Anti-authority authoritarianism
Apr. 6th, 2013 03:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerHere’s a thing I’ve noticed with a certain subset of liberal teachers, professors, message board moderators, etc.: they have a problem with authority.
Or, more precisely, they have a philosophical issue with the very existence of authority, have nonetheless found themselves in a position in which they exercise authority, find this contradiction mortifying, and - fatally - try to defuse their mortification by not quite admitting to themselves that they are, in fact, authority figures.
So they try not to be authority figures. The teachers try to be friends with their students; the professors will actually outline their philosophical objections to authority. But refusing to face the fact that they are authority figures doesn’t make them not authority figures; it just makes them authority figures who only exercise their authority when they’ve already lost control of the situation and have been pushed to their limit.
As there’s no way for their subordinates to know exactly where that limit is, it seems utterly arbitrary and frightening when the authority figure snaps and tries to exert some control. And what’s arbitrary and frightening authority? Tyranny.
This just proves to the anti-authority authorities that authority is inherently evil – it’s not just that authority is inherently liable to abuse; the existence of authority is itself abusive – which strengthens their resolve not to exercise their authority, which just compounds the problem.
This is something I found particularly exasperating in seminars/blogs/message boards. Professors and bloggers are often free-thinkers themselves, want to impart this attribute to their students/readers, and therefore anguish about proper limits for class discussion/comment etiquette. This is an important issue: it deserves to be anguished about.
But anti-authority professors/bloggers/moderators/whatevers try to resolve their anguish by not setting limits. Quoth my most exasperating college professors: “We’re having a free-wheeling discussion! Nothing is off-limits!”
The problem is that there were totally limits, they just weren’t written down anywhere, or even verbally defined, because having rules feels so authoritarian. Instead these professors had a secret, nebulous list of “stuff it’s not okay to say.” The list generally stays the same, but the appropriate reaction to its violation is subject to change based on the professor’s digestive patterns, the weather that day, whether or not the speaker/commenter is an irritating person, etc. etc.
The lack of clear limits to acceptable discourse or clear punishments for violating those rules means that enforcing any limits – and if you’re going to have an actual educational discussion, there have to be limits and they have to be enforced – seems arbitrary, biased, and hypocritical. “You said we can say anything!” cries the silenced student, and the professor says, “Well, anything within reason,” and everyone wants to know “So what’s within reason?”
But of course defining “within reason” would mean making a list of rules, which would require these professors to use their authority. But they believe authority is inherently abusive, so they can’t do that, even though the transparent hypocrisy of their position exasperates everyone, sometimes even including them.
At best, this kind of policy leads to disorder, inefficiency, nothing getting done: harmless, but exasperating. I had a high school English teacher who had zero control of the class, and we therefore spent most of our English periods chatting desultorily about zombies or whatever. We cheated ourselves out of our American Lit education, so I guess you could argue we were harmed, but it’s not like anyone was traumatized by it.
But there are other circumstances – and this is particularly visible on the internet – where the refusal to exercise authority leads directly to harm. Popular commenters bully the people they disagree with until those people run away. Trolls take over poorly moderated comment sections and message boards. Meanwhile, the moderators/blog writers wring their hands about free speech, because they’re under the mistaken impression that free speech is what happens when you sit back and do nothing and let people talk.
Free speech doesn’t just happen. If you just sit back and don’t moderate, then generally the people who shout the loudest and have the most friends will shut everyone else up. Free speech has to be nurtured like a fruit tree, and for it to function, some kinds of discussion (ad hominem attacks, threats, etc.) have to be declared off-limits.
Failing to exercise authority is an abuse of authority when it allows others to usurp power to abuse people.
But it’s very hard to explain to an authority figure of this type what they’re doing wrong, because anyone with this type of aversion to authority is going to feel extreme cognitive dissonance when they hear that – quite without meaning to, and against their best intentions (not just their best intentions, in fact; against all their intentions) – they’ve been abusing their authority. THEIR WORST NIGHTMARE HAS COME TRUE.
Professors! Bloggers! Community moderators! I know that you want to encourage freethinking, and I admire that, but having secret rules is not the way to do it. Set limits! Tell us what you really think! Be upfront and say that you aren’t going to tolerate racism/sexism/whateverism. The conversation will be a thousand times more forthright when people aren’t tiptoeing around on eggshells trying to figure out where you hid the landmines.
Or, more precisely, they have a philosophical issue with the very existence of authority, have nonetheless found themselves in a position in which they exercise authority, find this contradiction mortifying, and - fatally - try to defuse their mortification by not quite admitting to themselves that they are, in fact, authority figures.
So they try not to be authority figures. The teachers try to be friends with their students; the professors will actually outline their philosophical objections to authority. But refusing to face the fact that they are authority figures doesn’t make them not authority figures; it just makes them authority figures who only exercise their authority when they’ve already lost control of the situation and have been pushed to their limit.
As there’s no way for their subordinates to know exactly where that limit is, it seems utterly arbitrary and frightening when the authority figure snaps and tries to exert some control. And what’s arbitrary and frightening authority? Tyranny.
This just proves to the anti-authority authorities that authority is inherently evil – it’s not just that authority is inherently liable to abuse; the existence of authority is itself abusive – which strengthens their resolve not to exercise their authority, which just compounds the problem.
This is something I found particularly exasperating in seminars/blogs/message boards. Professors and bloggers are often free-thinkers themselves, want to impart this attribute to their students/readers, and therefore anguish about proper limits for class discussion/comment etiquette. This is an important issue: it deserves to be anguished about.
But anti-authority professors/bloggers/moderators/whatevers try to resolve their anguish by not setting limits. Quoth my most exasperating college professors: “We’re having a free-wheeling discussion! Nothing is off-limits!”
The problem is that there were totally limits, they just weren’t written down anywhere, or even verbally defined, because having rules feels so authoritarian. Instead these professors had a secret, nebulous list of “stuff it’s not okay to say.” The list generally stays the same, but the appropriate reaction to its violation is subject to change based on the professor’s digestive patterns, the weather that day, whether or not the speaker/commenter is an irritating person, etc. etc.
The lack of clear limits to acceptable discourse or clear punishments for violating those rules means that enforcing any limits – and if you’re going to have an actual educational discussion, there have to be limits and they have to be enforced – seems arbitrary, biased, and hypocritical. “You said we can say anything!” cries the silenced student, and the professor says, “Well, anything within reason,” and everyone wants to know “So what’s within reason?”
But of course defining “within reason” would mean making a list of rules, which would require these professors to use their authority. But they believe authority is inherently abusive, so they can’t do that, even though the transparent hypocrisy of their position exasperates everyone, sometimes even including them.
At best, this kind of policy leads to disorder, inefficiency, nothing getting done: harmless, but exasperating. I had a high school English teacher who had zero control of the class, and we therefore spent most of our English periods chatting desultorily about zombies or whatever. We cheated ourselves out of our American Lit education, so I guess you could argue we were harmed, but it’s not like anyone was traumatized by it.
But there are other circumstances – and this is particularly visible on the internet – where the refusal to exercise authority leads directly to harm. Popular commenters bully the people they disagree with until those people run away. Trolls take over poorly moderated comment sections and message boards. Meanwhile, the moderators/blog writers wring their hands about free speech, because they’re under the mistaken impression that free speech is what happens when you sit back and do nothing and let people talk.
Free speech doesn’t just happen. If you just sit back and don’t moderate, then generally the people who shout the loudest and have the most friends will shut everyone else up. Free speech has to be nurtured like a fruit tree, and for it to function, some kinds of discussion (ad hominem attacks, threats, etc.) have to be declared off-limits.
Failing to exercise authority is an abuse of authority when it allows others to usurp power to abuse people.
But it’s very hard to explain to an authority figure of this type what they’re doing wrong, because anyone with this type of aversion to authority is going to feel extreme cognitive dissonance when they hear that – quite without meaning to, and against their best intentions (not just their best intentions, in fact; against all their intentions) – they’ve been abusing their authority. THEIR WORST NIGHTMARE HAS COME TRUE.
Professors! Bloggers! Community moderators! I know that you want to encourage freethinking, and I admire that, but having secret rules is not the way to do it. Set limits! Tell us what you really think! Be upfront and say that you aren’t going to tolerate racism/sexism/whateverism. The conversation will be a thousand times more forthright when people aren’t tiptoeing around on eggshells trying to figure out where you hid the landmines.
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no subject
Date: 2013-04-06 08:05 pm (UTC)And is also probably responsible for me being a postmodernist.
Woot.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-06 08:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-07 01:16 am (UTC)Thanks for the thoughts!
no subject
Date: 2013-04-07 02:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-07 02:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-07 02:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-07 07:57 am (UTC)Older students though - I dunno. 'How do you give a friend a D' - maybe by showing you care about them and want them to know the truth rather than a comfortable lie?
I say this as someone who kept a very clear line between myself and my instructors at university because I was very conscious of my lowly student status, but I kind of regret it now. I met some world-class academics, and I was too terrified to treat them as more than walking textbooks, whereas some of my contemporaries were relaxed enough to treat them as people, and I think benefited...
But perhaps that is only a model that works at universities where there is a lot of 1:1 tuition.
The Tyranny of Structureless
Date: 2013-04-07 01:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-07 02:09 pm (UTC)Rules are great precisely because they take subjectivity out of things. Subjectivity is great ... so long as it's great. But once it turns against you, suddenly it's not so great. It makes for real mob tyranny. Rules can persecute the minority--but they can also protect the minority. Subjectivity leaves it completely open to chance.
While it's true that sometimes a rule can turn out to be ill-advised or to have unintended consequences, you can also make mechanisms to revise rules. So the answer to "but the rules end up being stifling" or "but the rules didn't protect this group of people in this particular instance" isn't to abandon the rules but to fix them.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-07 04:39 pm (UTC)So it's fine to like one's professors, and probably actually makes it easier to learn, but at the end of the day they are ultimately going to be grading you, and it's my experience that people simply handle any kind of judgment better when it comes from someone they see as being superior than them - someone who is not just a peer.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-07 04:41 pm (UTC)Whereas when the rules are clear, they can be revised.