Beautiful Souls: The Courage and Conscience of Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times Highlight

As Rothmund’s conduct showed, human beings don’t inflict harm on others merely because layers of bureaucracy or physical distance lead them to stop thinking about the consequences of their actions. Often they do so because of a factor conspicuously absent from the artificial experiment Stanley Milgram designed: ideological convictions and beliefs. In other words, because they believe the harsh policy they’re enforcing is justified, even moral.