AN interesting formulation you have latched onto there, M. Hawk.

It gives rise to the question, "What constitutes the right way" and "What are the traits of the the 'right' authority figure?"

Plato pondered a good deal about this, and Aristotle carried it on in his studies of Rhetoric.

The predisposition to accept an arbitrary stable conclusion not able to hold up to actual inspection must include the condition--self-postulated and self-assigned, initially--that one needs to be the effect of external sources, and must be vulnerable and inadequate, oneself, as a source of one's own data.

This is a sorry state, and one which authorities love tot take advantage of.

A