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Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill (2012)
- squozzer 13y agoI once worked for a major corporation that celebrated "compliance week" -- not compliance of a personal nature, but regulatory compliance. Though at times it seemed hard to distinguish one from the other.
- neilk 13y agoI sometimes ask mental health professionals what the converse of Oppositional Defiant Disorder is. At what point do we recognize a disorder in a child who is unnaturally compliant and obedient? No answer so far. I ask because I think I had this. When I was a young prodigy I had the mentality of a performing seal. It's true that some people have difficulty controlling themselves, and they do need help. But the lack of symmetry says a lot about how diseases are identified; it is about institutional convenience.
- jlgreco 13y agoI think that you are right in that there is probably a disorder in that particular case, but seeing the lack of symmetry in general to be an indication of a problem seems off. As far as I can tell we don't expect such a symmetry in the rest of medicine. I don't think there is an opposite of lung cancer.
- john_fushi 13y agolung necrosis?
- jlgreco 13y agoHa, fair enough.
- mikeash 13y agoI'd agree in general, but when it comes to biology, the health of an organism seems entirely rooted in moderation. Cancer is when your cells replicate too quickly and out of control. What's the opposite? When your cells don't replicate enough. Radiation sickness is what that looks like. Dehydration is a serious problem, but so is over-hydration. Insufficient oxygen will kill you, as will too much. Bacterial infection can be a serious problem, but eliminating all bacteria from the body will also kill it. Overactive immune systems are just as bad as underperforming ones. And on and on.
- nostrademons 13y ago"Low self-esteem", sometimes colloquially called "people pleasing" or "being a doormat". A good therapist will recognize this and encourage the child to develop more of their own interests and assert themselves more.
- jessriedel 13y agoSure, sure. But would be ever prescribe prescription drugs for this? Everything you're describing is characterized as a personality trait, whereas the OP (who I hardly fully agree with) is claiming that anti-authoritarian sentiments are labeled a disease. Obviously, this makes a big difference in how these phenomena are treated.
- jmillikin 13y ago> Sure, sure. But would be ever prescribe prescription > drugs for this? If there was a drug shown to improve self-esteem in children, it would likely become one of the most profitable drugs of all time. > Everything you're describing is characterized as a > personality trait, whereas the OP (who I hardly fully > agree with) is claiming that anti-authoritarian > sentiments are labeled a disease. ADHD and ODD aren't diseases, they are disorders. When it comes to psychology/psychiatry, "disorder" is basically a word that means "personality trait that negatively interferes with everyday life".
- madaxe 13y ago> If there was a drug shown to improve self-esteem in children, it would likely become one of the most profitable drugs of all time. It's called alcohol. It's wildly profitable.
- brandoncapecci 13y agoWhen's the last time you give your child alcohol?
- 13y ago
- ceejayoz 13y ago> But the lack of symmetry says a lot about how diseases are identified; it is about institutional convenience. Is it? I'd chalk it up to the fact that a unnaturally compliant child doesn't tend to cause the parents to seek out treatment, whereas a child who's kicking holes in walls and attacking their siblings does.
- betterunix 13y agoWhat about a child who is not violent, but who would rather spend their time reading advanced math textbooks, hacking, or otherwise learning? What about a child who will stand up to their teachers and say, "This is worthless homework, so I spent my time learning next year's material instead?" The point of the article is that an awful lot of mental disorder diagnoses are being given to children who calmly reject certain authorities, or who demand that the legitimacy of an authority be demonstrated before they will submit to it. Psychiatrists are medicating people who question authority out of existence.
- ceejayoz 13y agoDo you have any evidence that kids calmly saying "I'd rather learn useful things" are getting widely diagnosed as ODD? Anecdotally, that's exactly what I did in the late 1990s with my biology teacher. No diagnosis.
- msandford 13y agoI don't think many of the kids that are ADD/ADHD/ODD are old enough to be aware enough of what's going on. The system is in no way tailored to them. Instead of those running the system reflecting on it's shortcomings and trying to remedy them, they instead suppose that it's the children who are the problem, not them. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so tragic.
- notahacker 13y agohttp://www.psychologytoday.com/conditions/dependent-personality-disorder http://www.psychologytoday.com/conditions/dependent-personal... ? In fairness, any abnormality defined by evasion of confrontation and dramatic episodes will inevitably attract less attention than the reverse, irrespective of institutional environnment.
- bethly 13y agoThey are classified as "dependent personality disorder" under the DSM IV, part of the anxiety group of Axis II disorders.
- wissler 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
- jorleif 13y agoSince we there is no exact definition of what a mentally healthy human being is, in the same way that those specifications would be available for a machine for example, the definitions of mental problems have obviously been developed mostly in other ways. Conditions where a person causea problems for himself or his surroundings are then labeled as mental health problems. Naturally, the opposite conditions may be benign. The person may be overly obedient, or overly trusting (opposite of paranoia), irrationally peaceful (opposite of depression) and so on, and this may indeed be caused by the same mechanism that causes the opposite condition, but as it does not cause problems, it is not considered a disease.
- throwaway1980 13y agoExcessive obedience often means you had overly needy parents who couldn't tolerate you acting out. So, you take care of their needs by not causing problems. This probably isn't recognized in the DSM as a disorder, since on the surface it appears good for a structured, smoothly operating society, but one term that you will probably identify with if you search a little is "parentified child". There are quite a lot of books written about this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parentification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parentification
- neilk 13y agoPretty much, yes.
- cema 13y agoAt what point do we recognize a disorder in a child who is unnaturally compliant and obedient? No answer so far. I think this is a great question. And I am not surprised there is no answer.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- JacksonGariety 13y ago> At what point do we recognize a disorder in a child who is unnaturally compliant and obedient? No answer so far. But if you give it a name people will start to recognize it and they will be harder to control! Nice idea though, in theory.
- DanBC 13y ago> At what point do we recognize a disorder in a child who is unnaturally compliant and obedient? Typically one of the important parts of diagnosis is "does it cause a problem for the patient?" > it is about institutional convenience. Misdiagnosis is a serious problem. But your comment is weird. Giving someone a diagnosis is not convenient. That person is now able to get medical treatment, maybe disability benefits, maybe time off work, etc. Once you diagnose someone you have a duty to try to provide treatment. It's far more convenient to say that people do not have a mental health problem and release them.
- pchivers 13y agoThis is a great article. The linked article ("Anti-Authoritarians and Schizophrenia: Do Rebels Who Defy Treatment Do Better?") is also very interesting: "At the 2-year assessment there were no significant differences in severity of psychosis between schizophrenic patients (SZ) on antipsychotic medications and SZ not on any medications. However, starting at the 4.5-year follow-ups and continuing over the next 15 years, the SZ who were not on antipsychotic medications were significantly less psychotic than those on antipsychotics.”
- illuminate 13y agoSounds like persons who are less functional feel that they need medication more than those who don't. Not that anyone WANTS neuroleptics, the side effects sound terrible. I would imagine that anyone who wants to deal through them is going to necessarily have more troubles.
- droithomme 13y agoThis is covered quite thoroughly in chapter 6 of Whitaker's Anatomy of an Epidemic, which has extensive citations of the history and research on this problem. Neuroleptics make schizophrenia patients more biologically vulnerable to psychosis. Standard antipsychotics block 70-90% of D2 receptors in the brain. To compensate, postsynaptic neurons increase the density of their D2 receptors by 30% or more. The brain is then supersensitive to dopamine. This leads to dyskinetic and psychotic symptoms.
- chris_mahan 13y agoWait, let me guess... As such, they are not allowed to buy weapons, right? How convenient...
- bjhoops1 13y agoPlease tell me you don't actually want these folks armed.
- WayneDB 13y agoWho? Anti-authoritarians or the mentally ill folks?
- VLM 13y agoThe purpose of the article was to claim that the opinion of the only people legally allowed to make diagnoses is that the venn diagram shows the anti-authoritarians completely enclosed as a subset of the mentally ill folks. The author's personal experience was being diagnosed with "issues with authority" because he didn't kiss up to his crazy boss. I don't see any conflict between not kissing up to his boss and owning firearms, so sure, let him go deer hunting on vacation if he's got no other, real, issues.
- chris_mahan 13y agoWait, weren't the people who fought to make America independent upset with the King's Authority? Would you not say, today, that they were anti-authorianists? Would you not say that an oppressive government would use such a "medical condition" to confiscate guns from people who disagreed with it? Think hard about this, and ask yourself what you would have done in 1774: sided with the Revolutionaries, or sided with the Royalists.
- jbooth 13y agoTake it easy on the rhetoric. No, those founding fathers were not anti-authorianists to the degree that people would call a pathology. The continental congress did not descend into a bunch of bickering every time someone asked someone else to do something. They were mostly, from all reports, pretty well-adjusted and got along with each other civilly even with major disagreements on how to do things.
- tokenadult 13y agoI don't like this article's groundless speculation about Albert Einstein, who is used as an unwilling poster child for dozens of causes without support in Einstein's actual biography. I have carefully read Einstein's longest autobiographical writing, and cite it on my personal website, http://learninfreedom.org/Nobel_hates_school.html http://learninfreedom.org/Nobel_hates_school.html and while it is indisputable that Einstein blew off some of his school homework, it is not at all clear that he would meet any of the DSM-IV or new DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for any of the conditions claimed for him. More generally, there is a better call for improvement of psychological diagnosis http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia... already up on the website of the National Institute of Mental Health in the United States, the subject of much news reporting and commentary in the last week. So I won't take this opinion piece by lone blogger as the last word on what needs to be done to improve psychological diagnosis.
- WayneDB 13y agoI think your summation of this article is way off. First - It was written by a lone PHd over a year before the NIMH blog post (which was written by a lone MD). Second - I don't think this author was presenting his article as "the last word". Lastly - The speculation on Einstein is grounded in comments by one of Einstein's biographers. I wouldn't call that groundless.
- gdsimoes 13y agoI read two Einstein's biographies and I have come to the conclusion that if he was born today he would probably be a college drop out. Some people say that geniuses always survives life hardships, but the fact that there are no new Einsteins (or Maxwells, Plancks...) seems to show this isn't true.
- ceejayoz 13y ago> Some people say that geniuses always survives life hardships, but the fact that there are no new Einsteins (or Maxwells, Plancks...) seems to show this isn't true. No new Einsteins, Maxwells, and Plancks? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Physics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Phys...
- losethos 13y agoIndia-nigger http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yknkKIX4ikE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yknkKIX4ikE
- guylhem 13y agoIn the first paragraph is the little gem : authority needs to a) know b) be honest c) care for anti-authoritarians to accept it. > I know that degrees and credentials are primarily badges of compliance. Those with extended schooling have lived for many years in a world where one routinely conforms to the demands of authorities. Yes! Wow. Just read the article - not a single idea I'd disagree with, except maybe the conclusion : > Americans desperately need anti-authoritarians to question, challenge, and resist new illegitimate authorities and regain confidence in their own common sense I don't know if anyone desperately needs anything. However, the abc test to test how legitimate is the authority and how a diagnosis would be best explained by something this simple thing is something I'll keep.
- zdw 13y agoThe TL:DR of this article, in D&D terms: Chaotic aligned people are being diagnosed as mentally ill by Lawful aligned people. Unfortunately, it's frequently Lawful-{Neutral|Evil} judging Chaotic-Good, which is a travesty.
- drharris 13y agoNot only that, but the trend is cemented by the fact that only Lawful people are allowed to diagnose in the first place, so there is no checks or balances. In D&D, a few rolls could take care of that, but in the real world you'll get some hefty jail time... and a diagnosis.
- bjhoops1 13y agoI have a 13-year-old brother with ODD. And let me tell you, there is more to it than a healthy does of anti-authoritarianism. We adopted my brother when he was 15 months old, and in his first year of life we suspect he was frequently neglected, leading to attachment issues. Basically, when an infant's needs are not met, they get distressed, and the more often this occurs, the more those neurological pathways become ingrained in their brains. Which means that people with a traumatic early childhood are much more sensitive to stimulus, feel threatened easily, and very quickly move into "survival mode". In survival mode, we will all lie, cheat or steal because our survival is at stake. Kids like my brother spent a disproportionate amount of their time in this state. They also learn at that young age that their needs are not going to be met, and so they come to distrust authority and other people, focusing on looking out for themselves (since no one else is going to). They also tend to fail to internalize social norms and rules like being honest and the "golden rule". These sorts of tendencies can be considered anti-authoritarian, but it is a reactionary anti-authoritarianism, not a healthy, well-reasoned skepticism of prevailing authorities. The latter is healthy, the former is not. So while it may be the case that anti-authoritarian individuals frequently are diagnosed a mentally ill, it is probably much more common that some kinds of mentally ill individuals happen to be anti-authoritarian. I.e. causation moves from certain types of mental illness to anti-authoritarianism. Basically, I'd like to say this is an interesting article, but please don't walk away thinking that the entire system is just a ploy by The Man to keep the Lisbeth Salanders of this world marginalized. It is much more complicated and difficult than that. On a personal note, it can be very painful to love someone with issues like ODD. It requires loads of love, patience and restraint. It can also be very rewarding.
- AutoCorrect 13y agoand it requires the above traits in people close to the person, not Ritalin or other mood altering drugs, to truly solve the problem, and not just mask it.
- ameister14 13y agoYou're applying an acute care model to a chronic problem; it's not necessarily 'fixable.'
- jasallen 13y ago"...I know that degrees and credentials are primarily badges of compliance." Preach it brother.
- madaxe 13y agoThe trick is largely to learn when to shut your gob, or say one thing and do another. I was repeatedly diagnosed with ADHD and ODD in my year of school in the states - flushed the pills, got expelled (well, forced to leave, as they didn't want an expulsion on their squeaky clean record). Back to school in England... "Engaged", "curious", "incisive questions". Partially down to cultural differences in terms of views on mental health (I'm merely "eccentric" these days), and partially down to me doing a year long master class in the states as to how to lie my arse off and pretend to accept authority while rejecting it.
- LekkoscPiwa 13y agoYeah, and probably an American kid in the UK - and for sure in Eastern Europe where I currently reside - would be diagnosed with autism ;-) Too quiet, has no views or opinion of his own, sits still all day. ;-) I love it. I remember my first days at the office in the US. I was like - am I in a mental institution with a band of cranky autistic adults now? And for them I was waaay too crazy. Asked too many questions, talked too much, walked too much, "rocked the boat" too much. Finally, they got really offended when I told them that I really came to believe they must be medicated or have some stuff added to water / food. ;-) And I loved that too. I had a friend from LA visiting Poland. He used "dude this is intense" about 10 times an hour. He claimed people drive crazy here, say crazy stories, generally are crazy, and he was like - is that all for real? Cultural differences can be huge factor in determining if someone mentally fit or not.
- jacalata 13y agoI happen to know quite a few American kids who moved to countries around the world and unsurprisingly, none of them were diagnosed with anything. I have also known Poles who moved to America and other countries and have never considered them more intense than other people. Maybe your experience says more about you than the world in general.
- LekkoscPiwa 13y agoI used a parallel (exaggerated) to present my point of view. You see for you it's already "something wrong with you" department. In Eastern Europe cynicism is just much more common. The point is that American will feel as if everybody around them has ADHD when in Poland. And a Pole may (I did!) feel that people suffer from serious autism when visiting the USA ( office setting in particular). US office vs. Polish office is like autism vs. adhd to me at least and I have the right to express that opinion. I'm not saying everybody in the US is autistic and that everybody in Poland has ADHD. I'm saying people are closer to these psychological traits: in Poland ADHD, in the US autism. Also Americans (and I'm one too!) are well known for over medicating their kids for trivial reasons. I think there are cultural reasons for that too.
- jasallen 13y agoIt truly help a lot when you read things like this. I'm 36 years old now, and have learned to live pretty successfully in society. But as a child that wants to explore and innovate (or for that matter just understand the rules I'm following), it often feels impossible to live in a society that has a rigid set of expectations. One common refrain from childhood: "If only he would apply himself..." well, of course, I actually applied myself with a focus that would blister the brains of the people who said this sort of thing. But I didn't apply myself to what they wanted. And that was from the people who even recognized that I had intelligence worthy of any respect. Many had no idea that I was more than troublemaker (a ditch-digger some would say). I suppose it is of relevance that I grew up in a very blue collar environment, and in those environments the expected measure of success is a stable job with routine and predictable pay increases; questioning and understanding is not the path to that, acceptance of the "that's the way it's done" is. These issues led to a malaise and kind of depression that resulted in me dropping out of school and joining the Marine Corps (yeah, great idea for an "anti-authoritarian", but part of me still believed i was the one with the problem and needed fixing). The path "back to the world" was a difficult one, and who's to say if that path is even done -- where could I have been. My decisions were poor back then, but hell, I was a teenager and living in a world that didn't support me. Ironically, as I've gained positions of authority over people who themselves are submissive to authority, I think they have a greater respect for me, than they do people who are not innovators or independent thinkers. I still fight the battle constantly, the white collar corporate world is nearly as unimaginative as the blue collar world -- it's not even about resisting authority, in fact, a good 'authority' is as good as delegating -- someone trusted to do stuff.
- bjhoops1 13y agoI'd be curious to hear about your experiences in the Corps as an anti-authoritarian sort. I nearly joined the Marines myself out of college but decided that I was not well suited for it.
- jasallen 13y agoWell, I think there is a lot of confusion in this thread: confusing people who genuinely have serious problems with those to whom the author was referring, those who are simply differently suited than the majority. I'd like to think that I'm the latter overall, so, frankly, I didn't fit in, and I didn't do terribly well, but its mostly a non-story (with regards to anti-authoritarianism - in other ways I have plenty of stories). I was average, I mostly tolerated the authority because the threat of not doing so was a little more than I could bear, and I got the hell out as soon as I could. Then I was lucky enough to be a smart guy during the original dot-com bubble and found my way back into the company of people I was more comfortable with.
- ritchiea 13y agoPrevious discussion of this article one year ago http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3642570 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3642570
- rayiner 13y agoSo in a species that depends on pack/tribe behavior for survival, how is an inability to follow authority not a mental illness?
- clicks 13y agoOkay, so let's go down that line a little bit more. In a species (alongside a whole host of other species) that depended on rape for survival, how is an inability to rape not a mental illness? [1] In a species that depended on rigidly defined gender roles of women child rearing and men being hunters, how is aberrant behavior not a mental illness? I think what's happening is you're falling prey to appeal to nature fallacy. Consider here also the results of the loners, the outliers, the dropouts -- a lot of them go on to contribute greater value to society than the ones following the pack/tribe behavior. [1]: Researchers Thornhill and Palmer say rape is an evolved reproductive strategy and not a crime of violence. See their piece 'A Natural History of Rape: The Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion' for more.
- rayiner 13y agoThe rape analogy is misplaced because humans, unlike say ducks, do not primarily reproduce through rape. Also, appeal to nature fallacy is not applicable because I'm not making a "good" versus "bad" conclusion. I'm thinking of "mental illness" in terms of whether it's an evolutionary mal-adaptation, not in moral terms. And while it is true that loners, outliers, and dropouts often contribute great value to society, it is also true that they also often do great harm to society (the bell curve is a bitch). Moreover, the bulk of collective social value is produced by people following the pack/tribe. What happens to the total productivity of society if everyone acts like the loners, outliers, and dropouts?
- jradakov 13y agoGood. Now I can use the "anti-authoritarian" card when I tell my boss to go crunch a biscuit.
- jasallen 13y agoYou miss the point entirely. "Playing a card" is usually in reference to having some condition. The author's point is that anti-authoritarian is no condition. So. If you are anti-authoritarian go tell him to "crunch a biscuit". If you are also not an idiot, have a fallback plan.
- jokoon 13y agookay guys, can we also talk about good will hunting ? right. If therapists had to take care of all the problems caused by society, there'd be no end. On top of it, ODD is for kids, not for grown adults.
- blaze33 13y agoThanks for sharing. Actually “issues with authority” is exactly what got me fired ~2 years ago after "assessing whether or not authorities actually know what they are talking about, are honest, and care about […] people". They didn't. On any level. The worst part is how much time and care is needed to fully recover from the rejection feeling and depression that can ensue.
- mikegagnon 13y agoWorking at a place like that is a curse. Leaving is a blessing. Getting fired is a blessing in disguise. Are you working at a better place now?
- Mz 13y agoNot exactly the same thing, but I have long said that if Joan of Arc were alive today, they would be adjusting her meds to make the voices go away instead of following her into battle while she played handmaiden to the birth of modern France.
- mountaingoating 13y agoI guess so, but I wouldn't be too negative about it because she probably wouldn't have gotten burned at the stake.
- Mz 13y agoShe ended The Hundred Years war. She stopped a great many other people from suffering and dying. Her fame does not make her suffering "worse" than what she stopped. France was an occupied land. It was an ugly era that she put an end to.
- LekkoscPiwa 13y agoI had a teacher in High School who was a genius. He wanted us to think independently. One time he assigned a homework to the class where each of us had to study a mental illness of our choice. Mine was narcissism. And we had to go to a psychologist or psychiatrist, pretend that we have the disease and the task was to be convincing enough to get diagnosis. More than 80% of students passed. We were all officialy crazy now, lol. Now, try pulling it off with pneumonia or flu. That's the problem with psychology or psychiatry. They can pretend all day long they are real sciences, but I'm sorry as long as a band of kids can pull off stuff like this it's not science. It's a complete and total joke. Parent who have no time for their kids medicating them, so they can rest after work. Teachers who can't handle the class, so any kid who isn't complete vegetable must have ADHD, ODD, or whatever. Joke, joke, joke, joke.
- katbyte 13y agoI have a friend who goes to i think 3 different doctors pretending to have various mental illness to get a variety of prescription pills he then sells with a huge markup. ADHD --> adderall/vyvanse anxiety --> ativan/xanax/etc insomnia --> sleeping pills
- JacksonGariety 13y agoMy friend Bob Sacamano sells Russian hats in Battery park!
- LekkoscPiwa 13y ago<cynism>Is that schizophrenia or bipolar disorder? I'm sure it must be something! Let's medicate him as that's waaay to disturbing.</cynism>
- Jayschwa 13y agoWhat a great lesson. I'm a little jealous. How did you prevent this from becoming a black mark on your medical history though?
- pond_lilly 13y agoITT obedient pro-authoritarians are getting pissed at the article. In all seriousness, I can second the notion about extreme compliance that is required to get PhD and to secure a job. I knew a small army of extremely talented individuals that have been forced out of grad school because they refuse to kiss all asses they were required to kiss (starting of course wit almighty adviser). Those who graduated (well at least majority of them)are only good at following commands and "networking".
- eliasmacpherson 13y agoRSA Animate - Smile or Die http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo Touches on the same idea of those who are anti authoritarian being sidelined without reason, and enabling and exacerbating the recent global financial crisis.
- UK-AL 13y agoI would like to see if there is a relationship between anti-authoritarian and entrepreneurship.
- 205guy 13y agoThere is a word that hasn't come up in this discussion, and that's Asperger's. I know some people with Asperger's who are very oppositional and some who are not. Given that ADHD is sometimes considered the tail end of he Autism-Asperger's spectrum (not always, this is new and controversial), I think it is reasonable. As top commenter bjhoops says: "it is probably much more common that some kinds of mentally ill individuals happen to be anti-authoritarian." And I don't really agree with it either, but Einstein has often been co-opted by Asperger's support groups as one of their own. From my admittedly limited reading on autism, Asperger's, and other behavioral diagnoses, they are not mental illnesses but rather alternate "wirings" of the brain. People on this spectrum can (to varying degrees) learn to deal with the "neuro-typical" world around them, but they can't change their brains. And these are not one-dimensional conditions: people on the spectrum have any number of different wiring, from social handicaps to language problems, hypersensitivity to touch or noise, face recogniition, etc. I suspect that anti-authoritarianism is one of these dimensions. It can exist on it's own in an otherwise "neuro-typical" person, but it often gets added to other deficiencies on the Autism-Asperger's spectrum. I am not saying that blind adherence to authority is "typical," but I think there is often a recognition of parental and social authority that is mostly normal which is what the anti-authoritarian lacks.
- Allower 13y agoIf anti-authoritarian means "question[ing] whether an authority is a legitimate one before taking that authority seriously. Evaluating the legitimacy of authorities includes assessing whether or not authorities actually know what they are talking about, are honest, and care about those people who are respecting their authority." than the rest of humanity really are ignorant fucking sheep.
- snowman41 13y agoI personally feel that "Cogito ergo sum" means that taking assertions on faith is simply foolhardy, because the only opinion that one can truly trust is your own. Not that you should take my word for it.