Authority vs Autocracy - do our leaders serve us or serve themselves?

Transcript:

As we approach the election season in Victoria, let's remember what authority is and where it comes from.

Authority is invested in an office, never in a person. And so the moment someone in authority appropriates that power as a personal attribute of their own, they forfeit their authority. To be in authority is to be authorised by something or someone greater than yourself.

You are said to be 'under authority' because you hold that power and that authority in trust for something or someone greater than yourself. You are merely a representative of that authority.

Insofar as someone starts to govern at an impulse of their own will, they cease to be 'authorised'. They cease to be an authority, and they become arbitrary and autocratic.

And the thing about arbitrary and autocratic rule is it requires a strong penal code to enforce. A despot rules through fear, through fines, through threats, and through sheer bullying.

Whereas, on the contrary, someone under authority has no such desperation to enforce their power because they don't require strong penal codes to command respect or to command their authority because they know it comes from somewhere else.

In fact, the primary trait you will see in people in true authority - who are acting on behalf of someone else...holding power in trust - is not bullying, and not threats, and not punitive measures as we see in a lot of our politicians and leaders.

The primary trait you see in people under authority is docility. They're docile. They are quietly confident because they know they act on behalf of someone else.

So, for the politicians that we elect and the leaders around us in the world today...have a think about whether they behave like they are under authority, holding it in service of others, or they are acting like autocrats? Appropriating authority that's not really theirs and pretending it's their own.

Because those people, they're not authorised. They themselves are morally illegitimate when they personally appropriate power and authority for themselves and act out of the own impulse of their own will.