Give Me Permission

I got started on this while watching a debate on ideals.  As the missiles were flying each contender was careful not to appear too brutish in their hostility towards disagreement.  One made a point to the detriment of the other and in rebuttal uttered “If you’ll permit me” and suddenly a starburst when off in my head

Permit?  Now isn’t that a luscious word? If you’ve ever seen 2001 A Space Odyssey you might recall near the end of the film a series of flash-backs and flash-forwards that mimicked mental processing.  But that’s the best I can do with conveying how my thoughts were rushing in different yet conjoining fashions.   In the purely philosophical context, permission is most commonly used to refer to consent. And that consent is the legal embodiment of the concept, in which approval is given to another party if so required by a perceived power to enforces its will. For permission I’d have to have an authority to grant it, for the premise to hold water.  Yet also, Permission depends on norms (ought-to proclamations as well as commands and prohibitions) or institutions, (structure or mechanism of social order and cooperation that governs behavior of individuals) where permissions and obligations are complementary to each other. Who is this authority that possesses the sacred permission?  

   Most times we’d agree that our collective society creates laws that describe standards of behavior, limits and boundaries; otherwise known as Deontic logic, or logic that affects acts. With that then to support distinctions would be to elect consequences for not upholding agreed upon covenants.  We would also create a body to enforce those laws with apprehension, judgment and finally punishment.  But hidden, behind the façade is the power plant of action.  What makes it work is force: by default, threat-or actual, violence.

Short version is then: violence is the authority by which we must obtain permission.  Permission absolves behavior from violent consequences. A good example would be: The prohibition of taking life.  Accept in specified situations, as in war, saving oneself or loved one from attack that would result in death, or upholding the law as an officer of the court while protecting life of citizens.

   Why the big deal about permission?  I suppose it was recognizing how I was conditioned to submit.  I have ample life experience to suggest why that is so, from submitting to the authority of my parents, to by extension, the institutions of society; School and then church, then ultimately to my employer who controls the source of funds that meet my daily needs.

Fundamentally my employer can’t use physical violence on me to get me to comply, he can coerce me by withholding pay (via job) in which I am left to resolve how do I meet my needs?  The fundamental contract is pay for work, so all employers use the same trade of meeting personal needs as incentive to cooperate with their goals.

If we perceive we cannot obtain permission from the institutions we recognize to have authority to grant it, then we are left with the necessity to liberate ourselves from the reaches of that institution.  

Responsibility, as in creative alternatives can be a heavy burden, heavier it seems, than the weight of chains we willingly accept as limitations.