Authority is Like a Condom

The Condom is a Cuirass against Pleasure and a Spider's Web against Danger. -- Madame de Staël (1766 - 1817) The authority we possess often distances us from others, making the pleasures of companionship or of even more ordinary forms of social intercourse strained, if not impossible. Yet, authority does not in and of itself, protect us from brute force, as any battered spouse with a restraining order knows full well.

How Does Authority Protect?

All new teachers, like many old-time missionaries, or any person newly thrust into a leadership role, discovers that the reputation of those who bestowed authority upon them may matter very little. Kids, for example, are not impressed with State issued teaching licenses. People raised in one religion, or in older forms of the same religion, are resistant to the new authorizations that have ordained the newcomer.

Authority of any kind is ultimately based on consensus, an agreement to acknowledge the validity of that authority. This consensus may based on traditionally shared beliefs, values and attitudes, or be merely expedient acquiescence or outward conformity.

This is the reality of the moral freedom we enjoy as individuals, if we only think about it. We, each one of us, can choose, if we are willing to live with the consequences, not to acknowledge as pertinent to our lives, any "authority" whatsoever. (The possibility of such disregard is why those in authority try to aggrandize power. See Usurping the Rights of Others)

This is no weird, esoteric practice to be carried out by bald monks on a mountaintop. It is exactly what we do to a great extent when we visit other countries and cultures: we acquiesce in behaving so as to keep ourselves out of jail, or to avoid social opprobrium; even though we disregard whatever other concerns a native of that culture might have. Sight-seeing in a church does not mean you will be a convert.

Not acknowledging as authority what others do may lead to conflicts of many kinds. But accommodating diversity is what makes possible the differences between families, religions, cultures and nations. But diversity, still, is what sometimes makes teaching and preaching an uphill battle. (Especially where coercive power is lacking.)

To examine these issues further, see The Indeterminacy of Consensus

Cordially --- EGR

Cloning Citizens: mission accomplished … mostly.

The main product of the newsmedia has been and continues to be … anxiety. – Eric Sevareid.

Remember the fuss raised by religious and political personalities (generously referred to as “leaders”) when cloning first made it appearance in the media? Why has it died down? Who worries about cloning anymore now that new forms of life have been created in the lab?

We have been cloning “educated” minds for millennia. What do religious leaders want? Doctrinal clones. What do political leaders want? Political clones. What do ethnic leaders want? Ethnic clones. What do parents want? Clones of themselves.

What do educators lust after? Cultural, informational, and behavioral clones. Even "deviant" or “revolutionary” educators try to self-replicate: self-actualized clones, EST clones, inner child clones, Iron John clones. And how those miserable humans do resist! In spite of dungeon, fire, and sword. In spite of morality, patriotism, and rationality!

Forget Rousseau; educators look to clone. We pursue not the noble savage, nor do we indulge the feral child. We clone; not, genetically (yet), but much more effectively: mentally, intellectually, emotionally. Our cloning is the incarnation of our “ideals” into the recalcitrant flesh of homo sapiens.

To examine these issues further, see Cloning Student Voice

Cordially
-- EGR

Does Prohibiting Corporal Punishment Prevent Abuse?

Where there's a will, there's a way. -- Proverb

In the public schools, people seem to be rabid partisans on the issue of corporal punishment: the Pro’s salivate contemplating the wonders they imagine spanking will wreak; the Con’s worry, worry, worry that any physical contact initiates a very short walk to the torture chamber.

The Pro’s seem to see punishment, of all sorts, to offer a convincing argument for conformity. The Con’s are indisposed to entertain the possibility that non-physical punishment may easily reach the level of torture, even though every grade school bully knows this in his (her?) bones.

And cyberbullying opens a new dimension in which the infliction of anguish has little to do with physical contact. So long as adults delude themselves that merely forbidding a mode of infliction will suffice, cruelty will out.

To pursue related considerations, see School Violence, Punishment, and Justice 

-- EGR