What is Authority?

(Note: persons who are unable to question professorial philosophy, i.e., non-philosophy or the anti-philosophic rigmarole of a textbook, are kindly requested not to answer.)

The group presents some impressionistic half-notions, not yet worked out perfectly:

When persons act from authority they are more stupid than animals, in the sense that animals can be trained, but those commanded by authority stay obstinately with the authority at all costs.

Authority is more deaf than what one understands from one’s own resources. It resists all reason. The view had on authority could not reason if it wanted to, since it is not inwardly understood (even though, and even more because, an explanation can be readily retailed by the one under the spell of authority). Whoever has thought through something is more open to reason. However, what is authority? For the young, whose whole life is in the hand of the teacher, the teacher is authority. It is easy to teach the dependent to rehearse various tropes and concepts. For instance, although it is patently obvious that Socrates was not a law professor in the twentieth century, the ordinary American lawyer will go for thirty or forty years confidently announcing that they have the “Socratic Method” in their possession.

A thousand and one such notion dominate the mind of the non-philosophic person, who sits under the storm clouds, lightening, and negative gravity which hangs above the earth, never able to question the authority that works in them through their lives. Ergo, they are part of the blind train of the tradition.

In a certain sense, the concept learned in the pro-seminar is the most authoritative, which is to say, the least well known. It is the highest form of stupidity. Is this because it was attained while the one involved was too young to think for oneself, or is it because it was learned while the future of the student was precariously and knowingly in the hands of the teacher?

When is questioning possible, and when is the thing freely thought through, as yet, beyond articulation?

a. the thing had on authroity
b. the notion, half articulate, according to the personality and therefore prior to specific teaching in a classroom ( e.g., the idiosyncratically characteristic frame of mind)
c. the thing gained freely through the powers of questioning

c., However, is perhaps never free, but it indicates being moved by what is said in the investigation. Its sole advantage is in the vista, in its distance from mere personal speculation.

I’m not sure how conducive it is to a good discussion to start off each attempt at discussion by explicitly excluding a category of people who disagree with you.

Who disagrees, and with what? The class of persons who can’t question is ruled out, that’s the groups concern here?

What is it that you felt when you began this thread and typed up the first post? That was authority, of a sort. Personal, subjective authority. Authority which stated to your own mind that you had something worth saying and that you should demand others to listen and participate.

That is authority, no matter how misguided.

Here is a good speech on authority:

Start at 8:45

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M049vhh9_g4[/youtube]

If you can’t question, you have a problem, no question. If you never use authority, you got a problem also. Reinventing the wheel, everyday. I have a habit of questioning authority. But even so you got to pick your spots. Even tools used to question authority often come, at first, from other authorities. You hear second expert, a non-mainstream one, and turn that loose on the mainstream one. Some stuff I do not question, yet, since I have so much questioning and building and learning going on, accepting some things that are not, yet at least, controversial in me, is par for the course.

I mean, the metaphors in the language are authorities.

The group, in its expansive statement, seems to include all speech under the tag authority. The group cautions the group against the slide into sophistry. Then one must speak of greater and lesser degrees of authority from within the total sphere of authority which is everywhere (i.e., permeating this statement in its willing forth, according to what is said by the group: this becomes a formal condition of life: authoritative coming forth as a conatus).

What is written shows what the subject matter is. The inability to question is set alongside the Selbstdenker (self-thinker, or free thinker). The question in it clearest form means, education of very young people, as set alongside the same teaching, when considered with the greater scrutiny of a mature judgment. This touches on the subject of Enlightenment, and the sloughing off of dogma, which begins to become a deprecatory term in the eighteenth century or so.

———

The group says, the inadequacy of the metaphor “reinventing the wheel” shows in the assumption that a wheel is to return. However, the group is not chiefly pointing to this sphere of the discussion that the group brings in. Since this exists, the wheel is there, what matters is how is it thought. The questions concerning what can be lived in and what can’t don’t have any meaning in this manner of inquiry, they are refuted by the existence of the questioning place of the thinkers. What is asked is, not can something be replaced, but, rather, the concern is the nature of questioning. The group points to experience of persons unable, not only unwilling, to question. This is felt in personal dealings.

The group says, here, what is self thinking? Which is to say, can one at first make a distinction between more and less free acceptance of what is said by the speaker?

a. There is social pressure. b. there is what in Plato is called lazy logos. Unwillingness to examine what is already known and rehearsable and habitual. c. there is reception of what halts and claims one in the “evident” character of a speech, or word, which then refers one to the question, who received it, a fool, a child, one who was fit to wisdom (in other words where they halted only because they were deficient in some respect)?

a. there are those unable to think, largely taking their ideas from those they trust. b. those who can reason, but don’t for the sake of interested motive, c. they who can think and question but may lack comprehensive knowledge on the matter, e.g., of authority (“what sort of terms are available to you”).

Of course it is inadequate, but it is a facet of only questioning. If you only question, you will still be questioning using the tools and cultural artifacts given to you, down to the words you use in any verbals parts of the questioning, like in the OP. And then you may or may not improve. You could build your own language with your own metaphors built in. But you will find yourself with a wheel, perhaps even sicker than the one you got rid of.

Don’t know what you are saying here. A suggestion: concrete examples. Constant abstraction in authority move.

I question it’s value.

Do you question everything, all the time, or do you pick your spots?

I questioned many things today. I did not question the tradition of hugging my friends after our performance. I may at another time.

I did not question my continued existence. Not today.

You just question today. Did you question the rule to question? Or did you like me, oh group, question some things and not others, today.

The group is growing tired of the group’s insistence on the use of dialectics, which assumes some things are self evident, when the group and any simple philosopher holds that nothing is self evident.

The group notes the input of Parmenides in the first written philosophical text that survives, which states that what is is and what is not is not and what is cannot not be and what is not cannot be and justified this by saying it was given as revelations from the Gods as a fine example of this fact.

So if you will not guide yourself by what matters, what is important, but insted by the course of dialectic ruminations themselves, then you are wasting the group’s time, and the group once again refrains you from commiting to this investigation.

Good stuff KT :slight_smile:

They like to get you in a compromising position
They like to get you there and smile in your face
They think, they’re so cute when they got you in that condition
Well I think, it’s a total disgrace

I fight authority, authority always wins
I fight authority, authority always wins
I been doing it, since I was a young kid
I’ve come out grinnin’
I fight authority, authority always wins

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM6TsmPML3c[/youtube]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaKjRMMU9HI[/youtube]

Sorry, I couldn’t resist :evilfun:

Self-evidence is the primary spoor of authority.

Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of (authority). Try not to think of a purple tiger. You can’t help what you believe.

I run into a lot of folks online who are less concerned about my argument and more concerned about sizing me up as if that had anything to do with anything (ad hom).

Here’s a good example:

At 16:00 “you come here you call yourself a lord to try to convince the world to ignore something that threatens our grandkids and you’re not even a lord!” Rep. Jay Inslee

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cssne9Q5KM[/youtube]

Whether or not he is a lord is irrelevant to his argument, yet this is how most people argue. Only pedigreed mathematicians are allowed to state 1+1=2 because how could anyone lesser be able to know? :laughing:

Like calling oneself guide, you paint the others as the guided. Right off walking through the door, the guide has made it clear who is to listen and agree and who is be listened to.

And the smile can be in the dynamic. The dynamic is the goal.
Hard to avoid that myself. No easy thing to avoid.

But when it presents itself as love and is not loving
or
when it presents itself as questioning but all it does it tell abstractly
it is not what it is.

And harder when it’s no single person talking
perhaps it is what is never said
or never expressed.
Kids can learn rules from not being told things
the photo that is never talked about
the problem never commented on does not exist, it seems.

Well, I’ve won and lost against authority. That makes it more seductive, for me anyway.
Sometimes I just avoid authority.
Sometimes I play along.
Sometimes it fucks itself up and suddenly it is no longer there.
Sometimes it turns out to be a fad. There’s a new decade and new gods.

Being loving can be amazingly destructive.

“kindly let me help you or you’ll drown”, said the monkey putting the fish safely up a tree lol

No one dares disturb the sounds of silence

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence

genius.com/Simon-and-garfunkel- … nce-lyrics

Me too.

Fwd past the guy talking and checkout the group of people thumbing their nose at the shooter (authority) by standing in the middle of the field while everyone else runs for their lives.

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

Genetic variability. It takes all kinds to make the world go round. Sometimes it’s better to obey and sometimes it’s better to rebel.

Oh, I’ve been that monkey, ah, horrible. Though it’s a different kind of thing than I meant. I meant where you think your intention is loving when it is not. The monkey may just be stupid or misguided but actually trying to help. Both are unpleasant to remember. When I’ve made things worse by trying to help, and with a lot of ignorance involved, and when I thought I was the good guy, when really my motives and intentions were not what even I thought they were.

Man, I dislike that word ‘obey’. I wish it was ‘go along with’, but yes, sometimes it is inevitable, I mean, at least at airports. You have to pick your spots.

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?