Jinn

Even with the good intentions of the moderators in Politics, reading posts like "it doesn't matter what you think, this is how it's going to be,", I can't help but getting the aderaline-fueled fight-or-flight reaction I usually do when having authority pushed on me. As most of you know (or will soon know), I'm the ripe old age of 20. I've always had a severe distate for authority, and buck quickly under its pressure.

I identify this with realizing I was -- according to my own interpretation -- better than the resident authorities, even at a young age. I remember being so angry that I knew more about computers than my computer TEACHERS, and I link this with a deal of my distrust for "authority."

The most angering for me is when someone who doesn't have any explicit authority tries to act as if they do. "Shut your mouth or you'll regret it," type comments are the staple of this diet. I could almost harken it back to our prehistoric roots (establishing dominancy heirarchies like apes through dominance and submission gestures) but I truly wonder:

I've been told that resistance to authority (specifically mental and physical resistance) is linked more to age (or lack thereof) than personality; Do you think this is true? Why not? I'm especially interested in those past the disputed "age," but you're all welcome to reply.

EDIT: Changed the topic title, perhaps I won't be misunderstood THIS time.

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rainheart

You're not alone, I know how you feel. I'm only a little bit younger than you.

That said, you ask: "is vehement aversion to rules a sign of age or personality?"

Why should it be either? It depends on the circumstances, and you cannot define it as definately being one of the two, or a permanent and constant mixture of the two.

It's beginning to seem to me that my distaste for authority is becoming more and more justified, but I'm still trying to figure out why I feel this way, and whether or not it really is justified or not.

Ultimately, aversion to established rules should depend on:
1) Your personal views
2) How well the rules fit with your personal views

So, what are your personal views? And why do you hold those views? And what criticisms are there of those views? That might help you explain it.

Suave

Resistance of authority, in the most basic and societally deterministic of terms, is related to how well you are socialized for a particular facet of a particular society. We are constantly having forces exerted on us, attempting to, and generally at least partially succeeding in, shaping our actions and perceptions. Reasoning along this line, with age, assuming you have been fairly stable in your social confines, these forces would likely increase your obedience with society. Hence, age could be a definite factor.

Personality is also a factor. There are parts of our personality that are nigh unchangeable, and if those parts of your personality happen to clash with certain aspects of dominant society, then resistance to authority will be a result. Personality is also a result, at least in a large part, of the formerly noted socializing forces, and therefore when you age, your personality tends to change. Thus, the two "causes" that you stated are inseparable.

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Martel

Honestly I think you'll only be able to answer this question by looking back on the current time in about 5-10 years. There are plenty of things I knew were true about myself and the world when I was 18 that I now know were silly, and plenty of things that are indeed still true. I'm sure in another 5-10 years I'll be looking back laughing at how I thought I had figured it all out again but was still wrong.

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Cynthetiq

It's a sign of immaturity not age nor personality.

If one looks at Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, those that are younger in age generally have the lower tiered needs met and are trying to fill their Self-Esteem needs by seeking independence and dominance.

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analog

I agree with Cynthetiq's use of Maslow to explain this particular psychological issue- but no matter how you slice it, it's a matter of (im)maturity. Sure, age can play a part and often does, but there are plenty of immature people a lot older than 20.

There's a difference between the notion of (rightfully) questioning authority, and the knee-jerk rallying against authority because a lack of maturity is causing a lack of civility.

CSflim

Yup. That's basically it.
Rebelling against a figure of authority solely because he or she is a figure of authority is just a sign of immaturity. On the other hand, retaining your ability to think critically about those in positions of authority is pretty important.

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Carno

Wow. You're going to have a difficult life if you continue thinking you're so much better than everyone else. Also, how in the hell did you link being pissed about having dumb teachers into "fuck authority!"? That makes no sense to me.

Um, that has nothing to do with hating authority. You said yourself that they have no authority, so that is just hating people telling you to STFU.

I'd have to agree that hating authority is neither a matter of personality or age, but maturity. Were I as mature in high school as I am now, I would have gotten in a lot less trouble, gotten along better with my dad and pretty much just have been way less stupid. However, maturity is a lot of the time closely aligned with age.

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Ustwo

Bingo.

This is why so many people look back at their youth and think 'god I was a dumbass'.

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ubertuber

Age, yup. Part of the culturization of males, particularly young adults - check. Personality, right. Basically I think it's one of those all of the above deals, but IMHO (haha) it comes back to how each of those factors interacts with ego.

I used to be very much like the way you are describing. I've mellowed out quite a bit, and I'm still young. I think there are certain experiences that'll change your perspective.

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Gatorade Frost

That's about it I think. I'm 18 and there have been very few times I've felt the need to fight the power, and in my opinion those were times that I rightfully felt like there was an unjust situation that needed to be righted, and not because I've felt like being rebellious just for the sake of being rebellious.

I think that age, personality, and situation all factor in. Reasonings for that sort of thing are way to grey and way to broad to be clearly defined in my opinion.

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roachboy

simply equating a tendency to resist authority with immaturity is the equivalent of equating more skilled and wholesale submission to authority for its own sake with maturity. both are ridiculous.

what does break down over time, i found, is the frame you may drag from being a kid that may prompt you to view all authority as arbitrary----because from a kids viewpoint, it is. with that tends to go the assumption--which is in itself just as arbitrary as what you react against--that somehow you are better (what does that even mean?) than the the agents of Authority.

authority begins to break up as a category---into political matters, into types of hierarchy and relations to hierachy---responses to it change, modes of opposition change. if you shift into modes of political opposition, you may find yourself using philosophy as a way of posing basic questions---in which case you are trying to outline systematic critiques---which you would hope logicaly, compelling, fitting data with an interpretive frame and making arguments as to adequacy and implications--if you go this route, then the residual knee-jek resistance to authority that you may hang onto becomes itself a real problem because it blinds you to your own motives and--worse--to ways in which those motives get written into your arguments.
when i was younger, motivations were not problematic in that they seemed tocome with being in the world---now motivations are a problem that i have to try to be aware of and work my way through.

examples: one place where my attitude when was younger was quite close to yours, jinnkai, was on the question of religion. particularly catholicism--later christianity in general---i dont know when a change occurred that enabled me to no longer feel like what i did not believe was nonetheless my problem and begin to take a more distanced view of it--i tend now to see it as just another form of social control shaped by a particular register of signifier which is problematic if it gets mapped onto other areas--particularly politics--which is one of the reasons i find contemporary conservative ideology to be a dangerous thing. being trapped in reversal of the logic you encounter early in life causes you to waste much energy railing against your own emotional history even as you think you are railing against an institution. it is hard to sort this out. it takes time---i wish sometimes i had figured out something less banal to tell folk, particularly my students--about that, but i havent.

on the other hand, with music i went through a longphase during which i simply rejected everything about existing models for making music--then i found what i took to be a countermodel in free jazz, so without realizing it i turned myself into a bad copy of cecil taylor for a long time--gradually, i worked my way out from under that and at some point later found that i no longer cared what anyone told me about how things should or should not happen in music--but also that i could interact with all kinds of stuff that others were doing and had done, take what interested me and use it, not bother with the rest of it. this extended to relations to very highly controlled types of compostion, like serial music, which i like the sound of but am not interested in making according to the rules of the game. i guess that a question of feeling authorized to have and maintain a particular relation to music underpins that. but i have gone my own way with it for 30 years now. past a certian point, questions of authority as they come to bear on things that matter to you may drop away--authority looses its power, simply reduces to quirks of speech in folk who say things about how you should be or what you should do that are irrelevant.

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it make you sick.

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Jinn

Thank you all for so many replies!

Thank you for this. I hadn't broken it down into this level of granularity, and it clarified why I distaste a great deal of authority -- my personal views are quite different than the majority on what is truly a crime against society or humanity. Things like reverse-engineering, breaking copy protection or gaining "unauthorized" access to unsecure systems. I have a more liberal approach to these than the authorities who enforce the rules regarding them. Likewise, I don't consider speeding a "crime," as long as their an effort to maintain safety is demonstrable by the defendant. However, our police officers and law systems disagree with this -- perhaps this is something that is attached to my personality rather than my age (or as other posters claim, my maturity) whereas other things will change with age.

I'd quote the well-stated parts of your post, but I don't want to just quote the whole post.

I don't react to authority simply because it IS authority, but because I disagree with their policies or enforcement of those policies. Similarly, I'd never react without a sizeable amount of civility .. I do believe my signature.

You seem to have been "vehemently averse" to my post, based on your tone; but I'd like to clarify since you missed it in my first post. Teachers were (and are) an authority figure. Said authority figure was ignorant about the technology which they regulated. Therefore, I disliked their authority to regulate technology they knew very little about. Much like my anger at policiticians who pass laws like the DMCA without any direct understanding of technology today or how the software industry even works.

And in regards to "Wow. You're going to have a difficult life if you continue thinking you're so much better than everyone else." -- could you clarify? I never said "everyone," but the majority -- yes. And why would knowing that I'm better than them make my life difficult? If anything, it should make my life easier. This gives me the ability to know who I can trust with important tasks, and who I cannot. If I were disregarding others because they were lesser than me, that would be one thing -- but simply acknowledging it? I'm curious to see how you could defend this?

Quoted for truth. And for once, I understood the majority of your post. Thanks.

To those of you who cited the potentially valid idea that this is related to maturity rather than factors, such as age and personality, how do you define maturity?

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lurkette

Jump to conclusions much? This simply doesn't follow - just because submission is the opposite of resistance doesn't mean that we're equating submission with the opposite of immaturity. To put it in SAT format:

unreasoned resistance:immaturity = unreasoned obedience:???

And nobody has suggested "maturity" as an answer. How you reached that conclusion...I don't know.

ABSOLUTE submission is just as imbalanced as ABSOLUTE resistance. I certainly wouldn't characterize absolute submission to authority as "maturity" - more like spinelessness. However, there is something to be said for what others have said - the critical ability to determine when submitted to authority is warrented, and when not, and this is an ability that requires some maturity of judgment.

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roachboy

you know, lurkette, if my post was two lines long, i'd have come in and said yes you are right it was a jump mea culpa etc.
but it wasn't two lines long.

the problem your post poses for me is not its-----um-----selective editing of what i wrote--that happens lots in this kind of format...

the problem comes from my not being sure of what to make of your decision to route a banal logical point, which mayb be formally correct in itself, but which is wholly undercut by the fundamental mistake of ignoring context, through a patronizing reference to the sat.

no-one, not even the greatest of chess masters, would presume to have worked out an entire game based on the first move in isolation.
the first move only becomes other than arbitrary when it is followed by a second.

context matters.

if you have a problem with the substance of what i wrote, then speak to that.
i'll check back later, if i remember to....

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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Carno

Okay, so you were pissed you had shitty teachers. How does that translate into a general dislike for authority? You were mad because your teachers weren't teaching you at the level you wanted them to, so you decided to rebel? I still don't get it. Why didn't you just learn more about computers on your own? Why did you think their incompetence had anything to do with your learning?

A lot of people dislike arrogance.

I had written up a longer response, but first I just want to ask you why you think you're better than the majority of people?

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lurkette

Contex does matter, absolutely; but aside from finding the rest of your post a little incomprehensible, I didn't really see how it really related to or softened the first two lines. I don't know what you would call hanging on to earlier frameworks of viewing authority, but to me it sounds like a dressed up definition of immaturity. I apologize for the part about jumping to conclusions, but I still stand by the assertion that wholesale resistance to authority is a matter of intellectual immaturity. Presenting an obviously false dichotomy that none of us suggested as a means of pointing out the absurdity of our argument is a little unfair. Perhaps just as unfair as jumping on a banal logical point. The reference to the SAT was not meant to be patronizing but was rather my attempt to make the analogy clear for myself. Sorry you took it as a disparagement.

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roachboy

ok lurkette. as you like. it is not that important.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Ustwo

Formating exsists to make it easier to read and understand what is being written. I'd recomend the use of capital letters and such, but perhaps you are rebelling to authority here?

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ngdawg

Maybe it's because I came into the world ass-backwards, but this made perfect sense to me....no one would dare say, 'she's blonde, so she's good in bed', so why should we equate authoritative resistance with strictly the young and why should it be a sign of immaturity? I've been doing it all my life and I'm....well, ok, I'm not 'mature' but in age only....
I think some of the maturity aspect may come into play with what is being resisted. Blanket defiance is a sign of immaturity. Defying authority with cause, questioning the why's is not.

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Ustwo

I think for most of us who responded it wasn't a 'if you defy authority you are immature' it was in direct response to JinnKai.

What JinnKai stated sounds very much like immature rebellion. It's something I assume most of us can relate to as we were young once too.

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Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

analog

But we're not equating immaturity to a mere "tendency" to resist authority- we're talking about the relatively automatic and self-righteously indignant show of attitudes against a perceived authority figure. That's what the whole thread is about- vehement aversion (not casual whining). Casual whining is complaining about "the man" to your friends- what we're talking about here is the show of intentional disrespect for the rules of an authority figure, simply because such rules exist, or such a person is enforcing them. Therein lies the heart of the "vehement aversion" we're really talking about here, which IS a function of an immature mind.

rainheart

What about when vehement aversion is warranted? By your definition, there would be no space in society for civil disobedience, for example.

What good would it be to casually whine about the man, without really doing anything to make it better? It may not necessarily be "simply because such rules exist", but rather because of a real or perceived injustice or wrongdoing. If that is the case, then the cause behind aversion of the rules must be deduced and evaluated morally. If the reason for averting the rule is legitimate, then it may not be a sign of immaturity, but a sign of a problem which exists outside the person opposing authority figures.

Jinn

What if you disagree with the policy, the enforcement of the policy, or the appointment of the enforcer to the enforcing position? Is it still immature? I don't recall making a reference to arbitrarily resisting authority simply because it exists..

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Jinn

I really don't see how you're still misunderstanding -- A has authority over you. A is ignorant. You dislike A's authority because they're ignorant.. B has authority over you. B is ignorant. You dislike B's authority because they're ignorant. Continue this with the rest of the alphabet. Do you see that by the time you get to Z you have a general dislike of authority because it is empirically spiked with ignorance? You cannot respect an authority you perceive as less than yourself, whether you'd like to argue the semantics of their idiocy or not.

I did, and it did.

I'd explain it to you but I'm afraid your inferior mind couldn't comprehend it. only joookinggg. And since no test of intelligence, no matter how "culturally neutralized" they claim it to be can actually measure true intelligene, I can't give you a metric. It's simply a generalized feeling of being "above average" -- akin to a general feeling of well being..

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abaya

This point doesn't relate much to the rest of the thread, but I wanted to mention that a *lot* of people in their late teens and early 20's seem to feel this way. I certainly did. Now, I don't mean to put you down, JinnKai, for you may very well be "above average" (many TFP'ers are, in my opinion). All I'm saying is that for me, having been a teacher for high-school and college-age Americans for the last five years, I can easily say that many people think they are above average when they are really just average. When did being "average" become such a bad thing, anyway?.. people have such a sense of entitlement these days, it's insane. I think when people question authority out of that sense of entitlement, then I get irritated (not attributing that to you, Jinn, but it does happen a lot in my position).

If you ask me, a shift occurred in American public education in the 80s and 90s (yes, that's when I was in school, too), leading teachers to emphasize how "everyone's a winner," "no one deserves to fail," etc... thus resulting in a large portion of the US population having inflated ideas of their brain capacities. I see this most often during grading periods; Average Joe and Jane kids think that a C is an insult, and that their parents and teachers always taught them that they were the best, they deserved an A, no matter how little work or independent thinking they did in class. Class averages range MUCH higher than they used to, say, 30+ years ago... when a college degree meant something. Heck, a high school diploma used to mean something... but now it's "below-average."

/steps off thread-jacking pedestal..

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Jinn

You argue the same point I conceded above; it would be impossible for me to prove my intelligence to you. I could state that no test, standardized or otherwise, has ever put me "below average" or even "average," but I could either be a liar or I could be reinforcing what you've said above about the inflation of intelligence present in contemporary society.

Any claim to intelligence, substantiated or not, is a risky proposition. I didn't plan to (nor do I like to) defend my statement above, but Carn chose to pick that from my post to attack. I could just as easily state that you're the idiot and that everyone inflated your feeling of intelligence too, but it is truly a threadjack, as you mentioned. (And honestly, I do not believe it.)

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Sultana

It *appears* that you are inferring that everyone in authority is ignorant, or at least is ignorant in comparision to you. I'm not 100% sure if your references to authority are strictly about teachers, or include teachers (when I think of authority, the first things that jump to mind are police, gov't, judges, etc.).
If you truely hold the opinion that everyone else is ignorant, but you are not...yes, that smacks of arrogance. And arrogance does tend to be a sign of immaturity. Sometimes folks do have the "right", I suppose, to be arrogant, but it speaks well of them if they are not prideful. Pride does come before a fall, after all.

Arrogance is not strictly the realm of the young, prideful, and yet relatively inexperienced (and all of these are relative terms). But if all I see of someone's input is how stupid everyone else is, especially when using derogatory and inflamitory terms like "idiocy", one should not be surprised when "arrogant" is the conclusion many draw.

Besides, plain old rebellion against authority rarely gets anyone anywhere. However, thoughtful and reasonable arguments offered with a humble attitude can accomplish startling things.

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At night, the ice weasels come." -

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My goal? To fulfill my potential.

Jinn

I've apparently done a poor job at communicating the intent of this post, as it seems everyone has missed it by a long shot.

So I'll do a summary, perhaps it will make up for my apparent lack of communication ability above;


I do not arbitrarily rally against authority. I have a general lack of appreciation for it, simply because it has (in my experience) been misplaced or unfairly enforced. There is plenty of authority I am OK with.

I drew the corollary to my learning situation because they were the first non-atomic authority figure that I had, and a reasonable conclusion that my behavior to authority would be learned in those first experiences. Realistically, it had no bearing my argument at all other than to support my own position of distate for authority.

So I must restate the question it seems;

Does the desire to rebel against a self-determined unjust authority decrease with age and maturity, or is it a more ingrained personality feature? ie do you become more complacent with injustice with age and maturity? Do unjust things become less unjust with age and maturity? Do you become more complacent towards arbitrary, unecessary, or unfair authority with age and maturity? These questions are the crux of my quandry, poorly stated above or not.

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Sultana

"Self-determined", "Unjust", "Complacent", "Arbitrary", "Unnecessary", and "Unfair" are all highly value-added word choices, and the value is highly relative.

No reasonable person is going to happily submit themselves to a situation or person they have decided is unjust, unfair, etc. However, it is important to evaluate how that person came to those evaluations.

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"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath.
At night, the ice weasels come." -

Matt Groening

My goal? To fulfill my potential.

Willravel

The answer to your question is this: If you are talking about an "Im the center of the universe" type rebelion, this usually manifests itself betwen the ages of maybe 12-22. That is adolescense. If you are talking about becoming jadded towards authority figures because of their apparent failings, that comes from specific experience and has no connection to age or maturity.

Let's say you decide to take piano lessons from me (assuming you aren't a concert level pianist). I begin by teaching you the fundamentals; which keys have which names, how to position your hands over the keys, the circle of fifths, etc. You catch on fast because you are a pretty bright person. I go on to teaching you slightly more advances stuff, but you think I am moving too slowly, and start to think I don't know what I'm doing. Does that make you better than I am at playing piano? Probably not. What you may not know is that I've been teaching since I was 12, and I've learned that certian students need to be taught in certian ways. Frankly, I know how to deal with kids looking for someone to dump on. I teach them a bit slower, and I often will not play the song for them. My point is that often you will telegraph your feelings before you even get to know the teacher, so you end up being preempted.

If, however, you go to class without a grudge, looking to learn, you have a better chance of getting on with your teachers just fine.

Carno

This post tells me that you think all authority is ignorant, but I read your following post so I know that is not true. I thought you were saying you had a bad teacher one time and all the sudden you hate anyone in authority.

Well, good luck with that, O Enlightened One.

I'll just be over here rolling in mud

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Willravel

Hey above your avatar it says "lover protector teacher"...do you rebel against yourself?

Zeraph

This can be so true. I had a math class where 90% of the class hated the teacher's guts by the end of the semester, they even tried to get her fired. I treated her with respect and kept an open mind from the beginning; to me she was a sweat old lady and I learned a lot of math, to the rest of the class she was a crazy bitch that they learned very little from.

An extreme case, but one that really points out the wisdom in your statement.

Oh, and JinnKai I understand your situation in this thread. It is easy to be misunderstood on the internet. As for my opinion, I think it can be a personality trait, but at the same time that trait will be tempered by youth or wisdom. I've known people with very sheep oriented minds that will probably always be that way and ditto for rebellious minds.

roachboy

first off--lurkette-i have a bit more time now and want to qualify something that i said. fact is that i was mystified by the responses from you because i didnt see where we actually had any disagreement. later, it occured to me that such problems as happened probably followed from my way of writing, and so were my problem, not yours. apologies.

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ustwo: i dont like how caps look. that's all there is to it.
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more generally---i was thinking about this thread while i was teaching amiri baraka's book "blues people" this afternoon--curious, that, as usually these things dont linger much my mind---anyway---i think the sense of some superiority as jinnkai states above is a function of a bigger process of acquiring a sense of authorization--authorization to dissent, authorization to think otherwise, authorization to make meaning--in this, there is a link to how baraka talks about the blues, which he sees in parallel terms--as a space in which folk who were oppressed (economically, socially--as a function of a basically racist context) and who had internalized that oppression began to break out of it--partially, within a limited space, but still to break out of it.
how does this argument work? the definitions of african-american, from the outset, were imposed from the outside. among the corrolates of this general definition were a series of others--inferiority of intellect as a function of racist understandings based on superficial characteristics like the color of one's skin---from this the assumption that meanings were by definition imposed by "civilized" white people---the disposition that would follow from this--to function "legitimately" is to conform to these definitions, to accept their assumptions, to perform them yourself--that is, to function "legitimately" is to imitate the values of the dominant order. for baraka, the blues represents a break with this imitation and the beginning of patterns of meaning production that originate within this community that had previously been defined in wholly negative terms. he tries to connect this to subsequent musics---jazz in particular---the active taking over of existing forms and the remaking of them (think of bop's relation to the pop music of the time, for example).

there are problems with baraka's argument in some ways if you take it too literally as a history of these musics, particularly when you get to the ways in whcih he routes his argument through class.

but the center of it is evident--the blues was of a piece with a sense of authorization to engage actively in the production of music--and by extension meanings--that were not simply imitations of the existing/dominant order.

to shift this back onto psychological grounds, and to move it back into the context of this thread: to be able to make an intellectual space for yourself that is not a simple imitation of what you have been exposed to--particularly as a kid--requires that you feel that you are worthy of doing it. that what you think is worth thinking, that what you say worth saying and worth listening to, that your thinking matters. if you do not find that sense handed to you from outside, then you create a sense that enables you. that is what i think jinnkai is talking about, across this image of "superiority"---

i remember this phase--and i am sure that most others who have posted here went through something like it and remember it as well. that it does not function over a longer run seems evident to folk who have passed through this phase as well--whence the embarrassment it can cause, and from that the tendency to pretend it never happened.

it will probably transform, in time, into a range of other ways of thinking--i think it has to because even if you reject everything about the world as you have been trained through childhood to see it at one point, the fact of the matter is that that world does not go away and that, sooner or later you have to function within it. you adapt, and in adapting you decide (explicitly or implicitly) what you are willing to give away, what you are willing to alter, what you are willing to fight for or against---and what you have to take on, what you need to make part of yourself, how you have to adapt to get by,and what you are willing to allow those adaptations to come to mean for you.

and so this sense of superiority breaks down, shifts into other modes of thinking and acting, goes away or does not. with any luck, it mostly shifts into something that hurts less to maintain (in every sense) which is a sense of authorization to make meanings for yourself. and that can be enough to enable you to keep going in this fucked up world.

and it is fucked up.

you can give away everything and no-one cares--no-one asks you to do it, no=one is waiting for a response, no-one even realizes that a requirement like that has been posed. people just go about their lives..they make the world around them seem ok because they have little choice. but what that adaptation means for you is highly variable. this is true for everyone. you make your peace with where you land, who you become, and you rationalize how you got there. whence the tendency to treat statements like jinnkai's with a kind of embarrassment driven sanctimoniousness--which i see over and over in posts above.

i see it as a marker of the particular space he occupies right now. he expect--if my experience serves for anything--that it will morph into other dispositons. maybe it will go away. who knows? thing is that you cant tell anyone who is in that place that what they feel and how they think is stupid or wrong---they have to figure that out for themselves, on their own terms, in their own time.

it's one of the strange things about getting older---what you forget, what you suppress about the wobbliness of the path that took you there.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

abaya

JinnKai, by no means did I imply that I considered myself different from the crowd... that's what I tried to say by stating that I had gone through school in the 80s and 90s, too. And yes, that experience inflated my self-esteem, until I got out of school and realize how smart everyone else REALLY was.

I don't think I said anywhere that I thought I was a genius... I just said that as a teacher, I believed many students over-valued themselves, to their own detriment. My pedagogical training involved learning to measure student performance and comprehension on as an objective level as possible; just because I am trained to do so, and have my observations of my students, doesn't mean that I think I am the shit. I apologize if my tone sounded that way.

On-topic: I think with age, one realizes what a royal waste of energy it is to rebel against that which will never change. Call that complacency... I would have, at 20. But there are other things to do in life than be angry at unjust authorities (there are other ways of changing an unjust social structure than attacking the authorities).

__________________
And think not you can direct the course of Love;
for Love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
--Khalil Gibran

ngdawg

The desire never leaves most of us. Complacency and woundedness sometimes kills it. As for being ingrained, personally, yes it is. And I try very hard not to kill that rebellion in my own kids, but to counter it with a respect for the differences and knowing when to shut up.

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Don't blame me. I didn't vote for either of'em.

Suave

And yet, they are still an uncannily similar person to the "dumbass" they berate.

__________________
"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions." - Albert Einstein

"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." - Plato

Rodney

I was pretty much a conformer as a kid; but the older I get, the more I realize that many institutions are poorly run and often run mainly for the benefit of the staff -- and I'm talking gov't agencies, schools, churches and nonprofit organizations.

So if somebody comes at me waving their authority of office, I have to say I don't really respect the authority anymore; only the person who's wielding it, if and when they've shown that they're worthy of respect.

analog

Not to nitpick, but since you're arguing with me over your own words, words you say you didn't use but actually did, here they are:

"Is vehement aversion to arbitrarily dispensed authority a sign of age or personality?"

That's your opening post's title, that you wrote... so... yeah, you did say it, and that's why we're arguing about that point.

rainheart:

Your analogy of civil disobedience is a bit of a fallacy because such displays are rarely, if ever, about the automatic gainsay of rules, but rather based on a perceived oppression or rights violation... such problems are typically concerning civil liberties or civil rights, and hardly arbitrary.