Following are some stories about "authorities". And they explain why I'm not a fan of "authority".

The wayward Class VIII

At one point, I was on a forum having a discussion with a Class VIII and some other people. Someone (it may have been me) mentioned the old saw of, "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." At this point, the Class VIII popped up and said that LRH didn't say that, and that he doubted Ron would agree with it.

I thought about this for a moment and thought to myself what a dumb statement this was to make. First of all the Class VIII's pronouncement makes an assumption that just because LRH didn't make a certain statement, that makes it untrue. Ummm... fail. Reversely, had Ron made the statement, that wouldn't make it true. Ron was famous for taking the position that if it isn't true for you, it isn't true.

But even more important, the original statement about history is blindingly obvious. I simply pointed out to the Class VIII that the whole track is chock full of needlessly repeated history, and that in fact, that's what we're auditing.

Our Class VIII's response: "LOL".

I took this to mean, "By Jove, you're right!"

Two things were of interest to me about this incident. First, that a Class VIII would make such a dumb statement in the first place. Second, that he wouldn't openly admit he was mistaken. His "LOL" reply causes you to infer that he realizes you were correct in the first place, but avoids saying so. It allows him to maintain some altitude in the face of such a dumb mistake.

I've had some time to interact with this particular Class VIII, prior to this incident and after it. He appears to be one of those folks for whom the status of his advanced training is important to maintain. Translation: he takes himself a little too seriously.

Hobby-horsing Dentist

A few years back, my wife had some mouth pain, in particular around one tooth. At the time, we were making regular, every 3 months, trips to the hygienist. We'd had various things handled over the years, and were pretty familiar with our own mouths. My wife's experience told her this was a cracked tooth. So she went to the dentist, described the condition and suggested that it simply needed treatment as a cracked tooth. The dentist, whose specialty in school was gum disease and bite issues, begged to differ with her on the matter of diagnosis. He insisted that this was almost assuredly a bite issue and should be treated that way. My wife, being who she was, disagreed and insisted that he treat it as a cracked tooth.

So instead of some expensive, corrective treatment for bite issues, she got treatment for a cracked tooth. Result: the pain went away. Needless to say, the dentist never admitted his mistake.

Doctors make vegetables

This next one may be a bit long. I have a couple of nieces who are separated from each other by a few years. From the time of the younger one's birth, the older one has antagonized and victimized her younger sister. Anything she could to do make her sister's life hell, she did. She was quite covert about this most of the time, but if you kept an eye on her, you could easily catch her doing it. It got so bad one time when they were both quite young, that the younger finally had enough. She grabbed her older sister by the hair and started running around the house, dragging her behind. Of course, my sister-in-law (their mother) saw this happening, and like any good parent, should have done something right then to stop it. The problem was, she was doubled over laughing. The elder sister so royally deserved this treatment, and the irony of the whole thing wasn't lost on my sister-in-law. I assume she finally caught her breath and got the younger to let go. That's become of funny family story, retold on holidays.

Flash forward a few years. Now the elder sister is in her teens and the younger is probably a tween. They are horsing around, and suddenly the elder sister is starting to have numbness in her extremities. The most we can get out of them is that the elder sister got her neck bent backwards. The condition progressed rapidly, and at some point, the elder sister had trouble standing and walking.

She was taken to the hospital. The staff who handled her doubted what she was saying and asked her to stand and walk without "spotting" her (as in athletics, to stand close and be ready and able to catch the person should they start to fall). Result: she fell a couple of times on the hard floor of the treatment room.

So they admitted her.

Now let me take a moment to tell you what I would have done. Had my daughter come to me with this kind of complaint and under these circumstances, I would have called a chiropractor. Numbness and inability to control extremities is usually a nerve condition, stemming from nerves whose blood flow is being constricted by bones which are, for one reason or another being held in place by muscles, etc. Given that the kids had been horsing around and that the elder sister got her neck bent backwards, I would assume that her spinal chord had been damaged by the horseplay, and was starting to swell. The more swelling, the less sensation gets back to the brain. Acute numbness turns into an inability to control parts of the body, etc.

All this is the province of the chiropractor who is an expert when it comes to bones, nerves and the like. I rather suspect a chiropractor's treatment over a period of a week or two would have resolved the situation, though it might be touch and go at the time. But no one asked me or my wife.

But back to our narrative. My niece was admitted to the hospital. I won't go into the wholes sordid story. I'll give you the cook's tour instead. As a result of severe mishandling by the medical personnel involved, my niece is now a vegetable. She's had at least three heart attacks and subsequent significant brain damage, directly linked to her treatment at the hands of these people. (A teenager with heart attacks and no prior history of heart problems? Yes, indeed.) She will likely never improve. Aside from the heart attacks, there have been numerous infections, operations, mishandlings etc.

And do the doctors know why she had this condition in the first place? Nope. Not a clue. After a couple of years of this, they still don't know how this happened.

My mother, of advanced age and diminishing capabilities, has been in and out of the hospital numerous times. They've repeatedly given her mophine, which is known to cause hallucinations in some older people, and has done so with my mom. Moreover, her general treatment in hospitals has been poor.

Medicos and nutrition

Did you know that medical students get one to two semesters of nutritional study only? They study all about drugs, but almost nothing about nutrition.

Doctor's attitudes

In my business, which my wife started about twenty years ago, we do newsletters and websites for certain medical professionals and auto shops. The medical professionals include dentists, chiropractors, veterinarians, optometrists, podiatrists and the like. Notice what's missing here? Medical professionals with the initials "M.D." behind their names. We will not do business with people like this. Why? Because they tend to be arrogant, argumentative and hugely self-important. (Incidentally, lawyers tend to be the same way. We avoid them as well.) At least this has been our experience. But just to check ourselves, we've actually contacted more than one M.D. office manager and asked them about this. Almost uniformly, they agree with our assessment: M.D. doctors tend to be arrogant and self-important, making them hard to handle and difficult to service.

Second guessing the realtor

Every decade or so, my wife and I have the money and the desire to move. Now normally when you get to this stage, you call a real estate agent and you're supposed to believe they're working on your behalf. They are not. A real estate agent typically gets 3.5% of the selling/buying price on any property you purchase. The selling agent gets 3.5% and the buying agent gets 3.5%. Seven percent off the top. Can you believe that? I'm definitely in the wrong business.

In any case, the real estate agent is the "authority". You tell them what you want, and they're supposed to show you properties that fit your bill.

Of course, that's not good enough for my wife (or me for that matter). My wife goes into research mode. She drives to places to look at the cars in the driveways and the yards. Do the cars and yards look like the people who live there actually care about the condition of their stuff and the neighborhood they live in?

She goes to neighborhood and requests "comps" from the real estate agent. Comps are breakdowns of "comparable" properties in the neighborhood which have recently sold. She asks for details of properties currently for sale.

Now, because of the way the real estate business is set up, some of this information is only accessible by agents. They go through some of this information, but they don't necessarily show it to you. This isn't good enough for my wife. She wants to know what the agent knows, and all of what the agent knows. We're about to spend a boatload of money and make a long term commitment here. She wants to know if it's a good idea. And she's not willing to take a real estate agent's word for it.

Of course the agent wants you to take their word for everything. They want to do as little research as possible. They want to get you to buy a property and collect their commissions. Is that good enough for my wife and I? No.

So we drive agents batty. We do parts of their jobs for them and make them actually work for their commissions.

You may think I'm picking on the medical profession here. I'm not particularly. They just happen to be one of the professions people breathlessly listen to, and act like they can do no wrong. As I've shown above, this clearly isn't true.

My conclusion? Authority, shmathority. I've found that careful observation, a modicum of education in a field, and a willingness to step up to the plate trump "authority" nearly every time. It doesn't ingratiate you to anyone, but it often saves the day.

Moreover (and here's the real point), I've seen far too many people, where supposed "authorities" are involved, simply stand there with their mouths agape, waiting for the authority to finish, and then blindly follow their advice or orders. The reasoning, I suppose, goes that this person is sooo much more knowledgeable than I am, that they simply couldn't be wrong and I couldn't possibly be right if I disagree. Horse hockey. You certainly can be right and they can be wrong. It's happened to me many times. And if an authority tries to explain something to you, make them continue to explain it until you understand it. Doctors, in particular, are very bad at simply making pronouncements and not explaining why. Get it explained. Make the authority take the time and effort. You're probably paying these folks lots of money. They can damn well take the time to explain things. And if they can't explain it adequately, they probably don't know it as well as you think they do.