Bravely Default: What Is Disobedience?

[Lheticus]

I was going to post this in Gaming, but really it's less about Bravely Default and more about philosophy.

I suggest those of you who do not wish to be exposed to Bravely Default spoilers to leave this thread. I want to discuss a key aspect of Bravely Default's overall message, and how I believe it relates to a certain philosophical question...

What does it truly mean to disobey?

Starting I believe from the fourth chapter, the phrase "have the courage to disobey" is practically a case of Arc Words. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ArcWords) Yet in the case of this game, disobedience is by far the most obvious path. I'm not even to Chapter 7, and I'd have to be a total idiot not to know that Airy lies. Heck, I even got the message the last time I turned the game on!

Yet following this path gives lesser rewards than pretending to still go along. Just who then, is the player being told to disobey? The answer is one that left me rather reeling: The game itself!

To borrow from another game, "A man chooses, a slave obeys." But just what does it mean to disobey at all? We, as human beings, face inescapable pressures from all metaphysical sides in our lives to obey. Parents who think they know what is best for their offspring better than they do (and in many cases, are indeed correct) The schools say to obey them. Employers MUST be obeyed, or one's means of living is forfeit. Society must be obeyed or extremely dire consequences are faced. Corporations use every trick at their disposal to get customers to obey and buy their products--in some cases, products those customers hardly even need! Politicians use slanderous ads and other strategies to sway people to vote for them, to accept them as a leader (and thus obey.) Lobbyist groups use money to get the politicians to obey them! No matter where you turn, there are things obeying other things. Obey, obey, obey!

But so what, right? This is how our lives function. There are many instances where obedience is a very good thing. With this the case, it is an extremely difficult task sometimes to distinguish obedience that promotes peace and human prosperity and obedience that promotes ignorance, depression, and decay of human thought.

Ah, human thought. A lovely segue, for THAT is what I believe is the one true act of disobedience to the forces around you: thinking for yourself. I believe that acting as "I will do/say/think this/in this way because X tells me to"...that is the true obedience. Inversely, the true disobedience is to act as "I will do/say/think this/in this way for my own reasons and my own purpose." To think "I won't steal that candy bar because it's against the law" is blind obedience. To think "I won't steal that candy bar because if I get caught, I'll get arrested, I/my parents will be fined, it'll be a huge embarrassment and people will find out, and if I don't get caught all I get is a freaking candy bar" is healthy, rational risk assessment!

I guess what I'm trying to say is in determining true obedience or disobedience, reasons matter. They matter HUGELY.

[tomandtish]

I can see the point you are trying to make, but you may want a better example. After all, in your stealing the candy bar example, all those bad things happen because? "It is against the law". That hrase is shorthand for "a lot of bad things happen to me if I break it". A person may want to follow the law because they believe the law is just (absent proof to the contrary).

People may have a default state in how they handle things when first approached. But as most theories of human behavior hold, they usually have a reason for doing so even if they don't consciously reason it out. I obey the law because bad things happen to me if I don't. I obey the law because it makes people think I am a good person. I obey the law because it is the right thing to do.

Blind obedience occurs when a person continues to follow (a person, a law, etc.) regardless of circumstances. Tsukio was blindly obedient to the idea that undead are better and nicer than living beings, to the point that she couldn't understand their actual nature even when they were eating her. Redcloak appears to be blindingly obedient to The Plan, even though there have been enough signs that he should start questioning if this is actually the best thing for his people. The MitD was blindingly obedient to whoever was paying attention to him and "being nice" even when they weren't being nice. Thanks to O'chul he may be starting to break out of this.

[LaZodiac]

It's why the game is called Bravely Default. You are bravely doing the default action, heading forward into it without any fear, trusting it'll end up good for you.

[rs2excelsior]

Ah, human thought. A lovely segue, for THAT is what I believe is the one true act of disobedience to the forces around you: thinking for yourself. I believe that acting as "I will do/say/think this/in this way because X tells me to"...that is the true obedience. Inversely, the true disobedience is to act as "I will do/say/think this/in this way for my own reasons and my own purpose."

I think your analysis is missing something here. I can choose to obey some authority for my own purpose and reasons. In your example, you have deeply personal reasons for not stealing the candy bar above and beyond blind obedience, but the resulting decision is still to obey. Therefore, I would propose a spectrum from blind obedience--"I will do/say/think this/in this way because X tells me to"--to blind disobedience--"I will NOT do/say/think this/in this way, only because X tells me to." In the middle, you'd have reasoned obedience and disobedience. For example--compare "I will steal this candy bar because [verb] the police!" versus "There's someone who is diabetic and about to go into shock because their blood sugar is too low, and I don't have time to wait in line and pay for the candy bar, so I'll take it and come back later to explain" (kind of ridiculous, I know, but about the only reasonable reason to steal a candy bar that I could come up with). The former is blind disobedience, the latter is reasoned disobedience. Analyzing a situation and choosing to obey is still not disobedience, to my mind.

An idea for a social experiment: a number of participants are placed in a room and given a list of rules--things they must or must not do. However, they are not informed of any consequences, and in fact there are none. When someone starts breaking the rules, make it clear the administrators know, but do nothing. How many still follow the rules simply because they're there, even without apparent punishment?

[veti]

"Obedience" is more than just "doing what someone else says". It requires that the "someone else" be an authority figure. I don't think that advertisers or politicians are hoping to get you to "obey" - they are in the business of persuasion, which is a different thing from command or instruction.

So I don't think you can say much about "obedience", without also musing on the nature of "authority". What is authority?

A political science lecturer explained it to me like this: If you're in a bank, and a man with a gun charges in and commands you to lie down on the floor, you do what he says, right? But that's not "legitimate" authority - that's just "power", which is a different thing. You'll only obey him for as long as you're too afraid not to. As soon as you think it's safe, you'll look for a more legitimate figure, such as a security guard or the bank manager, whom you would be inclined to obey (in this scenario) even without being threatened.

"Authority" is inherently limited in scope. If I take my car to a mechanic, I'm deferring to the mechanic's authority when it comes to working out what needs to be done to the car - but that doesn't mean I have to listen to his medical or relationship advice. My doctor has authority to advise me about diet and exercise, but I don't have to listen to their theories about my tyre pressure. My boss can (within the limits of relevant laws, and my job description and contract) tell me what to do within the office and within work hours, but outside work hours, they have no authority over me.

So if you "obey" an advertiser or a politician, it's because you are choosing to give them authority. There are all sorts of reasons why you might want to do that. For instance, you might think that the advertiser has some expertise about "looking cool", and you want to look cool, so you drink their poisondrink. It's true that advertisers try very hard to convince you of this sort of thing, but it's always your choice to "obey" them.

If you obey the law - in the stealing-a-candy-bar example, I would obey the law because not doing so would make me a thief, and I don't want to have to live with that as my self-image. Sure there's a risk of getting caught, and bad things would follow from that, but the main thing that's policing my obedience is myself.