The well-being of a society is enhanced when many of its people question authority.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position.


The development of a society depends on authority. The government officials are responsible for making beneficial decisions to turn the society into a better place. However, the well-being of a society can be improved by questioning authority, as it eliminates biases and helps create a more objective and equitable government.

First off, it is necessary for the authority to hear voices of the public. Barring that in some countries, the people choose their own leaders, the government alone can still hardly represent the needs and rights of the people. In theory, the leaders should care for the people, but when political leaders enter their offices, they lose the perspective of being an ordinary person under the influence of certain policies. It is relatively hard for them to be aware of, or understand the situation of the public. Hence, surveys and visits to places such as the factories, homes, and hospitals are crucial to make implementations of policies regarding economics, residence, and health care. These surveys require the public to inform the authority of their real needs and concerns, rather than hiding them. For instance, in North Korea, chairman Kim has the power to make any commands without hearing from any citizens. Disagreement with authority will be regarded as a crime and treated harshly. These inhumane treatment of the people not only suppresses their true thoughts and feelings about society, but also grows the seeds of hatred and dissatisfaction about the government secretly. This is detrimental to a developing country, as the people are forbidden to question authority in any way. On the other hand, civil visits of the president and public surveillance can better help the government determine what is needed for their people. As Abraham Lincoln, one of the greatest leaders in American history, once stated, “of the people, for the people, by the people.” Even though he died more than a hundred years ago, his spirit still proves to be essential for the existence of society.

Secondly, the political officials always need help from other sources, besides the public, to circumvent their limited knowledge. The development of a society includes so many aspects, such as economy, culture, linguistics, education, science, and so on. It is fairly difficult for authority to obtain specialists in every single one of the fields. As a result, they cannot carry the responsibility of making policies beneficial for everyone entirely on themselves: they need opinions from experts in various fields. Hence, if they make wrong decisions, scientists cannot be silent and watch society go in a direction harmful for its growth. For example, a pandemic COVID-19 hit the U.S. hard in 2019, with increasing transmission resulting in national lockdown, greatly impacting the lives of the public in a negative way. However, at the start of the pandemic, the Center of Disease Control (CDC) established that masks were not necessary to prevent the infection, and they may have adverse effects, such as suffocating those suffering from asthma. This policy raised concerns from various scientists and specialists in the field of epidemics and virology. They conducted intensive research on the effects of masks, including real-world analysis and computational modeling. Their work questioned authority, and later CDC emphasized the importance of masks, and several states started to implement the policy of mask requirement.

However, sometimes the doubts against authority could be unfounded and unscientific. The public voice could be wrong, which most likely will hurt the process of policy implementation. Still take the COVID-19 example, there were multiple large protests going on in several states, and people refused to wear masks in shops, schools, and even hospitals, undermining the effort of controlling the virus infection. This argument continues even till now, speeding up the transmission rate and causing extensive deaths nationwide. Hence, the authority should act wise in the process of obtaining advice from various sources and make good judgments about whether they should take it or not.

In conclusion, I believe that certain doubts against authority are beneficial for the development of society, but the authority should discern good and bad advice carefully.