Finding a Balance

Today my group talked a bit about the balance between obedience and disruptive ideas/ questions, but I wanted to continue thinking about some of the pros and cons of each. Like I mentioned in class, John Locke promoted the value of both. Originally, he asserted that it was the duty of citizens to passively obey political authority, so long as that authority didn't threaten fundamental religious beliefs. Later in his life his point of view evolved to include the right of resistance in the face of unjust political authority. So where do we find a balance between the two?

The first question that I want to address is how authority hindered the flow of new ideas in the 17th century:

• When John Locke attended Oxford, he was largely dissatisfied with the curriculum. He felt that the University was focusing too much on the outdated views of Aristotle, and ignoring the important questions that were being raised by such natural philosophers as Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes. One reason that the University was so slow to change may be that political and religious leaders felt threatened by the onslaught of new ideas that may have affected their credibility.
• When Locke and one of his good friends, the Earl of Shaftesbury, launched a campaign to exclude the right of the King to pass the throne to his brother, they were forced to leave the country in exile. This is a painfully obvious example of authority trying to control the opposition for unjust reasons.

Do we still have figures that represent "the man" today? Sure. But I'm not so sure the problems we see with authority today are as black and white as they were in the 17th century. So who is "the man" today?

• The government
• State & Local, National, International
• Corporations
• Note Dr. Zapalla's blog post on patents
• The public
• Extremist factions resist progress of those championing opposing views

So today we're seeing a shift to a system where anybody can gain power and authority (someone mentioned the ability of any entrepreneur to secure authority just by building a successful business) and with the easy flow of information, people have to work as hard as ever to maintain that authority. But is this bad? Not necessarily. Let's look at some of the positive results we can see from a just and legitimate framework of authoritative figures:

• Guidance and direction
• Without a social/ political/ informational hierarchy, there is just no way to muddle through all the information and resources available to us. Garret Bassett mentions this in his post, and Open-Access Dilemma.
• Structure
• Anarchy is just not good.
• All the usual refrains
• Prosperity, freedom, etc. 

So why would you question the system and disrupt harmony and civil order? Because these authoritative figures are inherently bad? No way! You question for the sake of the betterment of mankind, because you believe in what you're saying. Take for example Galileo: he didn't want to upset the Catholic Church. On the contrary, he had the Church's best interests in mind when he decided to set out to give people better, more accurate information. The same could be said for most, if not all, of the great thinkers of the enlightenment and the scientific revolution. And so the same should be said for us. The ability to question authority is both a right and a duty, but it shouldn't be done with the intent to disrupt the harmony of society, it should be done with righteous passions and just convictions that will generate a positive and constructive outcome.