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Breaking the Chain of Obedience
by Gary Z McGee
“The man who can face vilification and disgrace, who can stand up against the popular current, even against his friends and his country when he knows he is right, who can defy those in authority over him, who can take punishment and prison and remain steadfast—that is a man of courage. But do you need much courage just to obey orders, to do as you are told and to fall in line with thousands of others to the tune of general approval and the Star Spangled Banner?” –Alexander Berkman
The chain of obedience has always existed. For instance, people have always been told, “because I said so,” or “because it’s the law,” or “it’s just the way it is.” These simple words contain remarkably many themes of false and bad reasoning. Paraphrasing David Deutsche, the author of The beginning of infinity: “First, it is a perfect example of bad explanation: it could be used to “explain” anything a so called authority can put a law on.
Second, it is about who declared such-and-such in the past, not necessarily what reality portrays (which is the opposite of truth-seeking). Third, it reinterprets a rescue from true explanation as a request for justification, which is the justified-true-belief fallacy. Fourth, it confuses the nonexistent authority from ideas with human authority. And, fifth, it claims by this means to be outside the jurisdiction of normal criticism.” It is not, nor has it ever been, outside the jurisdiction of normal criticism.
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