Member-only story
What’s your mindset everyday? What SHOULD it be?
Question Authority
When I was a kid, I remember seeing a roll of colorful and, well, groovy stickers that said “Question Authority.” This was during the Vietnam War and a period when people DID question authority. We sort of do that now, but in a very different way. We question authority when what people in power do violates our ideology.
In the 1960s, people were questioning whether they were being fed lies, and being forced to do unnecessary and dangerous things by those authorities. Like, for example, if young people were drafted and sent to Southeast Asia to kill and die in a war that made no sense. When what they authorities said and did was dangerous nonsense, people would speak out — they’d speak truth to power.
Today, the loudest voices are those of knaves and fools. People who make excuses for climate collapse. People who value profit over human life. People who try to focus on scapegoats — brown people, foreigners, and all sorts of imaginary enemies and threats. And those foolish and cruel voices remain loudest, in part, because they are repeated and reinforced by commercial media and culture. That is, any viewpoint that supports commercial things is amplified.
