{"id":563,"date":"2008-07-19T00:29:54","date_gmt":"2008-07-18T14:29:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/?p=563"},"modified":"2008-07-19T00:29:54","modified_gmt":"2008-07-18T14:29:54","slug":"some-thinking-is-more-smokey-than-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/2008\/07\/19\/some-thinking-is-more-smokey-than-others\/","title":{"rendered":"Some thinking is more smokey than others."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I recently heard a radio interview with the King of Motown, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Smokey_Robinson\" title=\"Wikipedia definition of Smokey_Robinson\" class=\"wikipedia\">Smokey Robinson<\/a>. The interview was recorded last year when he was in Australia.<\/p>\n<p>He made a throw-away comment that has been bugging me ever since &#8211; to a degree that is surprisingly to me.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t remember the exact context &#8211; I think it was about lessons from Woodstock, but he explained that we should all &#8220;question authority that isn&#8217;t enlightened by God.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I understand the suggestion (recommendation? duty?) to question authority. It is the implication of the qualifier that staggered me.<\/p>\n<p>Why did this expression catch my attention? Is it merely that I disagree with it? No. That&#8217;s not it.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, to be clear, I certainly think you should <em>especially<\/em> question authorities that claim to have God&#8217;s backing; no matter what your faith (or lack of it), it is clear that many unhappy events have been caused by people being misled by such claims.<\/p>\n<p>However, I don&#8217;t think that is what is bugging me. <\/p>\n<p>What I kept thinking about was how much artful thinking and rationalisation it took to get to the point that he could automatically rattle off this qualifier until it sounded natural. Taking a cliche like &#8220;Question authority&#8221; and carefully modifying it to protect a subset of authorities from its glare takes deliberation (whether from Smokey Robinson, or someone he was parroting).<\/p>\n<p>I finally realised what was really niggling me. It was <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Animal_Farm\" title=\"Wikipedia definition of Animal_Farm\" class=\"wikipedia\">Animal Farm<\/a> all over again.<\/p>\n<p>Question authority, but some authorities are more equal than others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Smokey Robinson made a throw-away comment that has been bugging me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[24,21],"tags":[78,161],"class_list":["post-563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cathartic-rant","category-observation","tag-literature","tag-skepticism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}