Obediantarians

How do we control society? How do we control our own lives? This question gets little thought these days, but in times past it was a question under active discussion. How we answer this is fundamental to our existence. How we go about making individual and collective decisions defines our culture and our form of government. Let's look at a few example of what motivates us and how we control our acts. Physical motivations include discomfort, hunger, fear, pain, sex and boredom. As we look beyond our physical we find the motivations which enable us to work now for future rewards. At a slightly more abstract level our emotions including jealousy, hate , dominance and submissiveness, love are powerful motivators. Interestingly the actions driven by our emotions tend to be societal in nature. We might say that our emotions help us to survive in the family and large kin group. Even more abstract are activities like planning and engineering to create value or a profit. Beyond these we find motivations for learning, adventure, music and art. The physical and societal motivation for these activities is minimal. They seem to be driven by a creative individual impulse to progress.

Regardless of motivation, our acts are controlled by our free will which is unconstrained. It's a wildcard which can lead to arbitrary acts. As such it is unpredictable and dangerous. More predictable is authoritarianism and enforced or voluntary obedience. I will call such voluntary obedience 'obedientariasm'

These motives may produce unacceptable behavior. How as a society do we control it? We use religious custom, culture, rule of law, respect and revenge to control behavior. We seem to have two basic paths; One path is 'self directed' and runs on trust, respect and informed voluntary acceptance of the rule of law. The other path can be called obedience to authority.

This gets me to the point of this post, we can either let people decide for themselves what to do or we can tell them what to do. Society benefits from an informed self directed populace, but it is uncontrolled. Many of us are not comfortable with making our own decisions. This is generally because we fear taking control. Those of us in this category, wish to be told what to do and wish to do what we are told. I will call these people 'obedientarians'.

It is also natural for us to be self directed, and to enforce our will on others. The dynamics of this natural system creates 'authorities' and concentrates power in their hands. Authoritarianism has a natural alliance in the obedientarians. With enough power, these two groups can force obedience on the self-directed.

In fact this division is an epic battle that has been fought for ages. The small but accumulated victories for the self-directed can be called the arrow of progress and has directly led to the age of enlightenment, tolerance, the rule of law and modern protections for basic freedoms and social security.

If this ancient struggle is obscured in modern life, it is because those who have fought and won are now dead. It is on us to advance or to be led.