Divergent Thinking (26 page)

The factions were originally set up to work independently of each other. Though together they comprised a balanced and functional society, each faction had autonomy and no one faction provided oversight over another. The main danger in allowing a militaristic group (like Dauntless) so much autonomy is that eventually they discard the democratic decision-making process and use physical force to achieve their goals, whatever those goals may be. Our own history is rife with examples: Julius Caesar illegally crossing the Rubicon with the Roman army in 49
B.C
., marching on Rome, and eventually becoming dictator in perpetuity—the first domino in the downfall of the Roman Empire and the democracy they held so dear; the Soviets (dominated by the Bolsheviks) overthrowing and taking over from the Russian Provisional Government in 1917's October Revolution, thus paving the way for Joseph Stalin's regime, during which millions lost their lives.

We combat this in real-world democracies by assigning elected civilian leaders oversight of the military. The military retains judicial autonomy and a manner of preserving good order and discipline among its ranks, but elected civilian leaders appoint people to the highest military positions rather than allowing the military to self-select their leaders. For example, general officers in the US military must be vetted, approved, and voted on by the Senate in a confirmation hearing before they can take a major command or assume their next rank.

When people are placed in positions of absolute authority in a closed environment (like a faction) without any form of external oversight or accountability, a pattern often emerges. Behavior that would be considered aberrant in the larger society can become the socially accepted norm. Abuse, brutality, hazing, and violence creep in, eventually sinking roots so deep that the members of the controlling group don't even realize how far they've strayed from their moral center. From the inside, most don't even realize anything is wrong.

That's not the only consequence. American military historian Professor Richard H. Kohn states in his essay on “Civilian Control of the Military” that control of the military by elected civilians is essential because it allows a nation to base its values, purpose, beliefs, and institutions on the popular will rather than the will of the strongest, most ruthless, and power hungry. In order to operate efficiently and work as a cohesive unit, a military organization cannot, by its very nature, be a democratic society. Orders must be obeyed and acted upon immediately with no time for debate. Whereas if the most efficient, expeditious route to action is taken in the general populace, often the “little guy”—the weak, the small, the timid, those who have just as much right to representation and having their needs heard and met—gets trampled and ignored.

Essentially, without civilian oversight, the very people the military is sworn to defend become marginalized and eventually forgotten.

This is where proper civilian oversight could have proven beneficial for Dauntless. Instead of being sequestered in its own space to devolve into the violence-ruled enclave it became, where the most vicious and strongest survived to lead and set the tone, an altruistic, selfless faction like Abnegation could have provided guidance and policies and prevented that from happening. While Abnegation
is
in charge of making overall laws for the city, the individual factions still appear to be autonomous in how they administer things within their own groups, with no direct oversight from other factions. Cross-faction oversight would have been a much-needed check and balance that, in fact, all the factions could have used from each other. Because without formal civilian oversight, Dauntless was left with a vacuum that allowed the most power-hungry and ruthless members within it to take control, which made it possible for Jeanine and the Erudite faction she led to influence and utilize Dauntless for their own ends.

There is a general understanding among democratic nations that “civilianizing” the military—meaning having an all-volunteer military force instead of drafted troops—is the best means of preserving the loyalty of the armed forces toward civilian authorities. It prevents the development of an independent “caste” of warriors that might see itself as existing fundamentally apart from the rest of society. Which is precisely what has happened with Dauntless. They have become a warrior caste with no purpose, and they
need
a purpose. When Jeanine and the Erudite roll in with one, Dauntless leadership is more than happy to oblige.

With Erudite having stepped in, shouldn't Dauntless then have the civilian oversight they clearly need? Technically yes; realistically no. If we were to liken Dauntless, Erudite, and Abnegation to their real-world counterparts, they'd match up most closely with the military, the corporate sector (the technological and industrial base), and the government, respectively. Yes, our military and the corporate sector do have a relationship, and a very good relationship at that, but industry does not control or provide oversight of the military. And it shouldn't, because the corporate sector is all about their bottom line. Their primary concern is the revenue to continue their work, not the health and well-being of the civilian populace. The military needs “stuff” (the three “Bs”: beans, bullets, and Band-Aids) and the corporate sector provides that “stuff.” The government provides the oversight.

What becomes apparent over the course of the events in
Divergent
is that in this society the corporate sector is driving the train on how the military is utilized, and the government is providing absolutely no oversight at all. Erudite, the faction that has goals that are not beneficial to the society as a whole, has control of Dauntless, the faction capable of physically enforcing said goals, and that's a very dangerous combination.

As soon as Erudite's leader, Jeanine, perceived something or someone (in this case Abnegation and the Divergent) as a threat to the fabric and structure of society, she utilized Dauntless to neutralize that threat.

Any given group of people is going to include a percentage of sociopaths—those who kill without conscience (aka murder) and commit what in the US military would be termed as war crimes. In Dauntless, you have a certain type of Erudite transfer.

Because they are genetically engineered to value knowledge above all else and, according to David in
Allegiant,
are lacking in compassion for others, the Erudite are more likely to lack the filter that would prevent a “genetically pure” human (or human from another faction) from killing. So, when Erudites transfer to Dauntless, they have a tendency to become cruel, bullying, conscienceless, and highly intelligent killing machines. In short, sociopaths.

A perfect example of this is Erudite transfer Eric, who seems to take joy not just in causing others pain, but also in resorting to any means necessary to climb to the top of his social sphere—to win or be the best. We know from Tobias that Eric was ruthless in his initiate class. Even two years after graduating, he is constantly gunning for Tobias, viewing him as a rival and threat and looking for a way to permanently remove him despite Tobias having made it very clear he has no desire to move up in the Dauntless ranks.

(Peter isn't an Erudite transfer—he's originally from Candor—but between his Eric-like ruthlessness during initiation and his defection to Erudite in
Insurgent,
it's easy to mistake him for one. In
Divergent,
Peter takes out Edward with a knife to the eye while he sleeps because Edward is at the top of the ranking structure, and then later makes an attempt on Tris' life after it becomes clear she is the next highest-ranked initiate. After all, David says in
Allegiant
that lack of compassion is a flaw of Candor's, too.)

But the blame for Dauntless' devolution cannot solely be placed on Erudite. Others, like Dauntless leader Max, while not (as far as we know) Erudite transfers, were easily influenced and controlled by Jeanine. Max was responsible for changing the training methods to make them more competitive and brutal, as well as appointing Erudite transfer Eric as a Dauntless leader, at Jeanine's demand, thus assisting her in creating an army she could use to wipe out the Divergent. While it can be assumed that Dauntless was already slowly becoming a more brutal and violent faction due to the lack of civilian oversight and harsh initiate attrition rate, the moment Jeanine placed a target on the Divergent, the priorities of Dauntless changed.

Further evidence of Jeanine and Erudite's influence on Max and Dauntless is the fact that the Dauntless leaders were not only complicit in, but actively a part of, the enslavement of their Dauntless troops' minds and the use of them to murder the peaceful Abnegation faction. No matter how far Dauntless had degraded toward unnecessary violence and brutality, they were not yet at the point where they would attack and murder an entire faction (especially a faction that would not fight back), and Erudite knew this, which is why they put Dauntless, as a whole, under the simulation serum.

But how did Jeanine convince the Dauntless leaders to do what they knew to be morally wrong and act contrary to their faction's manifesto, “We believe in shouting for those who can only whisper, in defending those who cannot defend themselves”? By twisting words and providing what is referred to in the military as “top cover”—an authority they could blame for their actions, the ever-familiar excuse that “I was just doing my job.”

In 1961, Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a series of social psychology experiments where he measured people's willingness to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience and moral code.

Three individuals were involved in each experiment: the Experimenter, the one running the experiment; the Teacher, the subject of the experiment (a volunteer); and the Learner, a confederate of the researcher pretending to be a volunteer. The experiment began by taking two volunteers and identifying who would be the Teacher and who would be the Learner, then separating them in different rooms, from which they could communicate but not see each other. The Teacher then asked a series of questions of the Learner, and for every incorrect response given, the Teacher was told to administer a shock to the Learner, with the voltage increasing in 15-volt increments.

Unknown to the Teacher, the Learners were not actually receiving shocks. Once safely in a separate room, the Learner set up a tape recorder that played prerecorded sounds of pain (screams) for each shock level. At a certain level the Learner would also bang on the wall that separated him from the Teacher, and then escalate things by complaining about a heart condition, until eventually ceasing to respond altogether.

Once the Learner stopped responding, most Teachers (the actual test subjects) indicated their desire to stop the experiment and check on the Learner. Some of the Teachers paused earlier, at 135 volts, and began to question the purpose of the experiment. However,
most of those who questioned the experiment continued after being assured that they would not be held responsible.
A few of the Teachers began to show signs of extreme stress (such as nervous laughter) once they heard the screams of pain coming from the Learner. Of the Teachers observed, 65 percent of them took the experiment all the way to the highest shock of 450 volts, despite the Learner's screams and frequent pleas to stop the experiment.

In the experiment, if the Teachers indicated their desire to stop, they were given a succession of verbal prods by the experimenter, in this order:

           
1.
  
Please
continue.

           
2.
  
The experiment requires that you
continue.

           
3.
  
It is absolutely essential that you
continue.

           
4.
  
You have no other choice, you
must
go on.

If the Teachers still wished to stop after all four successive verbal prods, the experiment was halted. Otherwise, it was stopped after the Teachers had given the maximum 450-volt shock to the Learners three times in succession. Again,
65 percent of the Teachers took the experiment all the way to the end.
Additionally, none of the Teachers who refused to administer the final shocks insisted that the experiment itself be terminated, nor left the room to check the health of the Learner without requesting permission to leave.

We've already established that humans, by their very nature, do not desire to inflict physical pain on each other. So how could this have been the experiment's result? The answer goes back to our tendency to obey authority and the protection authority grants us from being held accountable for our actions.

The results of the study demonstrate that, when provided with a legitimizing ideology and social and institutional support, people are more willing to do things they'd normally consider immoral or wrong. They can rationalize their behavior by saying that because they were under orders, what happens is not really their fault. If an authority is saying it's fine—if the experiment is still happening and hasn't been shut down—it must be okay. It's a natural instinct for people to do what those around them are doing, even if it means doing something they would normally morally oppose, or never consider doing alone.

Six years after these experiments, one of the Teachers/test subjects in the experiment sent a letter to Milgram, explaining why he was glad to have participated despite the stress involved: “While I was a subject in 1964, though I believed that I was hurting someone, I was totally unaware of why I was doing so. Few people ever realize when they are acting according to their own beliefs and when they are meekly submitting to authority.”

Milgram summarized the experiment in his 1974 article “The Perils of Obedience”: