What is Authority?

Me too man, me too. I’ve loved a lot of things to death :confused: Not too long ago I had a litter of kittens and a mother that wouldn’t eat, so I knew the kittens wouldn’t all survive and to prevent that fate I decided to start syringe feeding the kittens, but one by one they all died in my lap except the last one. The whole time I couldn’t decide if I was helping or hurting. I didn’t know if straight water was better than water + formula. I didn’t know if I should force them to eat or wait until they’re hungry. I felt like I had to do something, but had no idea what and despite my best efforts, I was still a miserable failure. I’ve killed lots of plants and animals trying to help them. I know I have to meddle in nature sometimes, but sometimes it seems meddling is worse than total disregard.

Why do you dislike obey? Is that not the opposite of rebel?

I think we were selected for obedience because those who didn’t submit to authority were hunted down and exterminated in nasty and bombastic ways. That probably explains why only a few people stood in remonstration against the shooter’s intimidation. Still, the fact that a few people did testifies of the persistence in genetic variability because nature cannot presume to foretell the future. Diversity is key to our survival as a species. I learned a lot from that video. Why did they not run? I have a rebel streak and like to take risks, but I can’t see myself standing in the middle of a warzone for seemingly no reason at all.

In another video a guy is seen giving the shooter the middle finger, but when he starts shooting again, the guy ducks lol. Yeah, that’s more my speed: protest, but be sensible.

To me obey smacks of following orders, where there is a power differential, where you must - not because it is good, or the person knows more in the situation, or because you have trusted them to make good choices in situation X or because it seems they know something right now and there is no time to explain it, and so on. If I look at the definitions I am not sure it is limited to it. I can only go by how the word has been built up in me over time and use. Very few people have told me to obey them, and they were assholes. So yeah, I would prefer ‘go along with’ ‘decide to follow the advice/suggestion/shouted plea of’ ‘trust the decision of’ and so on. I will not argue that this is what everyone should think or I have that word ‘obey’ down, but it just feels military to me.

I think we are socialized for obedience, but also socialized to not obey, at least in the States. We get a mixed message. My parents gave me a mixed message. All in all not a bad thing. If you just obey, the chances for real success, I think, are much smaller, than if you mix. And openly rebeling is not the only option other than obeying.

A lot of the people whose genes stand the best chance of being spread gave the fingers to the rules. And since many of them are rich, this was easy for them to do, compared to the rest of us, that is.

Of course you can not obey and not be a parasitical sociopath.

The military is all about blind obedience. I suspect most military people would appeal to authority in debate and our schools mimic the military to reinforce innate tendency so probably that’s why many people are more interested in sizing me up than tackling my arguments.

In what ways are we socialized to rebel?

Good point! But they make better cads than dads lol

That’s interesting. How do you connect sociopathy with obedience?

There is all the individualist mythmaking in the USA. A look at films will often see a hero going against authority and doing it ‘my way’ - music too. Generally not at the level of taking up arms against the government type rebelling (with or without a cause) but against this or that doctor court leader with power expert whatever. All the ‘they said it couldn’t be done, wouldn’t work, would lead to failure’ stuff which is in different media by also floating around like memes in the culture.

I said not obey AND not be a sociopath. In words there are many rich and powerful people who, for example, will lobby us to a war for their own profit. That is not obeying the rules, undermining democracy, etc. and it is sociopathic. But one need not be a sociopath while being a rebel.

But to answer your question, even if I hadn’t made that point, obey an evil authority is often sociopathic. You turn people in to the Stasi or the Nazis, since that is the rule. You buy into pictures presented by authority of internal or external enemies and judge and clack your tongue and treat people as less than human just because the authority you kiss ass has told you to. The mass of people controlled by media have sociopathic elements. It is easy, one does nto have to feel and think your way into what you are being told.

And this can start young. Even high school kids and younger can act out in sociopathic ways, based on what is cool what clothes you have, the shape of your ass, the music you like based on what companies are trying to sell and media images.

Oh I see… feminism! lol! How much more rebellious can one be than to be a feminist?

Sociopathic is essentially lack of empathy right? So I think what I was getting at are the connections of empathy with obedience. How is it that an empathetic person would be more or less likely to obey?

I think empathy is a dual-edged sword since one can feel sorry for a kid or cute kitten because they feel their pains, but feel anger towards a monster because they feel its evil inclinations. So empathy is discernment and another form of intelligence, but I usually associate obedience (especially blind obedience, faith) with less intelligence. For instance the people running for their lives were not using much cognitive power, but merely running on instinct like a herd animal while the idiots standing in rebellion were not displaying instinct, but calculated thought. Chalk another one up for the intelligent choice not always being the smart choice lol

I can see lack of empathy (sociopathy) having overlap with obedience.

Well, now that’s a third issue. I don’t know. It depends on the orders.

Can you give an example of what you mean by dialectics? This member of the group regards the of an assumption of “self evidence” unevident. What is self evidence, what does the group mean by this in terms of an example in the present discussion? On the face of it, this is a mistake so far as it pertains to this member of the group. If a member of the group only says “self evident”, they thereby do not know anything about the thinking of “self evidence”, or, put another way, the being.

The group suggests, as signpost, replacing the phrase “self evident” with primary or genuine vagueness, the work with the name Heidegger says: “The vague, everyday understanding of being is still a fact.” The point is to avoid trivial ambiguity, e.g., someone doesn’t know the meaning of a foreign word, and ambiguity with respect to giftedness or sensitivity to the material, such as the ability to think visually of the born artist.

Authority? Truth.

I’m going to take the whole cosmos because I don’t care about dominating anyone, and it will be mine.

I’m going to make every existent a hallucination of eternal forms. The cosmos goes to me, and there’s nothing you or anyone wants to do to stop it.

The group would say that “thinking” something provides the only possibility of not accepting it. In other words, one doesn’t believe in the purple tiger only because they picture it, or reflect about it. If someone is young, it is more likely that they will not be able to set aside something they have reflected over, the free thinker, then, is the one who has a mature power to confront what is put forward without succumbing to it, while, so to speak, sleeping.

It’s the trick of a sophist to hide behind “arguments”. Paid proponents in public debate. One always wants to know who, in the Delphic sense of “know thyself”, one speaks to. From a liar we can never learn about the self in the Dealphic sense. One can see this in most Platonic dialogues.Consider the case of the juryman: one wants the one who says guilty to say what they truly believe.

On the disinterested level, in Plato’s Sophist, one sees this play out beyond politics, in the sense of the impossibility to speak of the nothing, without the nothing being, i.e., in staying with the statement, there, where nothing external is at stake, the Sophist, indeed, teaches us something.

In this this member of the group only touches on the difficulties involved. The citation “a. there are those unable to think, largely taking their ideas from those they trust.” doesn’t fit the case you adduce in the video. But this: “b. those who can reason, but don’t for the sake of interested motive” (does fit.) In other words, it is wholly sensible to suspect a case where interested motive leads to sophistry. An obvious case of that being the tobacco companies interested in producing “arguments” denying the cancer causing nature of their product. (Note: the Climate Change case is not adequately parallel to the Tobacco case, since it is a one time event never played out, based on scientific expertise, rather than scientific results, but it shines light on the issues involved in the misuse of “logic” and assumed rules of reasoning [the latter are never acceptable to a serious thinker, since they must think anew every time they take up a subject matter [even this one, remembering they must also challenge the conception of formal contradiction and inconsistency at each moment])

The group hesitates to direct its attention to the object of the group’s distaste. It appologizes beforehand for any confusion this might cause the group.

Pride is the point of feminism (the empowerment) and pride results in rebellion.

If you give an order to a robot, it has no pride and dutifully obeys.

If you give an order to a person, they might say “Hey! You can’t boss me around!”

Kids believe in santa claus because the parents (authority) put that idea into their heads. Eventually the consensus of opinion among friends (authority) turns against the idea that santa is real, so kids stop believing. No one can dictate by power of will what they believe as if by sheer determination one can once again decide to believe in santa. Faith comes by hearing and what’s heard comes from authority (consensus of opinion).

You think by thinking you can decide what to believe, but what determines the fundamentals of thought? Well, that’s just more acceptances of axioms on faith and of which you have no control.

All statements must be backed by empirical evidence. So what’s the evidence for that axiom? You either buy it or you don’t.

A sophist is a sophia-ist or one who practices wisdom. Perverting the word in condescension to mean the opposite is akin to today’s republicans deriding intellectuals as being stupid for lacking “common sense”. The “professor” is the modern day “sophist”. The very purpose of perverting the term is to implement the ad hominem.

“You’re just a sophist and since I’ve labeled you such, anything you say can be disregarded!”
“You’re just an indoctrinated liberal professor and since I’ve labeled you such, anything you say can be disregarded!”

How does one reason that they shouldn’t reason because they have a motive to not reason?

Sophistry is quite different from lying.

Either they are lying or they are honestly presenting their side of it. You could be a sophist for alleging that they are sophists by implying their arguments are not.

There’s truth in that. But then one can join feminism to conform to the subculture you are in. One can do it to find an outlet for rage that really is about other things. Men can be feminists though they might say that men cannot be feminists to get Close to women, with or without realizing it, or out of guilt, or to feel good about themselves. Same with women. I don’t Think most idealogies mean that one is a rebel and I Think one can rebel, in the right context or with the right attitude, with any idealogy or set of ideas. A communist in earlier versions of Russia would have to be more creative to be a rebel as a communist. But in the US it would require Little more than daring to say it in many contexts.

Sure and feminism has called into question implicit and explict orders and the right to give them for certain reasons, in certain situations, etc.

The group says, this sense of unremitting authority as mere whim, or at the other end as expression of naked superiority and relativising of the others, was not the primary issue the group wished to reach. Rather, the uptake of teaching in early life, as what remains for decades or until death. In other words, what would, if taught during a period of greater maturity of the student-existence, not have been accepted. Then, authority and maturity of thinking as a road in the investigation, which ventures into what this maturity is. At first, from the observed things, more than the inner searching of the adventure into the intellect’s concept.

The group must say, this account given by the group is false in its presuposed slick neatness: “Eventually the consensus of opinion among friends (authority) turns against the idea that santa is real, so kids stop believing.” Rather, among the thoughtful, such transformation has an inward source. Though, for the many: such “opinion among friends” wields more than power to change the way of relating outwardly.

The passion for thought leads out of the grips of many such concepts, but, also into many, through the seeking of the passion for confrontation with the strongest teachings of they who have moved the farthest amidst the transcelestial region of all thinking through flanked by their protective daemons coming close to the god who does or does not philosophise.

The group says this is no perversion, but the simple text of Plato, where Socrates often must deal with sophists who attempt to play the great and powerful OZ, ergo, the one hidden behind the curtain of argument.

The group says sophists were paid to make arguments. A professor who worked for a think tank in the pay of an interested party would meet this description.

Of course, anything can be abused. The group yawns and remains with Aristotle, he who despised often.

The group advises the group to take five minutes talking to a human being into account in the group’s reflections. Then such questions would answer themselves. The group lacks experience with human beings.

The group says, not in this context. Big Tobacco can rightly be said to have simply lied. Though, the means was sophistry.

Too much cleverness and arid generalization about what could be serves to take one off piste. The group says, the closest approximation to a use of reason on this public issue, on the business (or “conservative”) side of the issue, it knows of, is Conrad Black’s. He gives a tolerably thoughtful account, i.e., one that does not flee into selective lapses of intelligence or hiding behind mere “argument” (i.e., sophistry).

But to dismiss an argument for any attribute about the person making the argument is an ad hominem fallacy.

Reminds me of the manifesto at zerohedge

our method: pseudonymous speech…

anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. it thus exemplifies the purpose behind the bill of rights, and of the first amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation-- and their ideas from suppression-- at the hand of an intolerant society.

…responsibly used.

the right to remain anonymous may be abused when it shields fraudulent conduct. but political speech by its nature will sometimes have unpalatable consequences, and, in general, our society accords greater weight to the value of free speech than to the dangers of its misuse.

  • mcintyre v. ohio elections commission 514 u.s. 334 (1995) justice stevens writing for the majority

though often maligned (typically by those frustrated by an inability to engage in ad hominem attacks) anonymous speech has a long and storied history in the united states. used by the likes of mark twain (aka samuel langhorne clemens) to criticize common ignorance, and perhaps most famously by alexander hamilton, james madison and john jay (aka publius) to write the federalist papers, we think ourselves in good company in using one or another nom de plume. particularly in light of an emerging trend against vocalizing public dissent in the united states, we believe in the critical importance of anonymity and its role in dissident speech. like the economist magazine, we also believe that keeping authorship anonymous moves the focus of discussion to the content of speech and away from the speaker- as it should be. we believe not only that you should be comfortable with anonymous speech in such an environment, but that you should be suspicious of any speech that isn’t.

zerohedge.com/about

first of all about which authority you are talking about ? can you tell us all ? ( my dear guide ) i hope that you will guide me.

so first of all tell atleast me ( only ) that which authority you are talking about ? :laughing: weather of any random idiots ? who has captured the damn power by hook or crook ?

or about me ? after chewing my lollypop ( by pying without invitation { like an whore}) anyways atleast enlighten me that about which authority you are talking ?

are you powerful enough to act directly ? instead of indirectly ? than atleast tell me ( only ) that about which authority you are talking about ?

The group is stuck in a moronic truism. That of the authority of the phrase “ad hominem”. The result is that we succeed in immunizing ourselves against thinking. One has a meaningless phrase, widely accepted, ergo, instead of thinking, we lay it down. This is the reverse of philosophic existence. In philosophy we are very anxious to know about the existence of the witness to thought. Because we make a distinction between someone who would say, this man is guilty, and really believe it in their bones, and someone who would say, I want to go home to see the basketball game, OK, so he’s guilty, and don’t ask if I really mean it, since that would be the fallacy of ad hominem. The fallacy is an injustice based on European Science, and the concept of the fact that came to power in about the year 1900. It means the same thing as the End of Philosophy.

The example above, of “ad hominem”, an idiot truism, and its analysis, is apt if we, here, in the group, would observe the phenomenon of authority through a specific manifestation. Note the way it dominates the thinking of beings. Leading them by the nose, as it were, obstructing the possibility of genuine investigation or thoughtful existence. And this is so also of those who do not directly follow the truism, but, as it were, move in the surrounding outflow of such authority, which pervades human life.

For example:

Hello, my name is Authoritus Credibullshit. I’m telling you my name so you’ll be intimidated by my credentials in lieu of making a convincing argument to legitimately win your support.

Hello, my name is John Q Public. I want to know your name because I’m too stupid to make any sense of your argument, which is completely inconsequential anyway because the only substantiation that matters is you’re a hetero white man with storied history of staunch support for conservative values.

Anecdotally, I’ve found a person’s age is proportional to the extent to which they endeavor to discover who I am.

A long time ago, people took pride in their ability to stand on their own, so to be put in a position where they had no alternative but to find employment under someone else was a mark of shame. The fact that they had to work “for” someone wasn’t anything to be proud of. But then it changed from bragging “here is what do” to boasting “here is who I work for”. It became about the “who” instead of the “what” and a whole generation became an incarnated ad hom. They seek to “size me up” when determining the soundness of my argument.

I’d prefer to be member # 47854785764 today and # 86558739486 tomorrow so that no one could ever link me to my arguments and I agree with Justice Stevens in that if anyone strives to make his identity known, it could only be to bias his argument as if he felt his own argument couldn’t stand on its own merit and therefore suspicion is warranted.

Conversely, if anyone seeks to address an attribute of the person advancing an argument, it’s likely the person isn’t confident in his own rebuttal.

Perfect example:

FWD to 7:42

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EvsPXA4z8U[/youtube]

Mr. Inslee: You come here and call yourself a lord to try to convince the world to ignore something that threatens our grandkids and you’re not even a lord. Not only are you not a scientist, you’re not even a lord who served in the house of parliament. Not only can the deniers not produce one scientist to deny this clear consensus, but they can’t even send us a real lord from the house of lords. I think that says a lot about that status of this debate.

Yes, indeed it says much about the status of the debate: it says Mr. Inslee is out of ammo and has nothing but ad homs for a rebuttal.

Is the claim that Lord Monckton presented true or not? Well, according to Mr. Inslee, it depends whether or not Lord Monckton is a real lord. Typical Boomer (that would be an ad hom if I weren’t making the case that it’s generational).

The bigger question here is what the hell happened to our educational system in the 70s that produced a generation so disproportionally representative of knuckleheads. Probably Nixon’s forced desegregation that possibly required the dumbing-down of curriculum to accommodate blacks which wasn’t fully sorted out until the 80s. It could be multi-faceted in addition to the coddling by FDR’s socialistic paradise combined with desegregation and the influence of the prior generation who decided “who” they worked for was more important that the job they actually performed that gave us a generation more concerned with who someone is than what they have to say.