Thinking on Obedience (and Discipline)

Today's Thinking podcast explores discipline, compliance, and obedience

Kahran: Hi, I'm Karin.

Divya: Hi, I'm Davey.

Kahran: And this is the 19th episode of thinking on Thinking. Today we set out to explore some intertwined topics, looking at discipline, compliance, and obedience. We were excited about understanding more about how discipline could play, into our lives, but we found our time really spent more exploring the notion of obedience. it was a really interesting conversation, understanding where obedience can have its place. And for people who like to believe they're free thinkers and, advocates of always having agency, it was really interesting to realize that we felt like maybe obedience does have its place, in certain circumstances and to drive certain kinds of behaviors. We loved today's conversation, and we hope you enjoy it, too.

Divya: So after our conversation last time about courage, and daring, I think my mind went into, hm. Both of these are things where an individual decides that they want to do something, even if there is no, for the lack of a better term, systemic support around them. And somehow my mind went to the idea of, obedience, discipline, compliance, because these are things that one would say, get a desired behavior out of someone based on a system. Obedience is often somebody in position of power, is forcing you to do something, and you obediently do it. You can also comply with it. I'm not particularly sure what are, the crisp differences between the two. And discipline can be externally imposed, but can be internally imposed, too. But all three of them have a, I would say, systemic component to it, and that's why, at least in my mind, they went into the same category.

Kahran: You know, I'm always very curious. I was just looking. So obedience, actually, it uses compliance in the definition, but the definition of obedience is compliance, with an order, request, or law, or submission to another's authority. And then the phrase it gives as an example, is in obedience to. Is in accordance with. He was acting in obedience to his conscience, which is really interesting, because a second ago, they just defined it as someone else's authority. And then to be in obedience to your conscience, I mean, it's like your conscience is a different authority than yourself.

Divya: I also don't think that that usage is correct. Like, I do not think that that's a natural usage of the word obedience. I am not obedient to my morals. I wouldn't even say I comply with my morals. Right? Would you say that?

Kahran: Yeah. in obedience to. It's not a phrase that rolls off the tongue.

Divya: I mean, you could. I don't think, grammatically, anything is wrong with it, but I don't think that, like, the, subtext is correct. It's a little bit like she dared to eat ice cream even during the winters. I mean, there's nothing wrong with the usage of the word, but, like, I.

Kahran: Could imagine you saying something like, she was daring in her dessert choices, and her daring extended to cold things in the heart of the winter or something. Right? Like, you could somehow set it up in a way that, like, it made it clear, like, that there was an element of daring and what that daring was.

Divya: I mean, if you really wanted to be literary with your writing, sure. But if you just think about, like, daring, you wouldn't think about it in that context. And, like, similarly, I'm just saying that, like, definition of obedience to your own conscience feels odd.

Kahran: So I think in obedience comes from being in obedience to God, because there's a lot of biblical verses about you being in obedience to God. And then in obedience is an idiom, which apparently, according to Miriam Webster, means in such a way that someone is doing what he or she is told to do by someone or by a law or rule. So the example is students are expected to act in obedience to the rules of the school.

Divya: that makes much more sense.

Kahran: Yeah.

Divya: Okay. Maybe, like, we can leave this example because the dictionary seems a little bit more confused than we would have liked it to be. Confused.

Kahran: It's kind of like saying that you're not having a cognitive dissonance. Right. Like that. If you're being, you're acting in conjunction with the rest of you. Discipline is the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior.

Divya: Interesting. So, comply was used in the definition of obedience, which is. Which, in verb form would be obey. And obey is used in the definition of discipline. How interesting. It's almost like degrees.

Kahran: Yeah. Because at first, when you were telling me about this topic, I kind of felt like they were two apples and one orange. but I didn't quite feel like they were all the same fruit. I don't know. But then, of course, you know, as you're pointing out here, like, they all are referencing each other in their definitions. I don't know. I just like something about it, though. It doesn't feel like that's. Like, I feel like compliance through discipline is just sad.

Divya: They are all different. I also think that, like, discipline has a, self component. There can be self discipline, or there is something about discipline that is still, in a weird way, higher on the agency side than obedience and compliance have. Obedience almost feels like you have been stripped away with all your agency in this situation to make choices and compliance is like you are complying, so you are choosing to give away your agency so that you can take whatever action you are being asked to take.

Kahran: Interesting.

How do you feel about whether discipline is self motivated or externally motivated

Well, I started thinking about, like, both, like, what would you want to build into a company? But then I was also thinking about, like, why do people have attitudes that they do? And I feel like something we've talked about in the podcast in the past is that the indian schooling system really is one that kind of pushes you into a obedience. Isn't that kind of fair? That's, I think, how you kind of have.

Divya: Yeah.

Kahran: You almost wish that you, you saw less obedience and you saw more people kind of being. Having discipline. Yeah. Even maybe from an internally motivated place than being obedient.

Divya: You know, it's a little bit like compliance is like you're doing the thing that is asked of you. Obedience is like you're doing the thing that is asked of you, and you are internally not committing thought crime against the thing either. So, like, you could comply with something and still grumble about it, but if you're obedient towards something, you would not grumble about it either. You would just do it and not even think that. It's like, you know, there could be an alternative. While in discipline you have in some sense understood the utility of the rule, and that's why you are doing this thing. You have internalized it.

Kahran: It basically was saying you can either be compliant because of discipline or you can be compliant because of obedience. It's kind of like compliance is the thing that happens and then there's a different motivation or intent.

Divya: Yeah. Base compliance is the output that there is a rule and there's a unit which is a part of the system and is the unit which is the part of the system following the rule that is there.

Kahran: How do you feel about it differs whether discipline is self motivated or externally motivated? Or do you feel like in the way you've been thinking about discipline, it's much more of an internally motivated discipline?

Divya: I think that, like, I've been thinking about it much more in the internally motivated sense, because otherwise it just feels like obedience and not like discipline. Discipline, as a word, at least to me, feels like you understand your own desires or your own perturbations of the mind for the lack of a better term, and you're able to move them in a particular direction. So it's discipline, let's say, to not eat junk food. It's obedience. When you are a young child and your mother says you are not going to eat junk food, and you don't eat junk food. Like, discipline is a muscle that you could grow. Obedience is just like a static thing. You could be hammered into obedience, I suppose. How do you feel about discipline?

Kahran: Do you feel like you do obedience with control? Like, if I was saying I was doing a, behavior that was an obedient behavior, would we say that I was doing it in a controlled way?

Divya: I don't think I understand.

Kahran: So maybe, like, one of the definitions of discipline is to train oneself to do something in a controlled and habitual way.

Divya: It's almost like the dictionary also itself isn't clear about the differences between the words, and it's using them freely and interchangeably, even though in situations that it really shouldn't. I don't think that obedience is a matter of control. Honestly, I feel like obedience is a matter of giving up control.

Kahran: Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking about.

Divya: So who is someone who doesn't. Who is obedient or, who is expected to be obedient? Subordinates, students, children, soldiers, like, people who all have a higher authority, who is almost imposing rules on them. Like, obedience is a desired behavior from subordinates by people who hold control over them. I would even go as far as to say, like, if you're someone who has high agency, you would have a very strong intrinsic negative reaction to someone expecting you to be obedient.

Kahran: No, what I was thinking about was, like, discipline is a way you can do things, but obedient is telling you what you can do.

Divya: Okay. But obedience is also, I think you are right, or rather, why you can't do it.

Kahran: Yeah. You know, that's one of my favorite things to break things into. I'm always breaking them into this, the, like, what is happening? who is doing it? How are they doing it, why are they doing it? And then it's, also, you like, when you're doing it for stories you do. Where is it?

Divya: I would also say that, like, I don't think obedience allows you to ask the why question. Like, if you think about how, let's say the easiest example is in case of religion, you are expected to just do the things that are asked of you. You're not expected to ask the why questions.

Kahran: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. And I feel like there's this notion of belief. I don't know if you've, ever kind of had conversations with people who like to question the whys of things but are also religious. And, in the conversations that I've had, what they will come to is that there's a certain point where it comes to belief. And then it's interesting because belief really requires obedience to the belief, right. You don't question belief. Belief is like a suspension of disbelief, frankly. But, you know, a lot of other things have belief, too. And in some ways you do kind of have obedience to that belief. Right. If you think about, like, the ethos of kind of companies that are challenging norms, in a lot of ways, they're looking for people to have faith, you know? And we could say that faith and obedience kind of go hand in hand, to a belief that something is that a lot of people, other people don't believe.

Divya: I'm not sure how much I agree with that statement because I think that, like, even if you think about, like, a company that is progressing or, like, you know, that is saying that it's progressing and breaking rules, I don't think asking why is forbidden. So it's not belief in that pure sense, as it might be in case of religion, right. In case of a company that is trying to break norms, at least I would say they're not expecting obedience. They might be expecting shared values.

Kahran: But do you know, you know how one of Amazon's leadership principles is disagree and commit?

Divya: M. No.

Kahran: Okay. So it's basically this notion that, like, you can disagree, right, and you should disagree, but once the decision is taken, then you, then you commit, right? So, you know, you air, there'll be a place for you as a team to kind of discuss whatever, and you're welcome to register your disagreement. But once we have made a decision, you commit to the decision. How do you feel about that?

Divya: Okay, that feels closer to discipline because, like, you do have a choice and you do have, like, almost like, free will and ability to question things. Like, your agency is not being destroyed in this situation. At least that's how I, well, so.

Kahran: Just to push it a little further, though, so, and expecting people to commit, like, expecting people to be obedient after a certain point is fine with you if you've given them the option to make that choice for themselves is what you're saying.

Divya: Because I don't think that that is obedience as much as it is, like, compliance, where you're like, I don't believe in this thing. I don't agree with it, and I don't have to. Like, I can hold my own thoughts here. I can question the why, but not.

Kahran: But the point of committing is that you're not going to do it publicly after that. Right. You may be questioning it for yourself. But after that date, you're committed, right? Like you're not going to go and nurse the team to other people or kind of like undermine. Right?

Use the phrase disagree and commit. If you have conviction on particular direction

Like you're going to do everything you can to make this thing successful.

Divya: I guess. Like there is an element of obedience there then.

Kahran: correct. Right. It's like if you wanted to, you didn't have to be here.

Divya: I think that, statement, if you like, you know, if you disagree, you can leave, is definitely one that people who are more interested in obedience make. But it's like, oh, you could just leave. Don't question.

Kahran: Yeah, sorry. I was actually just looking what Amazon's actual thing was. So it was, have backbone, disagree and commit. Like, so have the backbone to disagree.

Divya: That feels even stranger.

Kahran: So what he says is, use the phrase disagree and commit. This phrase will save a lot of time. If you have conviction on particular direction, even though there's no consensus, it's helpful to say, look, I know we disagree on this, but will you gamble with me? Disagree and commit. By the time you're at this point, no one can know the answer for sure and you'll probably get a quick yes. What an interesting way. It's like framing it in the least obedience way possible. Even though I would contend that I think at the core of it, it really is about obedience. Like, I just kind of made you arrive there, right?

Divya: But, yeah, it is just like put your effort and your heart into this direction that I am telling you is probably the right direction and put your full self into it. I guess. Like the way he's wriggling out of it is by saying that we will get quick answers and we don't have information right now.

Kahran: And it's weird because it almost makes it into an emotional place. Right? It's like, I know that you disagree with me on this idea, but because you have faith in me and our relationship, you should commit to it. It takes it from being like a, the quid pro quo is no longer like a, oh, you're taking my idea, so I'm giving some. So I'm taking something back from you. It's like, oh, you're taking my idea and you're doing it because of the value you put on our relationship. It's just like really interesting. It's such an interesting way because both, you know, every time that happens, it actually helps build their relationship because it shows trust in the relationship. It shows that, you know, like, we are here for each other. We support each other's ideas. We commit even when we don't necessarily agree. but because it makes it about the relationship instead of about the idea and framing it that way, it's just a really interesting outcome. I never thought about obedience in that way. Really?

Divya: Yeah. It's almost like obedience is acting as a social bonding liquid.

Kahran: Yeah. I wonder if that's why it's so like, a lot of religions will have the roles for everyone. It's not just like these are the roles for the laypeople, but also like that there's prescribed roles for people who are part of the church or part of the faith. Right. So it's like they have to be obedient to their thing, just as you have to be obedient to your thing. So there's this shared kind of sense of obedience. I don't know. I don't know if that's the same thing as when you're being obedient to each other. And the same way that that would kind of build a relationship, if kind of this notion that we both are going through the same thing, even though we are different places, it kind of helps build a, build a further relationship or build a depth of relationship with.

Divya: I really didn't think that we would arrive at, like, obedience is not all bad when we started this topic because, like, I think in my mind, discipline, great obedience, not so great because you're almost forcing other people. But it's like, it's a tribal glue, but not an individualistic good property.

Kahran: I, totally agree with you on that. Right. But I think that second part, just reading this kind of the way Amazon thinks about it, has really changed my thought a little bit of. I think what we end up doing a lot of the times, in business and just in relationships, is we tend to try and look at ideas dispassionately where we're like, oh, yeah, we'll try and evaluate the idea regardless of the person who has brought it. So separate out those two things. And I think in doing that, a lot of times we forget that there's an impact to the person who has brought it, where they'll start to feel like either they're valued in this group or less valued in this group, or they'll start to feel like people generally start to understand certain kinds of things are more appreciated. There's an impact beyond that. Right. And I think this interesting notion that I kind of understood from this disagree and commit idea is that it's like, it's acknowledging, especially the way that they're framing it. It's acknowledging that the idea has a source, and that, sometimes those sources, sometimes the idea may not be fully formed when it's coming from that source. And so sometimes what you're doing is you're not actually evaluating the idea, you're valuing the idea to an extent, but at some point you're just kind of saying, well, we know that you can do what you can do even if you aren't being able to explain this that well. So we're going to be obedient to the notion that people don't need to be as clear almost, right. That people can somewhat, be able to explain their ideas or explain their path and still know that they will have the support of their team and their community.

Some people say consensus based collaboration is incomplete because it's not complete

Divya: I want to push back on that is, I wonder if, like, you know, that is trying to explain away collaboration in a completely different definition.

Kahran: Well, there's consensus based collaboration, and this is like, not consensus based collaboration.

Divya: No, but this is sort of, okay, so sometimes collaboration is like, oh, we all agree on this thing, and sometimes collaboration is. Yes, and, and this is in some ways, yes, and in thing. Like, I'm not trying to criticize what you're building. Like the definition that you gave. Right. Like, this is incomplete. I agree with what you have brought in. And, now I'm gonna go and add something of my own to it, and maybe that will make it complete, or maybe the next person will make it complete. And that just feels more like a collaboration definition, that this is not complete, that that doesn't feel as much about, like, obedience. Like the initial definition. Disagree and commit. Sure it feels like that, but the moment you start introducing, like, oh, the creative process means that things are incomplete. Or you bring half an idea and I'm going to add my half an idea without critically evaluating, that just feels like a part of the creative collaborative process.

Kahran: Yeah, I think, I mean, here, I'll just read it again. Right. What they were saying was, look, I know we disagree on this, but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit. And I feel like there's something about that where it's like the normal, or, not the normal thing. Right. But it's like, oftentimes what will happen is that it's hard to get people to, if they don't agree, then they're not going to fully commit. And I feel like it's, that notion, it's like saying that you don't have to get someone to fully agree to get them to fully commit. And I feel like that has this obedience underlying characteristic because normally, when people fully agree, like, to get people to fully commit, you need them to fully agree. So it goes into that belief point. And I feel like once you fall into that belief side, then there's this point, this component of obedience, because you're not being able to fully question. There's a point where you're like, okay, I just. I believe. Right. And whether it's. I believe in the relationship, I believe in the, you know, that we both are serving a greater good, or I believe that we both are committed to the same values. Like, there's a point where it's just like, I believe, and because of that, I'm going to do this.

Divya: Interesting.

There's something weird about this overlap between obedience and compliance that makes me uncomfortable

So now I have a different question. When we began this topic, you were not fully sold into this idea, that we should talk about this.

Kahran: Well, particularly one side of it, but, yes, go on.

Divya: Right. So now, do you feel like you were being forced to do it, or you were like, you know, because I think that, like, obedience, in some ways, to me, feels like there is an element of force, like, whether it is social pressure or whether it is, like, psychological pressure or emotional pressure, there is some element of that. Did you feel like that is why you did it? Absence of resistance is not presence of pressure also?

Kahran: Yeah, I mean, I think so. I don't. I think that's not entirely unaccurate. I think that there is this notion of kind of being obedient to, if nothing else, like your higher self. Right. And I think, for me, the notion that, like, yes, we do produce a podcast regularly. we do create an equal space for our ideas. And I think, in my mind, a little bit, I kind of felt like you took a risk with me where you didn't quite understand what I wanted to do with courage and daring. But you kind of were excited about exploring with me. Right. You kind of disagreed and committed for rag. Right? Like, we talked about it, you were like, I think courage and confidence will be better, but you were like, if you feel really strongly, we could do it. Right. and so I felt like I kind of raised to you where I was like, you know, I feel just. There's something weird about this overlap between obedience and compliance that, like, makes me feel weird. Like, I don't know if I like that notion of, But then, you know, we were like, ah, ah. I think it might be interesting. And we explored it. And I think now what I start to realize is, usually when I feel that way, it's something that I'm, like, not like a little bit uncomfortable with. And I think in this case, part of what makes me uncomfortable is I do think that as much as I like to kind of, like you were saying, believe that obedience is something that you don't really need to think about how you're formulating or where its place is in your organization or in your relationships. I think I kind of arrived in this conversation that it does have a place. Right. And I think as we would think about how we would build a great organization, it will have a place to think about what is these notions that we are having a shared obedience to and where can that manifest in a way that can kind of strengthen the relationships that we're trying to create? Because I do think that at the core of it, having strong fundamentals, which, to me is values and relationships, is what will allow you to weather different storms and be able to have resilience as life goes on, both as a company and as people.

Divya: And in this model, it almost feels like obedience is the thing that would tie a person to the value. So, like, when the going gets tough, it's because you are obedient or I guess, like, we have also overlapped the word obedience and belief together a little bit. Like, obedience is the action that comes out of belief in a certain sense. and because of that, like, because you have belief in some shared set of value, whether it is, if we were to refer to a previous episode, whether it is even this idea of, like, we want to be daring, then you have some amount of obedience as a result of it.

Kahran: Yeah. And I think, to me, doing things with discipline, to a large part, means, like, doing things with control. It's a how, I guess, as I was kind of saying a few minutes ago, that, like, you could be doing many different kinds of actions in a disciplined way. Like, just to kind of continue with some of the examples we were just talking about, like, if we were doing project work and, you know, one of the values that we felt was important for our company and for, you know, our project team was, to be disciplined. I would look at that in, like, how we communicated to our client. I would look at that in, like, the way we worked, with each other, and I would look at that and, like, kind of ingest, even like, kind of how we produce things. Right. I would look and say, like, you know, are we being disciplined in it? Like, are we being systematic, in our approach? Like, you can have chaotic times, but you could, but you're putting them in somewhere. So the overarching thing is structured. I guess that feels to me as where, I guess the interplay of discipline into this mix.

Divya: It's almost like for you, it feels like all of these different, all of these different things are not opposing forces, but they are different aspects of the same piece. Sometimes you need beliefs, sometimes you need compliance, sometimes you need discipline, and sometimes you need, obedience. That word really still doesn't sit right with me. I think it's years and years of just really disliking the obedience word. it's also interesting because I've been reading this book, the righteous mind. It's a book on moral philosophy and moral psychology, like a combination of the two. And, he's basically trying to explore the question of, like, why do people vote Democrat or Republican? And he has six, fold moral foundations theory. I do not remember them off the top of my head, but it's an interesting book because he basically talks about how liberals, have very narrow moral foundations, while, conservatives have broader moral foundations. So you can appeal to more things around it. And, it almost feels like obedience falls in one of those things that I don't want to morally associate with. But clearly I can see the utility of now after this conversation. So I think I'm having, like, a weird ethical dilemma here, because I'm like, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. but this really goes against the idea of liberty. No, I don't like it.

Kahran: Well, maybe we can revisit it and see how you feel in a few weeks, maybe after you have done some work with your spaces, as you promised on our previous episode that I have not forgotten, and I'm sure our dear listeners are waiting to hear the updates.

Divya: I think I've been thinking about organizing my stuff more from a functional perspective, but still, like, thinking about the usability of it. Like the thing that you said. How will the space be used? I've been thinking about it, and I think I shall. M, what verb will I use? It? I shall try it. That's the verb I'm going to use.

This week we talked a lot more about obedience and finding it positive

Kahran: There you go.

Divya: I think this was a short one, but this was an interesting one. I don't think that we have ever arrived at the opposite conclusion of what we thought I we would arrive at. I really thought that we would talk a lot more about discipline, but we ended up talking a lot more about obedience and, also finding it positive.

Kahran: I really like how disgruntled you are by this. What is this nonsense? Yeah, I mean, I think it's just. I think it's easy to conclude things don't have their place. But I think almost every. It's something you've helped me really realize, I think, a lot, that almost every emotion is signaling to you something. Right. So I think, like, most behaviors are similar, too. There's a reason and a place where it can be adding value to you almost all the time.

Divya: All right, then we'll put it up to a good episode.

Kahran: Yes. This is very fun.

Divya: Awesome. I'll see you next time.

Kahran: Bye bye.

Divya: Thanks for listening to this episode of thinking on thinking. Our theme music is by Steve Gomes.

Kahran: If you found any of the topics we talked about interesting this week, we'd invite you to get in touch with us. We'd love to invite you on the podcast or just have a conversation about how these topics apply in your business and in the decisions and problems that you're struggling with. You can get in touch with us on our website, joyous studio, or by reaching out to Divya, or me, Karun M directly.