cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/17147012
"Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority”
and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say “if you won’t respect me I won’t respect you” and they mean “if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person”
and they think they’re being fair but they aren’t, and it’s not okay."
-a 15yo autistic girl experiencing ABA therapy
This is only vaguely related, but I remember reading that anti-authoritarianism is a trait of autism. I'm an autistic anarchist, so seeing the crosspost community is fun
My bet is that this is often the result of receiving more mistreatment than usual, or from simply being less likely to adhere to the already established social hierarchies because the social hierarchy just rejects you, which turn (pretty reasonable) attitudes that later become rationalised as anti-authoritarianism.
Pretty sure it's more than that. The entire concept of just obeying someone "because they're the authority" is incomprehensible to me. Give me a reason and if it makes sense I'll do it. Otherwise if I don't agree with it I don't see why I should.
To me it depends on the context. In a new job, I take a humble stance and repeat to myself:
And I just work according to instructions assuming the higher up's have a roughly good idea what they are doing.
After a few months, you can start understanding the broader context and spot some mistakes. Then you can start making suggestions.
Yea, if I don't know the full context then I can just accept it unless I think it's completely stupid, and then I'll just ask. Getting the explanation also helps with understanding the processes better.
I think I most commonly notice this when it's a movie theme, where some character is struggling with disobeying a person of authority that doesn't actually hold significant power over them and is just an authority because of social hierarchy. It wouldn't even cross my mind to obey them if I didn't want to do what they're asking, and all I can think is "why are you doing this".