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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"Human beings are at their best when they are free of authority." Agree or disagree?
I read this quote and wondered what you thought of it.
It seems simple to me - what gets in the way of productivity, communities, families, etc is authority.
Specifically it is unearned authority.
And that each worker/family member/human being has to earn authority with each other, not through some central authority.
That is, leaders and authoritarian structures - be they state, corporate, religious or other - are what always doom us.
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SoutherDem
(2,307 posts)No authority would mean no laws, no regulations to protect the environment, no regulations to prohibit corporations from walking on us more than they do already.
I am not advocating an Authoritarian society where we are fearful of this authority.
We willingly give authority to certain entities, this keeps the bounds on society. Without it I dare say we would be in worst shape than we are.
Unless I have totally misunderstood, I could never say we should be "free of authority".
Lionessa
(3,894 posts)Some need authority figures, earned or not.
Some don't.
BlueJazz
(25,348 posts)
DrewFlorida
(1,096 posts)This poll is so vague and general it serves no valuable point.
PassingFair
(22,447 posts)No surprises, though!
Zalatix
(8,994 posts)Imagine a whole bunch of people free from authority. You'd have Lord of the Flies.
pwhtckll
(72 posts)I'm not inclined to agree with Thomas Hobbes that life in a state of nature free from authority would necessarily be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. I'm similarly not inclined to agree with Ayn Rand that a libertarian society in which everyone pursues their rational self interest produces the best result. Some authority is necessary, some is not.
Gman
(24,780 posts)If they are desperate, Katie, bar the door without authority.
Confusious
(8,317 posts)Confusious
(8,317 posts)Even with authority, people act in ways which are not "the best."
They're not acting out against authority or society, they're bad people.
Not having any authority would just let the rednecks play king of the neighborhood.
As far as gaining authority through other people, we don't always act in ways which would allow that. You couldn't meet enough people in your lifetime to have a nation, for example. People in groups also act in ways which the wouldn't alone. A single person might stop a mugging, but given a group of people, they might not. That "might not" increases in relation to the size of the group.
People need some authority to get things done, push society forward and keep order ( Some law and order in always needed to protect those who cannot protect themselves ). Otherwise, we'd all be a collection of people working in their own interest, which is an example of libertarianism, which leads to somalia.
Iggo
(49,787 posts)
Douglas Carpenter
(20,226 posts)such as occurs following major natural catastrophes such as as earthquakes or floods or even prolonged major power outages, or during or following revolutions or wars - during times when all lines of authority have ceased to function. Has humanity ever witnessed such utopia?
Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)lord! Taverner - do another bong hit. dude.
MADem
(135,425 posts)cake for supper.
Crap push poll, indeed.
UnrepentantLiberal
(11,700 posts)When they don't have it chaos is sure to follow.
ChazII
(6,448 posts)Taverner
(55,476 posts)Response to Taverner (Original post)
cherokeeprogressive This message was self-deleted by its author.
cherokeeprogressive
(24,853 posts)I'd make the statement that authority stifles achievement.
Marrah_G
(28,581 posts)No one in charge doesn't usually do well, neither does overbearing, over reaching authority.
Humans in general work best in small groups "tribes" where people rely on one another.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)Is that being attacked here as well?
Certainly, if the authority was vested in Nelson Mandela, or Mahatma Gandhi, or Martin Luther King (were the last two alive), I would feel pretty good about it.
I dont think you can make blanket statements like this. I think the issues that you intend to raise are what Democracy is supposed to address. Some Democracies do it better than others.
I think community based authority can be worse than a Democracy vesting its power in an individual and the reverse can also be true of course. It depends on the community and on the individual in question.
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)
Confusious
(8,317 posts)And masters not of their own making.
4th law of robotics
(6,801 posts)ie you are free to not bathe yourself. But no one will like you and being ostracized is not pleasant.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)to desperately compete with each other within a manufactured illusion of insufficient wealth or resources.
rrneck
(17,671 posts)Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)Or is it from another fantasy writer?
treestar
(82,383 posts)There can be too much authority, but there can be too little. People who are the loudest and strongest or most charismatic gain too much upper hand if there is too little - and those people are not always the smartest.
Historic NY
(39,855 posts)or would you do what they tell you not to do.
Little Star
(17,055 posts)Taverner
(55,476 posts)Government has already been rendered toothless and powerless by the corporations that own it.
To eliminate authority in the US, you must eliminate the corporation.
The government? Please. You have a President with the best intentions, the highest intelligence and the best staff and he STILL can't do anything.
That doesn't sound like power to me. That doesn't sound like authority either.
arely staircase
(12,482 posts)
JustAnotherGen
(37,832 posts)IN the authority/institution.
Right now, a lot of people don't trust the institutions that have been in place for the past 40 or 50 years. Count me as one of them.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Support the growing authoritarian state!
It's a GOOD thing!
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)Without a person or group as an authority, who is to stop companies from paying $ 0.50 an hour wage to their employees?
Without a person or group as an authority, who is to stop managers and supervisors from sexually harrassing their workers?
Without a person or group as an authority, to whom do you report break ins to your home or threats to your person?
Without a person or group as an authority, who is to stop industrial and other companies from dumping toxic waste into rivers, lakes, oceans, or fields?
etc.
I'm not in favor of 'authoritarianism', but I am not in favor of the wild west as a model either.
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)
yurbud
(39,405 posts)
BlueCaliDem
(15,438 posts)who will set the rules and laws for us to follow or challenge, even when we don't know we're doing it.
Those humans who believe we are at our best when we're free of authority are hermits or "recluses" who society, generally speaking, distrust and look at with a jaundiced eye.
Trajan
(19,089 posts)At the end of a sword ... or a gun .... take your pick ...
Human beings are animals .... Without some sort of established guidelines for behavior, then it's just a fucking jungle and a dangerous one at that .... It is worth noting that before there were established constitutional governments, there were clan/tribe leaders, and then village chieftains .... Those leaders were leaders because they possessed the ability to create superior weapons ....
Blacksmiths used to become chiefs, because they made superior weapons .... It was really a simple calculus ....
I would posit that society NEEDS laws in order to help peaceful human beings resist the natural predatory behavior of human beings that possess those weapons .... Killing the weak used to be so much easier without them pesky laws against murder and manslaughter ....
Lord of the Flies might be a tame example ....
lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)
Taverner
(55,476 posts)Black, signifying no leaders, no masters, no gods...
spin
(17,493 posts)In order to function a society needs some rules and laws and a system to enforce them. This should be limited as much as possible.
Excessive authority can stifle freedom and consequently advancement of the society.
For example religion serves a valuable purpose in a society as it can increase moral behavior. Almost all religion is based on a version of the "Golden Rule." (ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule) However if religion gains control over a society it can stifle the advancement of scientific knowledge.
Catholic Church and science
***snip***
Galileo Galilei
The 1633 Church condemnation of Galileo Galilei created a time of antagonism between the Church and science.[citation needed] Federico Cesi created the Accademia dei Lincei in 1603 as an Italian science academy, of which Galileo became a member.[19] This scientific organization would be refounded as two separate institutions, the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, in 1936.[20]
Galileo's championing of Copernicanism was controversial within his lifetime, when a large majority of philosophers and astronomers still subscribed to the geocentric view that the Earth is at the centre of the universe. It has been much debated why it was not until six decades after Spina and Tolosani's attacks on Copernicus's work that the Catholic Church took any official action against it. Proposed reasons have included the personality of Galileo Galilei and the availability of evidence such as telescope observations[citation needed].
After 1610, when he began publicly supporting the heliocentric view, which placed the Sun at the centre of the universe, Galileo met with bitter opposition from some philosophers and clerics, and two of the latter eventually denounced him to the Roman Inquisition early in 1615. Although he was cleared of any offence at that time, the Catholic Church nevertheless condemned heliocentrism as "false and contrary to Scripture" in February 1616,[21] and Galileo was warned to abandon his support for it—which he promised to do. When he later defended his views in his most famous work, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, published in 1632, he was tried by the Inquisition, found "vehemently suspect of heresy," forced to recant, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest.
In March 1616, the Roman Catholic Church's Congregation of the Index issued a decree suspending De revolutionibus until it could be "corrected," on the grounds that the supposedly Pythagorean doctrine[22] that the Earth moves and the Sun does not was "false and altogether opposed to Holy Scripture."[23] The same decree also prohibited any work that defended the mobility of the Earth or the immobility of the Sun, or that attempted to reconcile these assertions with Scripture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_science#Dark_Ages
Even non religious societies can suffer from excessively authoritarian governments.
Censorship in the Soviet Union
***snip***
Control over information
All media in the Soviet Union were controlled by the state including television and radio broadcasting, newspaper, magazine and book publishing. This was achieved by state ownership of all production facilities, thus making all those employed in media state employees. This extended to the fine arts including the theater, opera and ballet. Art and music was controlled by ownership of distribution and performance venues.
Censorship was backed in cases where performances did not meet with the favor of the Soviet leadership with newspaper campaigns against offending material and sanctions applied though party controlled professional organizations.
In the case of book publishing a manuscript had to pass censorship and the decision of a state owned publishing house to publish and distribute the book. Books which met with official favor, for example, the collected speeches of Leonid Brezhnev were printed in vast quantities while less favored literary material might be published in limited numbers and not distributed widely. Popular escapist literature such as the popular best-sellers, mysteries and romances which form the bulk of Western publishing was nearly non-existent.
Possession and use of copying machines was tightly controlled in order to hinder production and distribution of samizdat, illegal self-published books and magazines. Possession of even a single samizdat manuscript such as a book by Andrei Sinyavsky was a serious crime which might involve a visit from the KGB. Another outlet for works which did not find favor with the authorities was publishing abroad....emphasis added
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_Soviet_Union
Many authoritarian governments today fear the freedom of the internet for good reason. We see this today in the recent freedom movements that led to the Arab Spring.
I fear today that the fear of terrorism is causing our government to restrict many of the freedoms we were granted in the Bill of Rights. For many years the freedom that Americans have enjoyed which included freedom of religion, freedom of the press and freedom of speech have been envied by many people who live under the thumb of an authoritarian and oppressive regime. If we lose those liberties, the terrorists will win as we will no longer be as bright a beacon to the world. It is not necessary to destroy our nation but merely to make it more authoritarian and oppressive like theirs. It might also be logical that the rich 1% of our nation would like to see a far more authoritarian government as it would help stifle any movement to undermine their wealth and power.
I also fear that an another unhealthy trend is developing in our nation and that is the desire of those on the religious right to promote the Bible as a science textbook and to incorporate many of their Christian views into law. Our Founding Fathers wisely believed in a separation of church and state.
Individual freedom with reasonable constraints can advance our civilization but in reality such freedom is difficult to achieve and preserve.
Taverner
(55,476 posts)
spin
(17,493 posts)Taverner
(55,476 posts)Not the naysayers who think we have to eat our shit sandwiches with a grin and a toothpick, but an honest re-evaluation of our priorities.
spin
(17,493 posts)but to learn and often change my personal views.
Often on DU and on other similar internet forums I am discouraged as many posters appear to be mainly interested in insulting and demeaning the opinions of others. However DU does seem to have far more intelligent and literate posters than most other forums.
Life should be a constant learning experience and while I often disagree with many of the views posted here, I do my best to carefully consider all posts and form a balanced opinion. I love news and I listen to all three major 24/7 news services. Obviously Fox News and MSNBC have a political bias and CNN largely is somewhat in between.
I also enjoy studying history and attempt to learn lessons from the past. I find science, religion and mythology interesting subjects.
Now that I am retired I have far more time to spend on study and learning and I find the more I learn the less I feel that I know and I end up with far more unanswered questions to research.
I value DU as I get a chance to debate with intelligent people many of whom have a far better education than I have. I do my best to contribute in a polite manner and to always respect the views of others.
I fear that in my lifetime we, as a nation, have become divided into camps that refuse compromise and are cemented into strong views. We often fight like unsupervised children in a playground.
Our nation is finding itself in a situation similar to a galley where 40 percent of the rowers on one side are refusing to row, 40% of the others on the opposite side are rowing as hard as they can and the remaining percentage are drilling holes in the bottom of the boat. Our objective is to reach a destination on the opposite shore but at the best we will end up rowing in circles or at the worst we will sink.
Perhaps that why I try to form honest, unbiased and nonpolitical views.
This admittedly turned into somewhat of a rant on my part. I do greatly appreciate your compliments and I can always hope that DU will turn into a much more polite forum filled with intelligent and enlightening discussions on many topics.
LeftishBrit
(41,450 posts)Last edited Mon Jul 9, 2012, 05:54 PM - Edit history (1)
indeed, often to similar consequences.
Authoritarianism by state, church, family patriarch, or whoever, is a dangerous thing. But where there is no recognized authority, then the more aggressive are likely to try to fill the breach, either ending up as tyrants in their own right, or fighting it out for the role, with others ending up as collateral damage.
Taverner
(55,476 posts)stevenleser
(32,886 posts)I think some people are invested in community authority as some sort of cure-all. I don't think it is as the example in my subject line suggests.
I think Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and the crowds reaction to Mark Antony's speech illustrates fictionally what is a real world concern. There are always forces of evil and disinformation trying to play to the emotions of crowds trying to get them to embrace and do things that are not fair or right and all too often they are successful.
Basically half of the national collective of voters voted for George W. Bush twice.
A collective of exceptionally brilliant, advanced-degreed scientists sent the challenger and its seven member crew to their deaths, ignoring evidence right in front of them because of group-think. Wikipedia describes group think as:
"...a psychological phenomenon that occurs within groups of people. It is the mode of thinking that happens when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative ideas or viewpoints. Antecedent factors such as group cohesiveness, structural faults, and situational context play into the likelihood of whether or not groupthink will impact the decision-making process.
The primary socially negative cost of groupthink is the loss of individual creativity, uniqueness, and independent thinking. As a social science model, groupthink has an extensive reach and influences literature in the fields of communication studies, political science, social psychology, management, organizational theory, and information technology.
The majority of the initial research on groupthink was performed by Irving Janis, a research psychologist from Yale University. In an influential 1972 book, his original definition of the term was "A mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members' strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action."8–9 Since Janis’s work, other studies have attempted to reformulate his groupthink model. 'T Hart (1998) developed a concept of groupthink as “collective optimism and collective avoidance,”while McCauley (1989) pointed to the impact of conformity and compliance pressures on groupthink decisions."
FrodosPet
(5,169 posts)Authority needs to be constrained, but the saying "Too many cooks spoils the broth" applies in so many cases of group authority or no authority. The left hand doesn't know what the right is doing, and NO ONE has to take responsibility or blame.
Ultimately, in ANY group large or small, some people will rise up above the others, and people will turn to them for direction. Sometimes this is good - that leader has good intentions and the ability to make positive decisions and provide worthwhile directions. Sometimes this is bad - popular history is so filled with examples I won't even bother.
For the pure anarchists I ask - what direction does a car without a steering wheel go?
Bluerthanblue
(13,669 posts)keeps us all from losing our way.
When we as a group decide upon rules which benefit us as a whole- we need to have the 'authority' to enforce those rules.
Leaving every person to their own desires-devices results in chaos and anarchy. Had we humans not come together as 'clans' communities- we would have died out long ago imo.
No man is an Island, eintire of itself.
riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)I've driven in some places that had none and its extremely dangerous. Public defecation is a severe health hazard and enforcement of sanitary waste disposal is a necessity.
Some authority is necessary to ensure a functioning society. What amount of authority is up for discussion and is an ever changing point I believe.
So I don't agree or disagree specifically. I think your poll is too simplistic and disingenuous.
Taverner
(55,476 posts)I-5 I dunno. I mean the stretch between Sac and the Grapevine
That really doesn't need a speed limit
arely staircase
(12,482 posts)
quaker bill
(8,262 posts)baldguy
(36,649 posts)The same unencumbered freedom they wish to be able to paint their front door whatever color they desire would also allow them the unencumbered freedom to build an slaughterhouse in a densely-packed residential neighborhood.
If we choose to live in a society of people, there has to be some sort of authority - ideally one which we've chosen for ourselves through a democratic process. Those that wish to subvert or eliminate that authority are a threat to our society.
Taverner
(55,476 posts)Libertarianism has no problem with power structures or authority. It just assumes that if we eliminate the state, that is the part of the power structure that can, during brief moments, be controlled by the people, a meritocracy will spring up. Either that, or they really watched Mad Max too many times.
Anarchism is the revolt against all power structures. 'No gods, no masters, no leaders" is the rallying cry.
Now, being that this is a simplistic argument - there ALWAYS has to be some kind of modifier. Hence, 'Anarcho-Syndicalism,' ' Anarcho-Communism,' 'Anarcho-Capitalism' (my least favorite flavor,) 'Green Anarchism,' and 'Anarcho-Primitivism.' There are many other flavors of course.
Famous Anarchist Theorist Mikhail Bakunin claimed he was 'Anarchist plus nothing' - but this was not true. He was in favor of Anarcho-Communism, as he felt once the church, state and capitalist class were defeated, we would naturally form communes and collectives.
I think you need to set your goal, and then work towards it. It cannot be accomplished in a day - quite possibly not in our lifetime.
How was the transition from Feudalism to Capitalism accomplished? That wasn't overnight either, and there were many struggles in the process.
My goal is kind of an Anarchist/Socialist hybrid.
Centralized authority can be abused easily.
Shame is an amazing motivator, however...
Deep13
(39,157 posts)orpupilofnature57
(15,472 posts)Checks and balances not Experts and Consultants.
Spazito
(55,339 posts)human beings are free of authority? If so, no thanks. If not, please give an example of some country/state/nation that is representative of what you seem to be espousing.
Taverner
(55,476 posts)"Authority" is everyone
Anyone with a gun is "authority"
Spazito
(55,339 posts)when there is no agreed upon authority, then is it not true that it would be everyone in authority ala Somalia? Seems to me it would. Do you have an actual example of a State/Nation/Country that would showcase your perspective?
FrodosPet
(5,169 posts)It requires a mass to work together, with directed purpose, to capture and imprison the authorities.
Usually, to collect, rally, and focus such groups requires (gulp) LEADERS!
Damn...hosed again.
LiberalFighter
(53,544 posts)In what society are humans free of authority? Even one without a government will have some form of authority. It is the natural order of things.
Authority is earned when they are elected.
Taverner
(55,476 posts) 
bemildred
(90,061 posts)“Men will not be free until the last King is strangled with the guts of the last priest.” – Diderot
One can live in the shadow of an idea without grasping it.
--Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973)
“Governments, whatever their pretensions otherwise, try to preserve themselves by holding the individual down … Government itself, indeed, may be reasonably defined as a conspiracy against him. It's one permanent aim, whatever its form, is to hobble him sufficiently to maintain itself.” H. L. Mencken
"Morality is always the product of terror; its chains and strait-waistcoats are fashioned by those who dare not trust others, because they dare not trust themselves, to walk in liberty." - Aldous Huxley, author of the required-reading-list classic, Brave New World.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power." ~ George Orwell 1984
“Men nearly always speak and write as if riches were absolute, as if it were possible, by following certain scientific precepts, for everybody to be rich. Whereas riches are a power like that of electricity, acting only through inequalities or negations of itself. The force of the guinea you have in your pocket depends wholly on the default of a guinea in your neighbors pocket. If he did not want it, it would be of no use to you; the degree of power it possesses depends accurately on the need or desire he has for it, – and the art of making yourself rich, in the ordinary mercantile economist's sense, is therefore equally and necessarily the art of keeping your neighbor poor.” – John Ruskin “Unto the Last”
"Such euphemisms illustrate one major function of language, which is to keep reality at bay." – John Carey "Eyewitness to History" Introduction
Whereas the Greeks gave to will the boundaries of reason, we have come to put the will’s impulse at the very center of reason, which has, as a result, become deadly. ... Nature is still there however. She contrasts her calm skies and her reasons with the madness of men. Until the atom too catches fire and history ends in the triumph of reason and the agony of the species. But the Greeks never said that the limit could not be overstepped. They said it existed and that whoever dared to exceed it was mercilessly struck down. Nothing in present history can contradict them. A. Camus ‘Helen’s Exile’
When I was seven years old, I was once reprimanded by my mother for an
act of collective brutality in which I had been involved at school. A
group of seven-year-olds had been teasing and tormenting a
six-year-old. "It is always so," my mother said. "You do things
together which not one of you would think of doing alone." ...
Wherever one looks in the world of human organization, collective
responsibility brings a lowering of moral standards. The military
establishment is an extreme case, an organization which seems to have
been expressly designed to make it possible for people to do things
together which nobody in his right mind would do alone.
-- Freeman Dyson, "Weapons and Hope"
mainer
(12,530 posts)Without authority, without a civilizing force, the inherent homicide rate seems to be around 15 %.