iOWNme
24th December 2012, 08:33 AM
Teaching Morality vs Teaching Authority
It is commonly held that unless children are taught to respect and obey “authority” they will be like wild animals, stealing, assaulting, and so on. But being obedient, in and of itself, merely means that, instead of the individual using his own judgment, he will defer to the judgment of those who seek and acquire positions of power – some of the most immoral, corrupt, callous, malicious, dishonest people on earth. Training people to be merely obedient only prevents animalistic behavior if the supposed “authority” does not itself condone and command theft and assault, as every “government” in history has done in the name of “taxation” and “law enforcement”.
Obviously, teaching obedience does not help civilization if those giving the orders are commanding the very behaviors that harm society: acts of aggression against innocents. The idea that wide spread subservience is good for society rests upon the patently false assumption that people in positions of power are morally superior to everyone else. It should be self-evident that having most people disregard their own consciences, instead entrusting politicians to make their choices for them, is not going to make society any safer or more virtuous. Instead, it will simply legitimize the very acts that interfere with peaceful human coexistence.
Consider the analogy of a robot which is programmed to do whatever its owner tells it to do, whether productive or destructive, whether civilized or aggressive. This is akin to a child learning to respect “authority”. Whether the obedient robot or the child ends up being a tool used for destruction and oppression depends entirely upon who ends up giving the orders. If, instead, children are taught the principle of self-ownership – the idea that every individual belongs to himself, and should not be robbed, threatened, assaulted, or murdered – then the supposed virtue of obedience is completely unnecessary. Consider which of the following is more likely to lead to a just, peaceful society: billions of people being taught the basics of how to moral human beings (e.g., the principles of non-aggression), or billions of people being taught merely to obey, in the hopes that the few people who end up in charge will happen to give good orders. If there is any difficulty imagining what would happen in the two scenarios, one need only look to history to see what has happened.
Even randomly selected “rulers”, when given permission to forcibly control everyone else, will quickly be corrupted, and will become tyrants. But average, decent people are not the ones who desire power over others. The ones who seek and obtain power are usually already narcissists and megalomaniacs, people with a never-ending lust for power, who love the idea of dominating others. And the desire for dominion is never driven by the desire to help those who are being dominated, but always by a desire to empower the controller, at the expense of whom he controls. Yet people continue to echo the claim that the average person, if guided purely by his own conscience, would be less trustworthy, less civilized and less moral than if he sets aside his own conscience and just blindly does whatever the tyrants of the world tell him to do. If each person relied on his own judgment, that would, by definition, be “anarchy,” while widespread obedience to authoritarian tyrants, by definition, constitutes “law and order”. Note the drastic contrast between the usual connotations of those terms – “anarchy” sounding scary and violent, “law and order” sounding civilized and just – and the real-world results of following conscience versus following rulers. The level of evil committed by individuals acting on their own is completely dwarfed by the level of evil committed by people obeying a perceived “authority”.
Though many imagine teaching obedience to “authority” to be synonymous with teaching right and wrong, the two are actually opposites. Teaching children to respect the rights of every human being, and teaching them that committing aggression is inherently wrong, is very important. But teaching them that obedience is a virtue, and that “respecting authority” is a moral imperative, will make them grow up to either advocate widespread, large-scale aggression, or to participate in widespread, large-scale aggression. Every statist does one or the other (or both). In fact, teaching obedience dramatically hinders the social and mental development of children. After having grown up in a situation where they were controlled by others, rewarded for obedience and punished for disobedience, if they ever escape the situation, they will have had little or no training, and little or no experience or practice, in how to think and act from morals and principles. Having never exercised their individual judgment and personal responsibility, knowing only how to do as they are told, they will be like trained monkeys that have escaped, but have no way to cope with a life of freedom. If their upbringings have been molded mainly by controlling “authority” figures, people become existentially lost if that control vanishes. In short, people trained to obey “authority” do not know how to be independent, sovereign, responsible human beings, because their all their lives they have been intentionally and specifically trained not to follow their own conscience and not to use their own judgment. So the indoctrinated, when they escape one institutionalized control setting (“school”), hallucinate another “authority” to take its place: “government”. The escaped monkeys simply build a new cage, and eagerly jump into it, because that is all they know, and all they have ever known.
In a world without the “authority” myth, on the other hand, children could be taught to be moral instead of merely obedient. They could be taught to respect people, instead of respecting the inhuman, violent monster called “government”. They could be taught that it is up to them, not only to do the right thing, but to figure out what “the right thing” is. As a result, they could grow up to be responsible, thinking, useful adults, members of a peaceful and productive community, instead of growing up to be little more than cattle on the farm of tyrants.
(Taken from the book "The Most Dangerous Superstition", pg 166, by Larken Rose)
It is commonly held that unless children are taught to respect and obey “authority” they will be like wild animals, stealing, assaulting, and so on. But being obedient, in and of itself, merely means that, instead of the individual using his own judgment, he will defer to the judgment of those who seek and acquire positions of power – some of the most immoral, corrupt, callous, malicious, dishonest people on earth. Training people to be merely obedient only prevents animalistic behavior if the supposed “authority” does not itself condone and command theft and assault, as every “government” in history has done in the name of “taxation” and “law enforcement”.
Obviously, teaching obedience does not help civilization if those giving the orders are commanding the very behaviors that harm society: acts of aggression against innocents. The idea that wide spread subservience is good for society rests upon the patently false assumption that people in positions of power are morally superior to everyone else. It should be self-evident that having most people disregard their own consciences, instead entrusting politicians to make their choices for them, is not going to make society any safer or more virtuous. Instead, it will simply legitimize the very acts that interfere with peaceful human coexistence.
Consider the analogy of a robot which is programmed to do whatever its owner tells it to do, whether productive or destructive, whether civilized or aggressive. This is akin to a child learning to respect “authority”. Whether the obedient robot or the child ends up being a tool used for destruction and oppression depends entirely upon who ends up giving the orders. If, instead, children are taught the principle of self-ownership – the idea that every individual belongs to himself, and should not be robbed, threatened, assaulted, or murdered – then the supposed virtue of obedience is completely unnecessary. Consider which of the following is more likely to lead to a just, peaceful society: billions of people being taught the basics of how to moral human beings (e.g., the principles of non-aggression), or billions of people being taught merely to obey, in the hopes that the few people who end up in charge will happen to give good orders. If there is any difficulty imagining what would happen in the two scenarios, one need only look to history to see what has happened.
Even randomly selected “rulers”, when given permission to forcibly control everyone else, will quickly be corrupted, and will become tyrants. But average, decent people are not the ones who desire power over others. The ones who seek and obtain power are usually already narcissists and megalomaniacs, people with a never-ending lust for power, who love the idea of dominating others. And the desire for dominion is never driven by the desire to help those who are being dominated, but always by a desire to empower the controller, at the expense of whom he controls. Yet people continue to echo the claim that the average person, if guided purely by his own conscience, would be less trustworthy, less civilized and less moral than if he sets aside his own conscience and just blindly does whatever the tyrants of the world tell him to do. If each person relied on his own judgment, that would, by definition, be “anarchy,” while widespread obedience to authoritarian tyrants, by definition, constitutes “law and order”. Note the drastic contrast between the usual connotations of those terms – “anarchy” sounding scary and violent, “law and order” sounding civilized and just – and the real-world results of following conscience versus following rulers. The level of evil committed by individuals acting on their own is completely dwarfed by the level of evil committed by people obeying a perceived “authority”.
Though many imagine teaching obedience to “authority” to be synonymous with teaching right and wrong, the two are actually opposites. Teaching children to respect the rights of every human being, and teaching them that committing aggression is inherently wrong, is very important. But teaching them that obedience is a virtue, and that “respecting authority” is a moral imperative, will make them grow up to either advocate widespread, large-scale aggression, or to participate in widespread, large-scale aggression. Every statist does one or the other (or both). In fact, teaching obedience dramatically hinders the social and mental development of children. After having grown up in a situation where they were controlled by others, rewarded for obedience and punished for disobedience, if they ever escape the situation, they will have had little or no training, and little or no experience or practice, in how to think and act from morals and principles. Having never exercised their individual judgment and personal responsibility, knowing only how to do as they are told, they will be like trained monkeys that have escaped, but have no way to cope with a life of freedom. If their upbringings have been molded mainly by controlling “authority” figures, people become existentially lost if that control vanishes. In short, people trained to obey “authority” do not know how to be independent, sovereign, responsible human beings, because their all their lives they have been intentionally and specifically trained not to follow their own conscience and not to use their own judgment. So the indoctrinated, when they escape one institutionalized control setting (“school”), hallucinate another “authority” to take its place: “government”. The escaped monkeys simply build a new cage, and eagerly jump into it, because that is all they know, and all they have ever known.
In a world without the “authority” myth, on the other hand, children could be taught to be moral instead of merely obedient. They could be taught to respect people, instead of respecting the inhuman, violent monster called “government”. They could be taught that it is up to them, not only to do the right thing, but to figure out what “the right thing” is. As a result, they could grow up to be responsible, thinking, useful adults, members of a peaceful and productive community, instead of growing up to be little more than cattle on the farm of tyrants.
(Taken from the book "The Most Dangerous Superstition", pg 166, by Larken Rose)