Obdt

We found out an interesting fact about a friend of ours, recently. It turns out that although he is fully committed to obeying the law, he is not a fan of obeying rules. Opposite of that, in fact. I’m not sure that’s how he would word it, though. Because obedience is basically doing what an authority says to do. But if he’s not recognizing an authority, it’s just someone’s suggestion, not really a rule at all.

This week, our “word” is really an abbreviation… for obedient. We generally think of children, students or servants as being obedient or not. Maybe even wives, if anyone still promises to “love, honor and obey”. And of course, we obey the appropriate government agents, such as police, soldiers, tax collectors, etc. The Ten Commandments, representing God’s law, is another “must obey” example–maybe the most basic.

Following rules without a recognized authority is just compliance, or acquiescence, for the “Pirates of the Carribbean” fans. I think most of the people I know would be either compliant and obedient, or neither. The friend mentioned earlier is a bit of an exception, and there is probably an explanation that I may never hear. And, of course, there are the folks with the “Question Authority” buttons and stickers. While that is intended to suggest that folks in authority aren’t always right, in practice is simply seems to be disregard for authority in general, especially when you don’t like them or what they say.

As for the abbreviation for obedient, obdt, we really haven’t been using it much recently. And by recently, I mean since the Victorian Era, or maybe even colonial times. Naturally, it would only be in writing, not in speech, so it could show up in a letter, right before the signature. Something like, “Your obdt. servant,” which would sound familiar to fans of the musical, “Hamilton”.

A final reference to close out this topic is the famous obedience experiment from the 1960’s at Yale by psychologist Stanley Milgram. Volunteers were convinced they were giving stronger and stronger electrical shocks to students each time they gave an incorrect answer. There really wasn’t anybody getting the shock, but the volunteers were convinced that there was, yet most of them continued to flip the switches all the way up to 450 volts. They obeyed, even though they thought it was wrong, simply out of obedience to authority. Sometimes, we really do need to question authority, but no buttons or bumper stickers, please.