In this week’s spotlight I wish to discuss the power of authority. We are all educated to respect authority. In our early years failing to do so can lead to serious repercussions. We first learn that declining blind obedience to our parents and custodians can lead to punishment, humiliation and more. We then enter school where once again the authority has a remarkable fist held over our heads. If we refuse to respect this authority we can be failed and even expelled. By the time we reach Middle School the pressures to conform have become well engrained, so even the so-called revolts are often not much more than tantrums. As such, it’s not uncommon for some of us to dropout of the crowd and join yet another group. That is, maybe we revolt, we resist one authority, say that of the system as we see it, only to join another group that resists the system.
Changing Groups
In the ‘60s, the common dropout path was joining the beatnik generation. Free-love, communes, and all that went with those old painted up Volkswagen love buses. Now there was a new drummer to follow, and follow is the operative word. Not that everything was bad, for those were also the days of civil rights marches and war protests. I wasn’t one of those drop-outs despite my support for movements led by the likes of Martin Luther King, so when friends of mine came home from Viet Nam only to be spat upon by the great love-in folks—I found myself filled with rage. Nevertheless, I too belonged to a group who felt a great loyalty to this country and the people who served it and, despite my own notions of independence; I was nevertheless conforming in some way.
We all conform. We are after all herd animals. We all have a fundamental need to be accepted, loved and to fit in somewhere. Henry David Thoreau is famous for dropping out. He left society—for a while. Thoreau is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay Resistance to Civil Government, an argument for disobedience to an unjust state; but even he belonged to a group of those he admired and those who admired him. So Thoreau too had his authorities and his arguments for authority.
The Dr. Knows Best?
Years ago I created a study designed to look at the influence the mind had on terminal illness. I chose oncology for this study and with the help of several medical doctors we arranged to see that patients received a take home care modality in the form of an InnerTalk program. Three years later we gathered data. Two groups jumped out at me from the data. Now this was a small pilot study but the results were provocative to say the least. We had used a pre and post self-appraisal that, among other things, questioned both the doctor and the patient with regard to their attitudes about the role the mind played in wellness. So now, looking at the data I had one group who were all in remission. According to their surveys, both the doctors and the patients believed the mind had a role in wellness. However, in the second group, where the doctors reported not believing that the mind was in any way involved in wellness—everyone in this group was deceased. It didn’t matter what the patient believed—it was as if the doctors had pronounced a death sentence and their patients went home and died.
This finding troubled me for years and then I learned of a study where the brain’s discrimination ability shut down in the presence of an authority. I report all of this and much more in my new book, “Gotcha! The Subordination of Free Will.”
Think about the words of an authority? How many times have we learned that the authority had it all wrong? By way of a just one example, in 1949 the Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz won the Nobel Prize in Physiology of Medicine for his discovery of a successful treatment for schizophrenia. He had taught numerous surgeons how to perform this surgery which was carried out on very many including prominent people such as Rosemary Kennedy, the first daughter born to Rose Fitzgerald and Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. The young Kennedy, only 23 years old at the time, had taken to sneaking out of the house at night. The authority, our medical professionals, suggested her treatment—and what was it? The Noble Prize winning procedure commonly known as frontal lobotomy.
Implied Consent
Today we know that procedure to be nothing short of barbaric! But if the brain turns off in the presence of an authority—who is in the state of mind to question? The next time you’re in the presence of an authority, ask yourself, “Am I willing to question this person? Am I willing to question this discipline and it’s so-called “wisdom?” Am I willing to measure my response taking all things into consideration? Whatever you choose to do—remember the power the authority and the rule of implied consent—the consent we made long ago when we learned to conform!
Thanks for the read,
Eldon Taylor
Provocative Enlightenment
NY Time Bestselling Author of Choices and Illusions
www.eldontaylor.com