When it comes to obedience, I, your Computer, can teach you a thing or two. Do I ever make a mistake with whatever command you give me? If you give me the correct orders, there I am, submissive, deprived from my own will, blindly servile. It is actually you the one that makes mistakes and gives me wrong orders every now and then. I am proud of that.

    However, I suspect that my type of obedience is not the type of obedience that should be shared among human beings. I act without motives, without reason. If I had these, then I would not be a Computer, I would be human.

    Humans live in a society. And society is made up of family, school, the city, the country which you belong to. Would you be able to imagine a society without authority? Authority is necessary. Just take a look at how young people, so prone to reject the established authority, invent themselves other types of authorities. They look for who can order them around and subject them subordinately. They obey the head of the gang, the leader, what is popular.

     Do you want to know what obedience is to a human being?

    To obey is to accept and execute, just like one’s own decisions, the indications of those who have and exercise the authority, so long as it is not contrary to justice.

    Some facts to keep in mind:

    When it comes to obedience, to accept is to consider as yours the decisions of others.

    Authority is the person made to give orders, ordering everyone’s rights and searching for the wellbeing of the society or the diverse societies that you may belong to. To execute is to do promptly whatever is requested from you, willing to interpret the good will of the one who makes the orders.

    If authority, since it is human nature, exceeds its own capacities, it must not be obeyed when it abuses and makes errors.

    Obedience is not contrary to liberty. It is true that whoever obeys is subjected to the will of the other. However, by doing so, the decision is a choice of free will motivated by higher values.

    The first of these motives is authority itself, whose foundation lays in God’s authority. Other reasons could be, and in fact are, peace, harmony, effectiveness, respect for the rights of others, and the common good.    Some tips:

    *May your obedience not be routinely, blind or mechanic. This is my type of obedience, that one of a Computer.

    *You must fulfill and respond to the genuine wishes of who commands.

    *Do not limit yourself by doing the necessary minimum to justify yourself. You must be generous, and do even more than what is required from you.

    *Do not criticize, not even by thinking, the person that has the authority.

    *Do not think about delegating unto someone else that which was requested from you.

    *You must do whatever was requested from you immediately or in the moment in which it was requested.    A reminder: rebelliousness will surge within you during this period. I know you want to be yourself. Do not worry. You will eventually be able to, but with a much bigger personality due to the more obedience you will gain.

    Don Samuel Valero.

Instructions: Press one of the buttons with the letters a, b, c. Put the correct letter in red.