Krevinek said:
My own personal view of freedom is that as long as you don't infringe on the rights/protections of others, then it is okay. Now, while there is no line in a document stating that you can listen to music and nobody can stop you, there is the concept of 'freedom to choose'. The freedom to choose to listen to music, if not infringing on the rights/protections of others, does not pose a threat to anything but the perception of what makes society.
And my own perception of freedom is that it is a subset of the larger value, responsibility. Freedom and rights are equated in your view. It is often asserted (though not specifically by you Krevinek) that man was endowed at creation (or by nature) with free will, the right to choose. I would challenge that definition, I see it as the ability to choose the right. Of course now comes in the real interesting part of the discussion, what is right.
Defying legitimate authority? Anyone in a position of authority to MAKE such a document would PROHIBIT such action. Why? Because if you are in the position, you don't want others attempting to take it away from you.
The UN Declaration of Human Rights is not made by a body with any particular authority. It is a consensus of what should be the rights of all people. I brought it up _not_ because of the merits of the document but to put it in proper context. The DoHR was crafted to correct real evils in a world where torture and opression are widespread. It stands as a monument to the good intentions of the member states and a testament to human decency. To use it as a justification for breaking a rule (as one poster did) or to claim that it relates directly to the issue at hand is, IMHO, to commit a gross abuse. And I see the tendency to commit that abuse more pronouncedly in those who are arguing from a self-centered position (and the young usually fall into that category).
What is legitimate authority, what makes it legitimate, and why shouldn't we defy it? Things don't change unless we buck the norm (within reason). Just because we 'legitimately' select a president here in the US does not mean I should not defy this authority figure and attempt to get things changed if I believe what he is doing is wrong for the country as a whole.
Would you accept that parental authority is legitimate?
Authority is connected to freedom and to rights and as such it would come into the same subset as the others, that of responsibilty. Authority exerted beyond responsibility is tyranny.
We vest authority in the government of a community though the consent of the governed. Defiance of that authority is not generally seen as a mature posture, but that may be just semantics. There are patterns and procedures in all systems to redress grievances, defiance is a final stage that thankfully patriots throughout the ages have taken up, but after serious debate and discussion.
This particular clip is the scariest statement:
The point goes with the above about the scope of the document. It is not clearly stated in the document that one poster used as his justification. I heartily recommend time to oneself as a necessary component of sanity.
Wow... while I don't know about the UN, the US does have an amendment against unreasonable search and seizure, and intervention into private matters. Over time this has also come to mean the right to privacy, which would by extension, include time to deal with private matters in a way to keep them private. This concept requires that a person have time to one's self, otherwise privacy does not exist.
Until you go outside of your private space and participate in public. You certainly have the right to a beer. But in most places it is illegal to drink it on the street. If you do that, your pockets will be turned out and anything that would have been protected in your private space can and will be used against you in a court of law.
You interpolate the protection of space to the protection of time. I don't have much trouble with that as a layman. However - just speaking about debate here - Robert Bork may have judicial objections to it, just as he would argue long and hard and with judicial soundness that there is no "RIGHT of privacy."
I will concede that because of today's laws (in the US) and the like, and minors having no rights beyond basic protections, your statement does hold /in this case/. However, attempt to apply that to those who get full protections under the law and it breaks down, or creates an environment which is very stagnant in the long-term (but an efficient machine!).
I think part of the core problem here is not about iPods, authority or anything else, but rather that our concepts of society need to be looked at and updated for a new world where 'Obey thy mother and thy father' is not law anymore.
You may want to reassess your understanding of Old Testament "law" and it may help to quote correctly. "Honor thy father and thy mother." Honor leads to the concept of becoming all that they wanted to become but could'nt. It is an educational dictum, one not limited I think to blind obedience or to physical parents. It is the foundation principle of "It Takes A Village" thinking. I repeat, this is exactly the interesting point of the debate.
When you say it is not the law anymore, do you mean that post-modern concepts of freedom have erased the Golden Rule? It never was "law" in the modern sense, but it is a fundamental principle for the development of a functional society. And it contains a challenge to parent and child. Honor and be honorable.
Education needs massive reform IMO to cope with the new challenges of today's society. iPod use during a class is a symptom, rather than a problem itself, which goes rather deep into how we view society. Can we really continue to apply a technology (the current educational institution, which /is/ a technology) which is hundreds of years old without much change to the core concepts to a society where information consumption is faster than it was by leaps and bounds?
The current technology of school is flawed, but not because it is old, because it is new. It no longer deals with fundamental issues of right and wrong, but in technical facts without moral guidance. This is now two generations old. It is surely the challenge of our age, not just in education, to find the moral compass again, not in old time religion, but in serious spiritual renewal.
Ban them from classrooms if you must (the teacher is the one attempting to operate within that environment, and should have some control over it), but that should be the extent of it.
Dr. Spock's method may or may not be a failure, but if we continue to hold old assumptions on what is successful, then we color and bias the results.
It seems to me that it is the not the old assumptions that have been shown to be deficient. It is change for it's own sake that colors and biases results.
Anarchy is a two edged sword. It can be arrived at both at the top and at the bottom of human development. That is - I can either become an anarchist by internalizing the principles of society or I can become a boor. The true anarchist is a highly moral person, most of the ones I meet are the other type.
