High School Sack Day and Authority

In the 1950s the high school girls in my class decided on a certain day we would all wear burlap sacks.

I went to a local farm store and bought the sack. My grandmother turned it into a rather cute, but itchy dress.

We arrived at school and were immediately sent home to change.

We obeyed and most of us were back before lunch.

What a missed opportunity.

Rather than whip us into line, they could have used it as a teaching moment and tell the girls how during the depression burlap sacks were used to make children’s clothing. It was so common that the makers of the sacks often added designs such as flowers to the material.

Or they could have called all the girls into the auditorium and congratulated them on their creativity. They could have had made it a contest on whose sack dress was the most original.

Instead the used the event to increase their authority.

At university when there was a ballot for class officers we were told to check boxes. I put a little flag on the top of my check. The administration made a scene about irresponsibility, following directions and held another vote. I had marked a box. My vote was clear. My reason for doing it was only to bring a smile to those that tallied the votes, a tiresome process at best.

Only later, bit by bit as I made my way up the career ladder did I realized that authority erases originality for control.

In some companies where I worked, ideas from the lower echelon were often ignored. Many would have made improvements but employees learned to conform and good ideas did not help the company.

In 1970 we had to beg our boss to be allowed to wear pantsuits, which he considered unladylike. It was not a company where clients ever stepped across our threshold. We only saw each other. All writers were women. Only the boss and the printer were male.

Digital in the 1980s had an experiment with “troublemakers” putting them in one manufacturing plant. Instead of the usual hierarchy there was one manager who was more of a liaison. Every employee was responsible for everything. Who did what was by agreement and usually those who could do things best found the slot that matched their abilities. Also, if a person had the sign-off responsibility of a computer that went wrong, it was his or her job to go to the client to solve the problem. Some were even showing up weekends to tend the landscaping on their own time. People were so involved that the company had to hire an anthropologist to make sure people took the correct time off.

It also reinforced with the freedom came responsibility.

The plant was one of the best in production.

Societies need agreement, another word for conformity, but conformity can reach a point that stifles progress. Only by breaking accepted standards of society for example, did women get the vote and although civil rights have improved for blacks and browns, conformity and acceptance of the conformity have not given them equal status to whites and not just as in the U.S.

A people pushed to what they consider their limits will rebel.

Ask Marie Antoinette.

Ask King George about the Minutemen.

Those in authority do not want the challenges. If everyone marches along as robots, doing and thinking what they are told, there is a certain peace—especially for those at the top who benefit from that obedience.

And there can be a certain comfort (that word again) knowing your place in your society.

When Czechoslovakia rebelled against Russia, a news broadcast reported that parents told their children, “We tried it, it didn’t work.”

The children replied, “But we didn’t try.” It worked.

All of us are surrounded by the norms of where we live. Many of those norms work and there is an unquestioning acceptance of those norms. What woman in 1850 would think it was anything but normal that she be considered her husband’s property?

What about the artist who only painted realistic paintings?

What about the musician that only played the classics?

About the women who once could only be secretaries, nurses and teachers?

On a personal level there does need to be some standards to prevent chaos. Determining the level of comfort with those standards can be difficult. Being the first one to push the boundaries of those standards, can be costly to the individual including rejection from the authority setting those standards. Asking why, what else, what about the other side can shake our comfort zone. It depends on the answer that governs the reaction between acceptance and revolt.