Of authority and magesteriums -- The Golden Compass II

The bad guys in the movie The Golden Compass are the Magesterium. While is is not overtly stated in the first movie of book of the series, the Magesterium obviously represents the Catholic Church and religion in general. Throughout, we are to admire Lyra for following her own beliefs and defying the authority of the Magesterium. That is, for defying their authoritarianism -- which is not the same.

The good guys of the movie are those associated with Jordan College -- higher education, who defy the Magesterium in two ways at great risk. First, the fund an expedition to seek out and study "dust" a metaphysical substance the Magesterium doesn't want discussed. Second, the head of Jordan college gives Lyra a golden compass -- the only one left, all others having been destroyed by the Magesterium.

Obviously, the Golden Compass is part of the Enlightenment attack on religion, established churches, and authority in particular. As such, it is peculiar in this day and age to watch it given the fact that the Enlightenment has failed. It is as if Pullman were trying to channel Voltaire in his writings. But Voltaire was never so naive.

For Voltaire would have known that authority in all guises -- whether Church, state, or education -- should be contested.

But the real problem is that human nature is not so simple. You've heard of the Millgram experiments?

Millgram conducted an experiment to see how far people were willing to follow authority. His decisive conclusion showed that ordinary Americans -- yes Americans -- would kill someone if a person in authority told them to. Ah, but this is old news, surely we've grown by now. Not so, my friends -- frighteningly not so. Millgram's study has been repeated with similar results: http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2008/01/milgrams_notorious_.html

My question, then, is to what extent must human beings follow authority? What is the role of authority in our lives? And what do we do in the face of real life experiments which show how easily we follow authority? Isn't the Golden Compass just another peice of claptrap about how great human beings would be without religion, when religion isn't the issue -- authority is. Maybe we should consider carefully LeGuin's anarchist society in The Dispossessed.