Thursday, July 17, 2008

Disobey Obedience !!

Obedience can never be a virtue.
After being through the entire rigmarole of school and college life and into a year in a corporate I realize that much. Actually it is in the corporate world that this unsettling understanding established itself in my psyche.
I think obedience is taught as a virtue to make the job of parenting and teaching pain free. What it also creates is a batch of youngsters who cannot act on their own and rely on someone else to make decisions for them.....for many this is something they cannot get rid of in their entire lives.
We are taught to obey unquestioningly in school, obedience is associated with integrity, good character and discipline. At what costs?
It culminates in an unerring dependency on authority for any action. We always have to be told what to do. We obey tyranny, oppression, racism, to keep our own 'moral' high ground (obedience is a virtue after all). In office we defer going against the ruling of the higher ranked person.
There are few 'rebels' who do......who finally earn the right to decide for others and the process continues....
What should be taught to kids is the ability to decide for themselves. It will make a lot of difference to this world.

1 comment:

Manjiri said...

I think that,in the corporate world, we should be able to choose whom to obey and whom to disobey.
Also, I feel that as we grow up we change our obedience to compliance or conformity.

An interesting read on this could be the Milgram Experiment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment