[MD] Hippies in Sodom and Gomorrah

[Arlo J. Bensinger]

Salut Rebecca,

Your post (about covering for "I don't know" by giving allegience to the party)
is right on. I think this relates to Peirce's notion of how we fix our beliefs.
"Authority" is a pervasive one, and one that can't always be avoided (I've
never been on the moon, and yet I accept on authority what is is like).
However, over-reliance on authority is quite problematic, especially when one
sets up one authority as an absolute referent for all doubts.

The world is very complex, as you point out, with many, many complicated issues
that would take us quite a long time to read and learn about, were we to
abandon authority outright. And yet, keeping issues as "I don't know" has the
added benefit of preventing the need to psychologically sustain beliefs that
have been fixed by authorities we only believe we can trust. "Authority" is
simply turning over one's agency to others, and is something that should be
done cautiously and always with the notion that one's self is not tied to that
belief. Sadly, as is evident all around the world, and in this forum, the need
to blindly obey party ideology is at an all time high, and not only that, it is
held aloft as the noblest of doctrines. We become apologists for the state, and
nothing more. We see this every day.

There is a great correlation (you can see it here, but also anywhere you look)
between the amount of agency one hands over to ideological "authority", and the
near-psychopathical need one has to defend the authority. The more one places
oneself in the hands of authority, the more and more one defends that
authority, and the greater the depths he will sink to deflect criticism of that
authority. 

Hippies placed greater emphasis on what is Good, as Pirsig ends Lila with, this
should be a primary consideration. Not whether or not it is my party or yours,
or my country or yours. To this Indians, all Dusenberry was was a "good man".
We should all be so lucky.

The way you judge a wo/man is to look into her/his soul. 

Arlo