Rare is the person who loves, who really loves authority.  While most of us are willing to submit to authority, given the choice, most of us would also rather not have to deal with it.  Authority, be it from a teacher, parent, employer, country, or anyone else, by its very nature presents us with boundaries that contain us, bind us, and set fences around our ambitions, hopes, and dreams, be they for the moment, the day, year, or the entire scope of our lives.  It shapes our world in ways that we often do not invite or desire, ways that rework visions and intimations of what we might have wanted our life, or at least our immediate experience, to be.
     On the other hand, the fact and presence of authority indicates that we, as a community of people living together on this planet, believe that the world in which we move has order, that the creation in which we find ourselves has a structure, that it is the product of purpose.  It has meaningful content, content which we, by investing in authority, wish to preserve and sustain for our greater good.  OUr interest in authority underscores that we believe that beneath the rawness and wildness of the universe lies a greater purpose, a deeper intent, a richer vision, an order, human, divine, or both, into which we fit ourselves.
     Ironically, when we invoke authority, good or bad, we are telling ourselves that we and the world have meaning.