Chris Jepson: A hardening of the heart

“It’s not wisdom but Authority that makes the law.” — Thomas Hobbes

By whose authority? The Pope is arriving in America and I am mildly interested. The only religion that got hammered in my home was Catholicism, not so much its specific tenets or beliefs (humorous in and of themselves) but its structure of authority. My father thought the Pope delightfully ludicrous, a droll figure in comic clothing issuing ridiculous pronouncements. To revere a monkish old man wearing a conical hat and red Gucci shoes, a celibate who issues infallible “rules” on living, seemed the height of absurdity to father.

My father was a bit of a dichotomy. He was a lawyer with the heart of an anarchist. We didn’t have many rules in my home. Three, actually, that stick out today. I had to be home at 6 p.m. sharp for dinner every night. This was in concrete, so too, under no circumstances was I to ever be disrespectful to my mother. And three, I was to never lift a finger against either of my two older sisters (even when being wretchedly teased). Other than those “rules” I was allowed to discover for myself how life works and where and how authority intersected with freedom to be one’s self.

My grandfather was of the generation that did not spare the rod. This was not my experience. There is no question that my father was “the” authority figure in my early life. A large man with pile-driver hands; he never touched me in anger. His lawyer father disciplined him with a belt but I was held in check by the “look.” My siblings all recall the profound look of sorrow father displayed when any of us disappointed.

Father respected the mind first and foremost. Any determinations on how to act in life came from within, from a reasoned assessment of fact. If you broke the rules, challenged authority you did so from introspection. I have many images of my father but what I observed him do more than anything else in life was read. He read every time he sat down or had the opportunity. He read on the front porch, on the toilet, on vacation, everyplace but at the dining room table. Reading opens doors to possibilities, to how one may experience life.

The trajectory of the West (Europe & America) from the Greeks, from 500 BC on has been the inexorable empowerment of the individual vis-à-vis the state (authority: religious/autocratic/nobility, etc.). This historic slog to a free, independent individual determining for his or herself how to live was achieved through revolutions and wars, by overcoming butchery and oppression but most importantly through ideas.

The idea that the individual could — on his or her own — through observation, reading, introspection and discourse determine how best to live remains a revolutionary idea. We need look no further than the Mid-East to see just how revolutionary the notion is of an independent, free mind (particularly for women).

Authority has a Morehead, Kentucky public official, Kim Davis arguing that her “religion” morally requires her opposition to gay marriage. Her religion determines how she thinks. This is called faith. Ms. Davis, sadly, reminds me of an observation by Edward Abbey, “Orthodoxy is a relaxation of the mind accompanied by a stiffening of the heart.”

All of us are “products” of our environments. Not all “authority” is wise, religious authority in particular. To think wisely, to act humanely requires more of us than blind, subservient adherence to authority.