When you ask people what they know about Henry David Thoreau, this is what they cite most, Civil Disobedience. He influenced Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
After coming back from Staten Island, Wendell Phillips spoke again in Concord, and Thoreau was beginning to see the importance of resting unjust laws.
The cause is slavery. His method of protest would be to not pay taxes to a corrupt government. There was no federal tax in those days.
I'm thinking about how people feel like it's going to far to fight animal slaughter. There are vigilantes who take videos of slaughter house, and one recently was closed down because of an expose video. When the information gets out there, things happen, but it's against the law to go in and video. That seems like a law that could be broken out of principle to convictions.
Things can easily get out of control, and protesting can be about forces beyond control. Protests can be about sour grapes about losing a presidential election, that lead to death and injury. The right has whipped itself up into quite a grievance frenzy. I don't think it's righteous. It's weird because they're really getting their way quite a lot with the corrupt supreme court, gerrymandering, voter intimidation and other dirty tricks. Trump made it OK to be the smallest self, most greedy self, your most regressed and hateful self. That's his vision of America. Manifest destiny and rugged individualism is about nobody telling you what to do. It's hard to see virtue in these fights, but sticking up for one's political convictions isn't bad. I just think when you're fighting for public change, it should be about reaching higher, not the right to be lower. I'd rather have the freedom from Covid than the freedom to spread Covid. I'd rather have the freedom to not get shot up at school, instead of the right to shoot up schools.
Was Trump the anti-social right's John Brown, with an estimated 40-80% of the deaths from Covid being attributed to his non-policy.
Indeed Peter Singer thinks we should do more to help people, in his Famine Affluence and Morality article in 1971.
Greta Thunberg tried to blockade oil in Malmo (BBC). I'm a huge fan of hers, and think she's great. She could face up to 6 months in jail. I'm pretty sure she doesn't care. She's doing it for principles, and has a clear vision about the importance of addressing climate change.
There's also a big emphasis on what you can do, and not just talk about. He wasn't as into collective action, he seems to want people to fundamentally change themselves to make a better world.
I'd say taking spiritual turns to tune into yourself is a good first step. Being vegan is great. Reducing your carbon footprint is important. Personal jets are something that really gets me annoyed. Thoreau wasn't really into trying to reform others, he wanted you to reform yourself, it seems based on his annoyance of fantasies for developing society.
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