and evil throughout centuries. The psychology of why we agree to go along with things—sometimes ones that don’t logically make sense, or go against our moral reasoning—is fascinating and complex.
The Milgram Obedience Experiment had participants deliver what they believed to be electrical shock to another person on the orders of an authority figure. The Stanford Prison Experiment in the 1970s had participants take on the roles of guards and prisoners and showed how people would mold into whatever expectations came with their social roles. The experiment had to be terminated after only six days after the "guards" had started displaying abusive behavior towards the "prisoners." Group affiliation, size, and power dynamics all play important roles when it comes to compliance and these experiments also revealed how easily people’s behavior can be manipulated—even when they are aware that they are part of a study.
My guest on this episode of FORBIDDEN CONVERSATIONS is Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, a physician specializing in psychiatry and author of three books, including most recently, The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State (2022). He is a Fellow & Director of the Program in Bioethics and American Democracy at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a Senior Scholar & Fellow at the Brownstone Institute.
Dr. Kheriaty also serves as Senior Fellow and Director of the Health and Human Flourishing Program at the Zephyr Institute, and Chief of Medical Ethics at The Unity Project. Dr. Kheriaty holds the positions of Scholar at the Paul Ramsey Institute, Fellow at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, and serves on the advisory board at the Simone Weil Center for Political Philosophy.
Dr. Kheriaty graduated from the University of Notre Dame in philosophy and pre-medical sciences, earned his MD degree from Georgetown University, and completed residency training in psychiatry at the University of California Irvine. For many years he was Professor of Psychiatry at UCI School of Medicine and Director of the Medical Ethics Program at UCI Health, where he chaired the ethics committee. He also chaired the ethics committee at the California Department of State Hospitals for several years.
Dr. Kheriaty has authored books and articles for professional and lay audiences on bioethics, public health, political theory, social science, psychiatry, philosophy, religion, and culture. His work has been published in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Newsweek, The Federalist, Compact, The New Atlantis, Arc Digital, Public Discourse, City Journal, and First Things. He has conducted print, radio, and television interviews on bioethics topics with The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, CNN, Fox, NPR, EWTN, and Epoch TV.
On matters of public policy and healthcare he has addressed the United States Senate, the California Medical Association, and has testified before the California Senate Health Committee. Dr. Kheriaty has consulted on Covid related ethical issues during the pandemic for the UC Office of the President, the County of Orange Healthcare Agency, and the California Department of Public Health.
Find him on Twitter and Instagram.
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No truth and reconciliation committee, trials for crimes against humanity and hangings. They forced people to take a drug that murdered them. They hid the side effects, hid treatments that would have saved lives, and stripped people of their basic human rights. Those responsible need to be publicly hung, those just following orders need to be removed from their jobs so they can't harm others with their blind obedience in the future.
Then we can forgive those who were brainwashed but didn't harm anybody and move on but the mass murderers need to be prosecuted not allowed to walk free with billions in profits and millions dead worldwide.
Compliance
I want to be honest with you;
Often, when the threat of uncertainty presses in,
My body and mind find themselves
In a visceral acquiescence;
There is a larger shutdown of reason,
And the restless rise of mixed emotion,
There is the compulsion to protect myself and be safe,
The reliance on known securities,
As a defence against necessary courage;
I feel an equivocation, and then
A drawing into a vulnerable shell of compliance;
These have been uncertain times,
Long and filled with the ready yielding to rules,
Sharpened by the daily rhetoric of what is for the good,
The enforcement of this lock down
Has carried me along day by day,
On familiar and unfamiliar pathways,
There has been this uneasy social compact,
Taking me to the rough edges of my knowing,
Daily, I’ve felt the twisting roller-coaster ride of dis-ease,
Exposing me to the soft spots of my being,
And there has been a thinning of veils of my submission.
Compliance has had its many blessings for sure,
Recently though, I am struggling to trust this ‘rule of law’.
I’m alarmed by the greedy energy of its demands,
Wrapped up in uttered and written regulations of control,
I feel their deep bites into the fragility of my humanity,
My constitutional dignity and rights seeping away,
I feel more and more tied down in clamps of tighter obligation,
There is a confusing shaking of my ground of being,
I find myself wrestling the bullying of my free choice,
Now, I’m forced to breathe in the stale air of a dark curfew,
As I experience a bolder lock-down of any recalcitrance,
Unquestioning citizenship has become the new standard.
I want to trust you with this.
I will not suffer indefinitely these excessive calls,
Many of them ring hollow and feel haunted
Under these layered covers of what is deemed best science.
I will not rest forever obedient in its grip,
I will discern for myself what is good and best,
For the wounded whole and not just the part,
I join in with a mounting chorus of dissent,
I hear voices rising up from the depths of pain and suffering,
They call from the dirty belly of our gross inequality,
Now is the time for considered non-violent disobedience.
© Roger Arendse – 20200430 [Poem written during heavy lockdowns in my home country of South Africa at the time. Citizens in the country still battle the onslaughts of Covid policies and protocols from the Government, Health Regulatory bodies, and influencial voices in the MSM, Universities, and more. Many outspoken medical professionals are coming under attack, facing court actions, and loss of their medical licences. More than ever, South Africans (together with Global citizens) shoud NOT comply.]