Authority In Cahoots With Chaos? We Have The Magic To Prevail

What if authority’s main goal was never to keep order? What if the opposite to authority weren’t chaos, but the best order we could have ever imagined?

Photo by Peter Herrmann

We have been told that authority is important. Even to those who despise it, even to those who criticise it, even to those who seek to change it, authority is important, because authority creates order. This is exactly what we have been told since we were little kids: authority equates order.

We must do as our parents tell us, because they are our parents and they have the authority, and the authority is order and order is good. Very few parents take the time to explain why something is good for their children: most of them simply rely on their socially-given authority. This authority is then shared with school, in which a hierarchy ensures teachers do as told by the principal, who in turn does as told by the parents (depending on the system, this last step is more or less straightforward, but it does end up there).

Therefore, we have no reason to doubt that authority is good. Without authority, it follows, there would be chaos, and chaos is so bad that we don’t even talk about it (not unlike authority): violence, theft, malnourishment…