In the BBC News report "Indian woman paraded naked on donkey" (2014), we learn the story of a woman who was treated according to the cultural traditions of rural India after some relatives accused her at the village council of killing her nephew. His family persuaded the council, which then ordered her to be humiliated by having her clothes stripped off, her head shaven and face blackened before she was "taken around the village on a donkey" (para. 9).
The title of the article, which was in the BBC News front page headlines, caught my attention because I thought the story would probably be a good example to show why many state and official organizations should not be respected, and why it is often morally wrong to obey or respect traditional authorities. My guess about the content of the story was not mistaken. India's South Asian culture is, of course, an Eastern culture very different to the Middle Eastern culture that gave birth to the Judeo-Christian Bible, but perhaps both cultures share some deeply anti-democratic attitudes that contrast with the democratic ideals of the West, which are fast becoming the culture of the world. In India, it was the same blind, unquestioning respect for traditional authority that made the ugly abuse of the woman possible, and it was the Christian idea that popes, kings and other rulers must be blindly respected and obeyed that allowed such evils as inquisitions and censorship of scientific knowledge possible, along with the vicious suppression of entire peoples for centuries.
There are good reasons why despots and dictators, whether popes, kings or dictators such as North Korea's Dear Leaders and China's Mao must suppress free speech: if they don't stop free and open discussion, truths will come to light that do not reflect well on their largely false images created by media propaganda and the control of information. Such censorship requires the suppression of critical thinking and respect for truth, which is why there is a need for such commandments as we see in the Bible and everywhere where a dictatorship is in power.
Commanded respect is, therefore, the enemy of reason and knowledge. It is also, as the morally ugly example of the woman in India reminds us, a powerful source of unethical action by societies and governments against citizens to whom protection should be offered.
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