Against All Forms of Authority (Well, Almost All)

More from Theodore Dalrymple. Note: "Bazarov" is a nihilistic character from Ivan Turgenev's book Fathers and Sons.

"Bazarov's attitude of repudiation-what I suppose would once have been called spiritual pride-is now, if not a mass phenomenon, a very widespread one. I experienced a striking instance of it on a flight to Dublin from England. Next to me sat a young Irish social worker, who noticed that I was reading a famous book, Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram, the famous American social psychologist who died young, in part from refusal to alter his living habits. In his book, Milgram describes the experiments he conducted to demonstrate that ordinary people would, without any compulsion except the presence of a figure supposedly in authority, electrocute a complete stranger. The social worker said to me that, having grown up in Ireland under the iron tutelage of the Catholic Church, she was against all forms of authority.

"All forms?" I asked.

"All forms," she replied. She had precisely the "indescribable composure" that Turgenev says is possessed by Bazarov.

"So you don't mind," I asked, "if I now go to the cockpit of this aircraft and take over the controls?"

This, it turned out (I think because it was a matter of her life and death), was a completely different matter. The authority of the pilot was based upon knowledge, experience, and proper certification.

"And who," I asked, "certifies his knowledge and experience?" The answer was obvious: people with even greater knowledge and experience. But surely, I asked, this must lead to an infinite regress that, in this imperfect world of ours, would have to stop somewhere? Of course, but the state had looked into all that, and decided who constituted the competent authority. But from where did the state gain its authority? We, the people, of course. But who gave us, the people, authority? Well, it is so inscribed in the Book of Nature. This being the case, how is it that it was discovered so late in the history of humanity? How come it was not evident to Shakespeare, Newton, and Bach, who were at least as gifted as we?  

These were deep questions for a short flight. But it was clear to me that the person who was against all authority was against only some authority, the authority she disliked. The one authority she really respected, of course, was her own."  

-Theodore Dalrymple, In Praise of Prejudice: The Necessity of Preconceived Ideas