!Authority Is All You Need
Authorities are equally bad in politics, software engineering and generally in life. In Georgia lot’s of people lost reality because of authorities.
Here’s the context:
Georgian government is taking clearly anti European actions, by initializing absolutely not-needed law about foreign agents. Massive protests take place in the capital. About 100k people got out against it, most of them youth. As population of Georgia is around 3.5 million with a lot of emigrants, 100k is more than 2% of living residents of Georgia. That’s not a small number for the protest.
There is this joke in Georgia, if 5 people in the room tell you are a teapot, you should indeed release some steam. The worst thing is that government sees all of us as a minority and doesn’t look like releasing any steam at all. It absolutely sucks.
In Georgia we don’t do protests against oil price or traffic jams. The only thing we are good at is protecting our identity. Throughout the years lot’s of Georgians sacrificed their lives for our nation and their beliefs. Today we are against everything related to Russia. Btw, there are lots of Russians in Georgia who have escaped their homeland. I often say I’m not against those people and don’t mean any aggression at all. However, let me be honest. I might reject any relationship with a person only because he/she is Russian. It may sound horrific, but that’s the level of hate we have against Russia.
Authorities:
“Authorities” are used to hide reality.
People blindly follow their authorities. Only because they are “Authorities”. Children accept everything their parents think. Workers accept everything their managers think. Software Engineer accepts everything team lead says. Crowd accepts everything Politicians say.
Authority has transitive nature, it kind of creates chain of authorities, from bottom up.
Sometimes authorities are used by authorities to influence people, not only by the government. One can manipulate other person by pointing to another authority’s action or a quote. We often see Plato’s quotes about democracy and republic during protests. Not that I have anything against Plato, but it’s not “Plato” who should bring people together. It’s rational reasoning and thinking that should. Same happens in tech world as well. “We should use microservices, because XYZ is using that” such comments are surprisingly frequent.
Questioning Authorities:
What authorities don’t like is being questioned. On the other hand, questioning requires nuts. Where as effective questioning requires nuts and intense thinking. That’s why sometimes sheep gets tired and simply follows the shepherd.
Questioning “big” authorities can’t happen all at once. Sheep can’t escape from the shepherd after spending all its life following the shepherd. To overcome this fear of questioning, we should start asking “WHY?” a lot. Ask “WHY?” in simple daily situations, ask “WHY? ”to your parents, ask “WHY?” to your teacher, ask “WHY?” to your friends, ask “WHY?” to your project manager. It all boils down to being comfortable with asking “why” and arguing about certain topics. After all this practice it’s no longer hard to question “big” authorities like government, philosophers or any other human beings.
P.S
In general I’m not as emotional as people around me. Usually I’m the last person in the room who gets frustrated about certain topics. To all the people like me, I recommend writing your thoughts down. Just like this essay. This could be the best way to release your emotions and concerns to the open space.
