F01 Authority Principle

Which do you think is more likely?

Enjoying modern conveniences may require us to give up a few freedoms.

OR

The more we rely on authorities for what we once provided for ourselves, the more coercive authorities can get.

Anankelogy

The less we can provide for ourselves, the more vulnerable to the whims of those we must relyupon. I cannot dig my own well for water, for example, so I must take the word of those who tell me this city water is okay to drink. What if it isn’t?

Even if I could dig my own well, I do not have the time. Even if I could test my own faucet water, I am content deferring to local authorities who persuade me to trust its quality. Our lives run deep with countless instances of having to defer to authorities.

What if local authorities advise me to boil my water? Annoyingly inconvenient, but fine. What if local authorities drastically raise my water bill? Deeply frustrating, but I’ve got to have water. What if local authorities shut of my city water supply due to nonpayment by my landlord? Now I’m utterly disgusted!

Each encroachment on my access to water acclimates me to tolerate what I would have objected before. Each government intrusion into my personal affairs—like warrantless surveillance of my private conversations overseas—conditions me to put up with a few more invasions of my privacy. Each minor infringement upon my right to access quality healthcare coerces me to settle for whatever crumbs the authorities permit.

Our vulnerable dependencies tend to incentivize authorities to gradually impose upon our unchosen needs. You can choose how to respond to authorities. But you cannot choose to no longer require self-efficacy. Or cease your necessity for equal treatment. Or stop your need for the dependabilityof others.

Each time you cannot resolve such needs, you naturally suffer emotional pain. Authorities often coerce us into accepting their pain relief options as the only available option. Adversarial justice and polarizing politics induce us to settle for the winning side in a court or ballot battle.

They rarely inspire us to identify and resolve all painful needs. This easily pulls us into relying upon them to ease the mounting pain they help to perpetuate. We increasingly submit to their influence. At least we don’t seek their permission to breathe, yet.

Need-response

Populism is in part a reaction to failing elite-led institutions. Their authority counts on the populous accepting their expertise. The less responsive to our inflexible needs, the less trust we have in their institutions. The more their impositions go against our needs, the more we understandably resist.

But the more our lives depend upon their institutions, the more some of cast a blind eye to their shortcomings. We can explain away their imperfections. We could rationalize how no institution ever fully lived up to its founding purpose. We may even accept their narrative that any failings are mostly our personal fault.

These authoritative powerholders rely on untested assumptions about how to impact our lives. But they do not know what they do not know. These elite influencers could use impact data that we ourselves provide to them, as condition to earning the legitimacy to impact on our lives.

Reactive Problem

Anankelogy distinguishes between “ascribed legitimacy” and “earned legitimacy” of authorities.

• Ascribed legitimacy: Arbitrary acceptance of authority prone to manipulation and coerced low responsiveness to the needs of those under that authority.

• Earned legitimacy: Cultivated acceptance of authority by incentivizing authority figures with impact data that evidentially demonstrates they have enabled the full resolution of subordinate needs.

• Contemporary norms rely heavily on ascribed legitimacy. But as the rule based international order breaks down, tolerance for mere ascribed legitimacy collapses.

U.S. hypocrisy, especially in its relation with the Israeli far-right government, exposes the compounding incompetencies of authorities too removed from everyday lives to aptly empathize with those they negatively impact.

Instead of actively respecting each other’s needs, uniformed authoritiesreact to conflicts with an indulgent call to arms. On the world stage of geopolitics, this arguably bloats the military industrial complex. Weapons manufacturersbenefit from forever wars, and not so much from peacetime.

Uninformed authorities coerce us with fearmongeringand self-serving pleas for tax revenue to “protect” national security, often without tested evidence. And always without addressing the underserved needs igniting the conflict.

Big money incentives legacy media to play along. Too many of us fall in line. Metaphorically, we settle for asking their permission to breathe. In short, current authorities lack the kind of discipline that anankelogy can offer to improve their legitimacy.

Responsive Solution

For starters, asserting the objective fact of inflexibly unchosen needs can become a gamechanger. No longer can authorities blindly expect you to simply go along with their chosen policies. They must now recognize everyone’s impacted unchosen needs and unchosen priority. They will now be confronted with the indisputable reality that whatever they reactively resist they reflexively reinforce.

Second, join us in raising the bar with mutual regard. Reject the false promises of avoidant adversarialism. Replace it with the higher standard of engaging mutuality. Join us in mutually nurturing our capacity to be more loving toward each other.

Together, we cease conflating our unchosen needs with our chosen responses to them. Such moral conflation denies them earned legitimacy. To earn legitimacy, authorities must engage the unchosen needs and priorities on all sides of any conflict.

This effectively brings them out of the debilitating traps of avoidant adversarialism. We level the playing field by encouraging powerful authorities to be recognized as mere fallible humans. We affirm their unchosen needs and priorities to model how they are to affirm ours.

We raise the standard to social love. We affirm the legitimacy of their influence in our lives the more they demonstrably appreciate our vulnerable needs. When we say “you shall love” we mean it. If we prove ourselves more affirming of each other’s needs, then we may assert greater legitimacy than them.

Engage! Breathe freely. You don’t require anyone’s permission to breathe. Or to resolve any of your needs. And nobody needs your permission to resolve theirs. No one can bend the facts of anyone’s inflexible needs.

Affirm the unchosen needs of others as you would have them affirm your unchosen needs. Hold the powerful accountable to this higher standard by lovingly refusing their coerciveness. Put love first. And if any authority refuses this higher standard, let them seek our permission for them to breathe.

Responding to your needs

How does this principle speak to your experience of needs? Post in our Engagement forum your thoughtful response to one of these:

• How will authorities react to my insistence to first affirm my unchosen need?

• Have you shown this works without engineering a repressive backlash?

• You have no idea how much pressure I’m under by the local authorities where I live.

• By what authority do you say I don’t need any permission from anyone to breathe?

Instead of selecting one of these, post your own engagement feedback about your experience with the subject of this principle. Remember the aim is to improve our responsiveness to each other’s needs, toward their full resolution. If you’re new at posting here, first check the guide below.