Excerpts - Authorities – Experts – Officials - Laymen

 

Let’s discuss the four possibilities we find man taking position in in the world. 

We find some people are referred to as authorities and some people are referred to as experts, and some are officials, and some are referred to as laymen. 

An authority is a person who tells us “what to think, and what to believe” because he knows and we don’t. 

An expert is a man or a woman with “a special skill”. A person who knows how to tie electric wires together, make a computer, put a man on the moon. They’re very useful people to have around. 

Officials are people who can “tell you what to do for the well-being of most of the people”. If you go down to the intersection and the traffic signal is out, there’s a man out in the middle that can say, “You go this way”, “You stop.” “You go.” He doesn’t care what you think, what you believe or anything else -- he can only tell you what to do when there is groups running together. 

And then we have the layman. The layman is the person who doesn’t know the difference between the other three. The layman makes it possible for other people to become con men, dictators, despots, or rulers, and leaders of various and sundry sort, do they not? And how does the layman bring these people about. He’s quite a creator when you stop to think of it because he wants to be safe. And to be safe, he looks for somebody to depend on. 

The authority is the one who is most subject to the temptation that the layman puts him under by wanting to depend. For the authority this activates the feeling of gaining pleasure because to exercise a power is pleasurable and it also lets him get over his “sense of inferiority” because somebody is depending on him. As he gets more and more carried away, he sees that he can use these people some way or other–profit in dollars and cents or he can become a leader. 

The poor layman is still wanting somebody to depend on so the layman saps all the energy away from the leader; and the leader saps the energy from the layman. So would you look and see that turns into a situation of mutual exploitation? Now mutual exploitation is when each one is using the other to gain pleasure or escape pain in one or another form If I use you to gain some kind of a sense of feeling of worthiness or power and you’re using me to gain some sort of a sense of safety are we both in the same boat? 

Does a free man need an organization on which to function in? None whatsoever. I can be peaceful without rules and regulations. Can you? 

But now if I’m going to be the leader and you’re going to be the follower, we have to get things kind of lined don’t we? We got to know what the rules to this little game are? So in this exploitation, we got to set up rules and regulations then. Each one uses the other for their own advantages. Are both of them unconscious? They sure are. This is an unconscious game, isn’t it? You might much more call it a dream because the follower dreams he’s being safe by taking on all these many little games and rules and taking everything that the leader has to say. 

Now the follower, the layman, has to grant to the authority one concession. Would you like to know what that one concession is? 

He has to grant him that everything he says is true. If I’m going to follow you and feel safe in following, I’ve got to make you infallible. Would you grant that to them? You wouldn’t do that would you? That I’d say everything he tells me is true. Now then has the layman laid horrible temptations on the leader? He has put so horrible a temptation on who he’s made a leader or authority that the leader, when unconscious would be unable resist the temptation to use it, is that right? 

Now all I got to do is tell you anything; and you’ve already agreed that you will follow so you’ll be safe. The layman has to say that the authority is infallible. Never error one little iota – anywhere, huh? 

Now have we set up a rather ferocious violence? Because then the leader has to play the proper game or he would no longer be your leader; and he could no longer get over his feeling of inferiority or whatever he workin’ on or his sense of power? So then the leader is a victim just as much as the follower is. Both are victimizing each other. Both are eating each other --literally eating each other up. Would you put that kind of temptation on anybody that you would say that whatever you say I’m going to accept as true. That would be leading the person into temptation would it not? 

You wouldn’t grant anybody that privilege first for your own well-being, and second you wouldn’t do that kind of harm to anyone, would you? You wouldn’t do that consciously. Unconsciously we do it all the time, huh? Seven million Roman Catholics all over the world have said that the Pope -- just because he gets elected as an official in a good old organization is infallible. That every proclamation is one hundred percent true, fact, straight from the headquarters, or else they wouldn’t feel safe any longer would they? And Lord knows, that’s what we gotta have. We got to feel safe. And so then do we exploit ourselves in the process of exploiting this poor guy.