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Comment by wenebego | Hacker News Reader

"Woule you like me to shine your boots officer sir"

I think some people are built to despise authority and social order. Some of this may have something to do with early childhood experiences or parenting.

edit: obviously direct bad experiences, institutional treatment, discrimination, etc. also shape attitudes. I was thinking about folks who didn't fall into these groups, eg. wealthy European luxury car drivers, etc.

Some people are built to assume trust in authority and that authority maintains social order.

The truth is that there's always another side of the coin - every framing has it's opposite.

It does seem pretty prevalent nowadays and ironically they almost never are as smart as they pretend to be.

How is that ironic? Neither accepting nor rejecting "the social order" requires one to be smart. As always in politics the question isn't simply "what do you want" but "why do you want that".

It's ironic because there's an appearance of desiring the attention of passing readers via posturing.

When the vast majority of such readers will, at best, spend a few seconds reading, and then dismiss it.

If they write genuinely convincing, well elaborated, arguments, then it wouldn't be ironic. Because then there would be a reasonable expectation of some readers actually buying it, instead of, at best, joining in on the game.

Agree, though for a lot of people authority and the prevailing social order has caused negative experiences their entire lives. I'm actually surprised there isn't more discontent.

That seems a bit dismissive to all that we know, for instance:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unarmed_African_Americ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cases_of_police_brutal...

Oh, authority is fine. For example, if you're a medical professional, I'll assume you have more knowledge in that domain and defer to your expertise unless I have reason to suspect you're talking out of your ass and hoping I won't notice.

But the thing with medical professionals is that they can't hold a gun to your head if you disagree with them. Law enforcement on the other hand requires no expertise (often even being ignorant of the exact laws they're supposed to enforce) and its own claim to authority is by the barrel of a gun.

You presumably don't accept the authority of a schoolyard bully, so why do you accept any "authority" only backed up by a threat of violence? And if you presumably seek relationships that see eye to eye in a romantic partner or your circle of friends, why would you accept a "social order" that puts any man below another, let alone so many below so few (even if you might happen to be among those few)?

That just doesn't sound very sensible. I don't want to oppress others and I don't want to be oppressed either. A literal armed officer who can get away with killing me is the perfect representation of that so why would I have any warm feelings towards them? Especially when modern police training in the US often literally involves telling them they're the "sheepdogs despised by the sheep because the sheep mistake them for wolves".

We know that familial violence can be cyclic with children suffering abuse by their parents normalising the abuse to cope with their experiences and then replicating the abuse when they themselves become parents. We know this takes conscious effort to break out of. We know that subjects of authoritarian governments will likewise often quickly adapt and rationalise the abuse they suffer.

What makes you think you're the sane one rather than the victim who rationalizes the abusive system they can't escape their black iron prison?

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